HURJ Volume 08 - Spring 2008 by The HURJ

Human

Rights

HURJ Spring 2008 Issue 8

Table of Contents spring 2008 focus: Human Rights 18

Millions Die. No One Hears a Word David Attarzadeh

21 Teaching for Citizenship: How Human Rights Education Can Change Our Society Adriane Alicea 24 Respecting Autonomy in Individuals Within a Civil Society Cuong Nguyen 31 Behind the Blindfold: American Foreign Policy and Torture Ambroshia Murrietta 34

The Shadow of Child Soldiers Johnson Ukken

38 The Brazilian Amazon’s Forgotten People Lena Denis 42

Building Up by Kicking Out: Urbanization by Forced Evictions in Africa nancy Tray

spotlights:

Project Prevent ... National Student Partnerships ... STAND ... Programa

Salud ... Refugee Youth Project ... Global Conflicts ... Physics…in Space! ... Deoxy-research: Using Chemistry to Solve Biological Quandaries ... NGF and the Wnt Pathway ... Crossing a Barrier, Exploring the World

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Letter from the editors On behalf of the staff, we would like to welcome you to the Spring 2008 issue of the Hopkins Undergraduate Research Journal (HURJ). Since its inception in 2001, HURJ has evolved each year to encompass and reflect the diverse interests of Hopkins undergraduates. This issueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s focus on human rights is the latest in a trend of previous focus topics dedicated to important concerns of today. We found fellow undergraduates to be incredibly responsive to this themeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the result is a journal of many voices, opinions, and ideas. In this issue, HURJ showcases two types of articles. Spotlight articles highlight the achievements of professors and students. For the first time, we are also excited to share with you the work of student groups on campus. Specifically, these are groups who have been addressing human rights long before we chose the topic. Focus articles written for this issue build on this existing framework, adding dimension and insight to the continuing discussion of human rights. Whether our writers are pursuing in-depth analyses of human rights violations in the world or the philosophical basis of humane treatment, each is profoundly interested in inspiring solutions. We are proud of our writers and staff and hope that you will honor their work with your attention. This issue of HURJ would not have been possible without the dedication and support of the HURJ staff, Hopkins faculty, and HURJ sponsors. We would like to thank the students and professors who contributed to HURJ either through sharing their unique experiences, reviewing articles, or researching topics. We would also like to thank the Hopkins Student Activities Commission and the Office of Student Involvement for their generous contributions and continued support. Finally, we thank the Digital Media Center for allowing us the use of their facilities and equipment. As always, we welcome your ideas, comments, and questions. May this journal serve as inspiration for you to begin your own project and contribute to the intellectual growth of this community.

Editor-in-Chief of Operations

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HURJ 2007-2008 Editorial Board: Editor-in-Chief of Operations

....................... Adam C. Canver

Editor-in-Chief of Content

....................... Winnie Tsang

Editor-in-Chief of Layout

....................... Bryce Olenczak

Spotlight Editor

....................... Ishrat Ahmed

Focus Editor

....................... Jason Liebowitz

Engineering Editor:

....................... Jennie Wang

Science Editor:

....................... Karun Arora

Humanities Editor:

....................... Daria Nikolaeva

Sidebar Editor

....................... Gandhi Vallarapu

Layout Editor

About HURJ: The Hopkins Undergraduate Research Journal provides undergraduates with a valuable resource to learn about research being done by their peers and interesting current issues. The journal is comprised of three sections- original research, a current focus topic, and student and faculty spotlights. Students are encouraged to contribute their work either by submitting their research, or by writing for our focus or spotlight sections. The tremendous interest in our focus section has necessitated the use of an application process for our writers, while our research and spotlight sections are open for all to contribute to.

....................... Julia Zhou

Copy Chief

....................... Defne Arslan

Public Relations Officers

....................... Adriane Alicea ....................... Michael Lou

HURJ Staff: Spotlight Writers

Ishrat Ahmed Michael Arnst Jason Liebowitz Andrew Ng Pooja Singal Piyush Sovani Jeremy Stein Nicole Angeli Jackie Sofia Atieh Novin

Focus Writers

David Attarzadeh Lena Davis Ambroshia Murrietta Cuong Nguyen Nancy Tray Johnson Ukken

Copy Editors

Lindsay Van Thoen Haley Deutsch

Layout Staff

Sharon Ovadia

Cover Artist Karam Han

Hopkins Undergraduate Research Journal Johns Hopkins University Mattin Center, Suite 210 3400 N. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21218 hurj@jhu.edu http://www.jhu.edu/hurj

research spotlights Pr/ject Preven. Pooja Singal/ HURJ Staff Writer Project Prevent is a student-run, non-profit organization at the Johns Hopkins University that provides health education, information, and free primary care screenings to the Baltimore community. Project Prevent realizes that there are severe social-economic and racial disparities present in the current healthcare system and attempts to address these issues through the prevention of disease and illness. Project Preventâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main goal is to reduce and eliminate some of the disparities in health care delivery by organizing an annual health fair that provides free primary health care services to the uninsured and underserved communities in Baltimore. For the past few years, the fair has been held in mid-April in the Park Heights community at the Agape Love Center. Among the free medical services provided to the community are immunizations, HIV testing, lead poisoning testing, depression screenings, substance abuse programs, nutrition information, vision screening, blood-pressure screenings, consultations, diabetes screening, and physicals. The fair attracts about 300 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 500 people every year not only because of its plethora of free medical resources but also because of the festive atmosphere. The fair features both Hopkins and non-Hopkins dance groups, a capella groups, a DJ, and in the past, a local marching band as well. There are activities for the children including face painting, beading, and other arts and crafts. Community members are also drawn by the allure of hot dogs and hamburgers on the barbeque outside of the church, provided for free to all who have visited at least five of the health agencies. The annual health fair has become an event that Hopkins students, members of the Agape Love Center, and citizens of the Park Heights Community look forward to as an opportunity to assess their health

and also to simply gather to have a good time. The fair provides benefits to all involved, because it not only helps the community members receiving the various health services - it also serves as a reminder to Hopkins students that they cannot live in a bubble on campus and ignore the socio-economic and racial disparities that are all too present in the communities around them. From the fair, students take away a desire to be involved and to help make a difference. Project Prevent hopes to branch out in the future and assist other health groups with running health fairs as well as running health education workshops for the Baltimore community. Project Prevent seeks to bring together students who strive to make health care, the most basic and unalienable of human rights, truly available and accessible to everyone.

National Student Partnerships Michael Arnst / HURJ Staff Writer When discussing the issue of human rights in the United States, the war on terrorism and the death penalty usually dominate the conversation. However, as of late, especially in the 2008 presidential campaigns, the discourse has shifted to such topics of everyday importance as health care and education. While access to affordable healthcare and equal opportunity education has become a right in political rhetoric, it has yet to become a reality. National Student Partnerships (NSP) puts its staff and volunteers to this task. NSP is a dropin resource center that links low-income members of the community with proper medical care, GED programs, food stamps, affordable housing and much more. NSP was founded in 1998 by two Yale undergraduates, Kirsten Lodal and Brian Kreiter, who saw a gap between the dearth of knowledge and skills in surrounding New Haven, Connecticut and the wealth of knowledge and skills on their campus. What started as a campus effort to help the community is now the nation’s only year-round, student-led volunteer service organization. NSP currently has a national office and twelve local offices in New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, Illinois, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, DC. The stated mission of NSP “is to direct the energy and innovation of young people toward ensuring that all community members have access to the services, opportunities, and attention that they need to pursue employment, self-sufficiency, and personal success.” Inherent in this statement is that the client deserves, and indeed has a right to, basic necessities

like jobs, housing, food, and healthcare. NSP is not alone in its vision for American communities; in a 2006 report, the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights (UNHCHR) expresses concern for conditions in the United States. Concerning homelessness and education, the UNHCHR worries that “some 50% of homeless people are African-American, although they constitute only 12 % of the United States population,” and that the United States “has not succeeded in eliminating racial discrimination such as regarding the wide disparities in the quality of education across school districts in metropolitan areas, to the detriment of minority students.” These two issues, homelessness and a failing education system, are two that plague Hopkins’ own backyard in Baltimore, and are issues with which NSP volunteers tackle every day. The majority of NSP clients are African-American, reflecting both the city’s demographics as well as the hurdles the black community still faces. In the 2006-2007 academic year, the NSP-Baltimore office helped 354 clients find housing options and 75 clients continue their education. Recognizing that the road to self-sufficiency requires a holistic approach, NSP-Baltimore also aided 310 clients in their job searches, 146 clients in acquiring clothing, and 45 clients in finding reliable transportation. While many organizations make human rights an international campaign, National Student Partnerships make it a local one, right here in Baltimore on 325 East 25th Street.

. S .T .A . N

Andrew Ng and Piyush Sovani/ HURJ Staff Writers

We were telling them that HIV could actually kill them. Their faces remained stoic. The 14-year-old girl on our right checks her nails; the 12-year-old kid puts on his hood and puts his head down over crossed arms. “Come on guys, don’t you care if you die when you’re like, 30?” No reply. Awkward seconds tick by. After some time, we heard mumbles from the hooded kid. “What?” “I said I’d be lucky if I make it to 21.” In Baltimore, approximately 10,000 juvenile arrests are made each year. Research has shown that a combination of educational failure leading to unemployment and disenfranchised neighborhoods may account for this statistic. In public schools, “social promotion” exists where teachers pass students even though many do not fulfill their grade requirements. A 2000 U.S. census showed that children who were suspended from school were often staying at home without any adult supervision. Many of their parents are busy working multiple jobs just to provide food on the dinner table. Many of their neighborhoods are riddled with drugs and violence. This lethal combination of community factors, unstable family life, and unhealthy peer pressure can have a profound negative influence on this vulnerable population. Perhaps the biggest problem today with Baltimore youth is that they are trapped in this vicious cycle of poverty, violence, and drugs. They usually do not have many positive role models with their parents frequently absent, their communities infested with drugs and crime, and today’s media glorifying violence more than ever. As part of S.T.A.N.D.!, we target these at-risk youth in hopes of filling this role model gap and eventually breaking this perpetuating cycle. Instead of sending today’s Baltimore youth to prison for repeated offenses, we need to mentor so that we can arm them with a better sense of self-worth, optimism, a high school diploma, and the opportunity to pursue higher education. This is where we intervene. S.T.A.N.D.! (Students taking a New Direction) is a mentoring program that aims to impact the lives of underprivileged, at-risk youth in Baltimore. Currently, we collaborate with Partnership for Learning (PFL), an educational-based program that provides academic assistance and counseling to first-time juvenile offenders recommended by the Baltimore City Juvenile Court. Youth who successfully complete the program (50 hours, continued school attendance, improved reading levels and no new charges) will have their case dismissed, along with all charges being dropped. We also offer a separate program where volunteers interact with juveniles in the detention center once a week.

S.T.A.N.D.! can be viewed as an extension of PFL, where the mentors may continue to foster their relationship long after the youth has graduated from PFL. Sabree Akinyele, the executive director of PFL, strongly believes that collaborating with our program will be crucial to lowering the soaring recidivism rates that are apparent in these youth. Mentors will be matched with mentees based on interests and personality. Once the youth are near completion of PFL, our program rewards their commitment by inviting them to the Homewood campus on Fridays. We use this opportunity to expose the youth to the university culture and the option of higher education. We devote the first hour towards academics by taking them to Barnes and Noble or the MSE Library to read books or to help them with homework. Afterwards, we engage them in enriching activities such as presentations on topics of their interest, sports, arts and crafts, cooking, etc. We recruit volunteers that have the dedication, patience, and willingness to work with malleable first and secondtime juvenile offenders. We aspire to channel their creative potential. It is so important that we steer our nation’s youth in the right direction and break this dismal cycle because they are our future and they have the capability to impact tomorrow’s society. We understand that we may not be able to reach everyone we encounter, but if one person can succeed, then others will surely follow, and we would have prevented them from being just another Baltimore County Juvenile Justice statistic. Leaving the status quo as it is today would be more detrimental to Baltimore’s youth. Deterrence with mentoring programs provides the best solution to fixing Baltimore’s juvenile system. Unfortunately, much of our maximal potential is constrained. Our vision of improving today’s youth must come by first correcting this disconnect between Hopkins and the local Baltimore community. This largely depends on the Hopkins student body. Each and every one of us Hopkins students has the capacity to make Baltimore a better city not just for ourselves, but also for the people that live here. If you would like to make a difference today by mentoring an underprivileged youth, please get in touch with us.

Programa Salud Atieh Novin/ HURJ Staff Writer Programa Salud is the name of a Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus initiative for Hispanic/Latino health. This organization consists of three other chapters at the School of Medicine, School of Nursing, and School of Public Health. The purpose of this organization is to alleviate the cultural and linguistic barriers that many Hispanics/Latinos in Baltimore encounter when seeking medical care. To this end, Programa Salud targets two populations: first, the Hispanic/Latino community through health fairs, health education presentations, and community outreach, and second, their healthcare providers through cultural competency training and interpretation services. We have been active in a number of projects this year with the help of other Salud chapters. Some of these projects are tutoring at the General Wolfe Elementary School, a number of outreach projects such the HIV Project, Children's Health Project and TB Screening Project. Both the HIV Project and the Children's Health Project concentrate on the different aspects of raising awareness and understanding of specific healthcare conditions. As part of the HIV project pamphlets are made by students and passed out in the community. The screening part of this project is currently being designed. Students are required to not only come up with original ideas on how to spread awareness but also become directly involved in the community as speakers and public health professionals. The Children's Health Project requires a similar amount of involvement. Students are trained in workshops to become proficient on information on the existence of different health insurance options for children. Most parents are not aware of the existence of these options, therefore this spread of knowledge helps the community greatly at the time of seeking care. The TB Screening Project is a project started by the students at the School of Nursing and the School of Medicine. This year we have partnered up with these chapters in providing bilingual volunteers for the educational part of this project. We are responsible for giving and explaining pre-prepared information to Hispanic/Latino residents who get tested for TB at the Hispanic Apostolate, a community center for the Hispanic/

L atino c o m munity of Baltimore. We are also known for providing bilingual volunteers to local clinics. This year we have been providing interpretation services to the local STI Clinic and the Urban Health Institute Clinic. Students get a chance to work with healthcare providers and patients and simultaneously learn and help providers and patients. Opportunities are available for those students who want to get certified in the area of interpretation. This rich experience helps in alleviating the linguistic barriers among patients and providers therefore making possible the delivery of quality care. Salud is composed of volunteers consisting of undergraduate, graduate, public health, and medical students. We work with a number of partner institutions throughout Baltimore to achieve our goals of health promotion and cultural competency education. Each year we focus on a topic relevant to healthcare and organize an annual conference. Last year we held a successful conference on issues of community health. With the coming elections, this year we plan on concentrating on the topic of Universal Healthcare. We are in the process of contacting distinguished speakers who will be able to present the implications of this subject to a diverse audience.

JHU Refugee Youth Project 10

Jackie Sofia/ HURJ Staff Writers The Johns Hopkins chapter of the Refugee Youth Project (RYP) is looking forward to being on every student’s mind this coming Spring. As an extension of the Baltimore RYP created and managed by Baltimore City Community College (BCCC), the on-campus chapter originated as an effort by Nina Blanas (’04) in association with BCCC and Hopkins undergraduates to recruit student volunteers as after-school tutors for refugee children who had been relocated to Baltimore City from around the world. After a rocky start, the oncampus group has quickly evolved in the past two semesters; a week-by-week volunteer opportunity, the JHU Refugee Youth Project has aspired to increase volunteer participation through a greater on-campus presence by holding campus events to bolster the movement of students away from the closed quarters of the University and towards refugee youth within the Baltimore community. As a tutor for the Refugee Youth Project, the experience is beyond rewarding. Each Wednesday and Thursday, volunteers pile into a van in front of the MSE Library and head to a designated school within the city where the children who participate in the RYP after school program eagerly await their arrival. As the tutors come in the door, they pair up with a student to begin helping them with their homework for the evening. The children can vary in age and origin; from 5 years to 13 years old, refugee children in the Baltimore area come from several regions of the world and include Meskhetian Turks, Burundian, Somali Bantu, Sudanese and Congolese. Tutoring is always a somewhat challenging activity, particularly with children who may not have as firm a grasp on the English language as others who have grown up in an American household. However, this is only part of the reward. By helping refugee children assimilate to American schooling, the RYP tutors are simultaneously interacting with the

community existing outside of the Hopkins sphere. Nina Blanas, the Refugee Program Manager for Baltimore City Community College , shows an increasing concern for Hopkins students. She says, “I really feel that what JHU students most need is direct contact with Baltimore and by default refugees living in Baltimore.” Blanas continues, “I think it is of utmost importance that JHU students get off campus, and get into communities. RYP is a very unique opportunity to see the direct benefits of volunteering and organizing.” These direct benefits can be seen each week as an RYP volunteer creates lasting bonds with the refugee children they tutor. As time progresses, the shy and quiet girl or boy that they met on their first day becomes full of energy and shows greater excitement as the weeks progress. Besides the vital academic support the children receive from their tutors at each session, the afterschool program also stresses the cultivation of creativity within each child, showing them the different artistic tools they can use to express themselves. The combination of academic support, exposure to the arts and an adult figure with whom they can bond results in a more confident child. In turn, the volunteer is granted the fulfilling experience of giving back to their community’s youth and making the transition smoother for refugee youth into the Baltimore school system. The group’s executive board realized that in order to convey to the student body this overwhelming feeling of satisfaction through service, it was necessary to create a more accessible means of communication between RYP and the student body. RYP wanted students to realize the opportunity to impact a community existing outside of the Hopkins “bubble,” but within their reach. With the help of group members who had previous experience in event planning and publicity, as well as the further organization and creativity of other board members, RYP man-

aged to pull off their first major event- a free screening of the widely-acclaimed documentary film, “God Grew Tired of Us” (Newmarket Films, copyright 2005). The movie captures the trials and tribulations experienced by the Lost Boys of Sudan- hundreds of young boys who trekked through the Sudanese desert into Ethiopia and then Kenya to seek refuge from their war-torn home of southern Sudan. Infused with moments of light-heartedness and increasing hope, the boys’ struggle through extreme hunger and loss leads to an eventual resettlement from their U.N. refugee camp in Kenya to a suburban U.S. town. The film’s inspiring message of possibility for furthering the rights of refugees was exactly what RYP wanted to communicate to the Hopkins crowd. The combination of gasps and “awww”s throughout the audience in conjunction with the ups and downs of the boys’ voyage was followed by an enthusiastic final applause, giving an encouraging signal that RYP had managed to bring a heightened awareness of the bold issues that refugees must face throughout their lifetime. The next step for the JHU Refugee Youth Project chapter is to bridge these two efforts in order to attract RYP members to become active tutors for refugee youth, and in turn, more active citizens within the Baltimore community. “A lot of JHU kids are only interested in the ‘low hanging fruit’, such as organizing events; but the hardest and the most rewarding part of ‘helping people’ is working with the people who directly benefit from students’ time; in our case the refugees who end up in Baltimore and the surrounding areas,” says Blanas. Within the coming semester, The JHU Refugee Youth Project chapter hopes to inspire Hopkins students to reach towards the “higher-hanging fruit” and contribute their time and talents to the increasing number of refugee youth in and around Baltimore. 11

Global Conflicts 12

Jeremy Stein/ HURJ Staff Writer Professor David became interested in global conflicts because he grew up in the era after the Holocaust and in “the shadow of the Cold War.” Ever since he was young, he has been interested in why countries go to war. Professor David focuses on security studies, international relations, and comparative politics here at the Johns Hopkins University. He also concentrates on civil wars in the developing world from the Congo to the Middle East. By studying civil wars, Professor David focuses on topics that have interested him since childhood. Often civil wars lead to human rights violations and pose threats to the United States. In order to decrease the chances of future human rights violations and potential war, Professor David believes America must closely watch the internal affairs of potentially dangerous nations. Before World War II, the world largely ignored the deadly rise of Hitler and the Nazis. As the Nazis gained strength, the Holocaust occurred. As a result of the world’s slow reaction to the rise of the Nazis, the Allies had to fight World War II from a position of weakness and defense. In our interview, Professor David stated that his main goal during an upcoming WWII lecture was to say this can happen again. The students in his Contemporary

International Politics class need to learn the lessons of the past. What are these lessons? First, there are consequences worse than those of war. If the world had refused to fight the Nazis, then our world would be a far darker place. Although war is a deadly and harsh venture, the consequences of the failure to fight are often worse. Second, Professor David says a movement like Nazism can rise again. Although we do not know where it will develop, this movement may even prove to be just as dangerous as that of the Nazis. If a form of Nazism does revive, people cannot sit on the sidelines yet again. People cannot stand by while genocides continue to occur. Third, Professor David feels that “sometimes truth does not lie in the middle.” International ideologies can be dangerous to America’s interests and safety. For instance, Iran is a dangerous, emerging country. Iran has threatened to “wipe Israel off the map,” and is pursuing a nuclear program that threatens the intnernational community. What can the United States do about this new, perceived threat? According to Professor David, Iran must be watched carefully in the future. He says that it is hard to disarm a country as strong as Iran. America must try to achieve disarmament through diplomatic means at the moment. Two of the worst human rights

violations today are occurring in the Congo and Darfur. From 1998 to 2003, the Congo’ Civil war led to the deaths of about four million people through violence and starvation. Today, new conflicts have led to thousands of deaths and a dramatic increase in the amount of child soldiers in the Congo. In the Darfur region of Sudan, the Janjaweed and Sudanese government unleashed a relentless campaign against the non-Arab Sudanese. This has led to the murder of up to 400,000 people and the displacement of 2.5 million people. What can the US and world do? Professor David believes that we can deploy more African Union troops to both regions, help the UN forces in Darfur, and accommodate Sudan’s concerns. Professor David’s research on world conflicts is critical to finding solutions and better policies for the future. If America and the rest of the world would choose improved policies, the chances of a major war and its deadly consequences would subside. Civil wars often produce the worst human rights violations such as in Darfur and the Congo. Professor David provides our policy makers with the material needed to make the right decisions in the future, and his work may aid in the effort to avoid a potential world conflicts that would ultimately be disastrous.

Physics…in Space! Jason Liebowitz/ HURJ Staff Writer Astronomical observation has shed light on the workings of the universe and provided the means for intellectual advancement for hundreds of years. For example, in the sixteenth century, Johannes Kepler’s examination of planets led to a total reworking of traditional scientific dogma, which had persisted since the ancient and early modern periods. As new technologies have emerged, Professor Paul Feldman of the Department of Physics and Astronomy has continued the tradition of looking to the stars to gain insight, albeit in a more modern manner that relies on fundamental techniques of physics. Primary among these techniques is spectroscopy, a method of observation that breaks down light into its constituent colors and thus reveals a great deal about the light source. Dr. Feldman has been involved in numerous spectroscopy research projects, but his education and training span much broader topics than this singular area of investigation. Attributing his success in research to luck, a little talent, and good mentoring, Dr. Feldman began his undergraduate years working for Nobel Prize winner Polykarp Kusch at Columbia University. At the urging of his mentor, Professor Feldman continued to attend Columbia for graduate school, as he pursued his Ph.D. in atomic physics, and worked summers at the prestigious Brookhaven National Laboratory. At this same time, fueled by the launch of Sputnik, the U.S. was experiencing a surge of interest in space and astronomical research. With the creation of NASA and the increasing availability of research grants to use lab instruments in space, Dr. Feldman began a postdoctoral fellowship at the Naval Research Laboratory, in which he applied the basic techniques of experimental physics to astronomical inquiry. Upon his arrival at Hopkins, Dr. Feldman became involved in the launching of UV spectrographs into space, thereby bypassing the UV-absorbing atmosphere and permitting observation of phenomena. Such projects have allowed Professor Feldman to break down the components of comets and see what they are made of, determine how comets differ from one another, and understand the origins and roles of comets in the solar system. Dr. Feldman’s group was the first to find carbon monoxide in comets, an important discovery since this highly volatile compound drives comets to be active far away from the sun and helps explain where particular comets do or do not originate. Additionally, by using spectrographs on the Hubble Space Telescope,

Dr. Feldman has been able to investigate how constituent materials are distributed in comets, understand the mechanisms that produce comets, and determine the chemistry of the comet’s atmosphere. Although Hubble has proven to be an invaluable resource for observation, NASA’s strategy to shut down the telescope in 2013, and the fact that there are no immediate plans for creating new UV astronomy satellites of the same class, threatens to hamper research like Dr. Feldman’s. Compounding these problems is NASA’s desire to go to the Moon and to Mars, even though many scientists consider the study of dark matter and dark energy to be more important issues. Yet Dr. Feldman is confident that progress in space research can be continued by appealing to younger students and stimulating interest in physics and astronomy at an early age. For his own part, Dr. Feldman is currently teaching Introduction to Stellar Physics, a course which covers the “gee whiz” applications of modern physics to astronomy as students learn why the Earth can sustain life, why the Sun will live for another 5 billion years, and how and why supernovas occur. In terms of his own research, Dr. Feldman is most excited about his participation in a European mission called Rosetta, launched in March of 2004, in which scientists will be sending a spacecraft to a comet, trailing alongside it, and putting a lander on its surface. To accomplish these goals, the spacecraft will swing by Earth in November 2007, receive a “slingshot effect,” and encounter the comet in 2014 at three times the Sun-Earth distance. Dr. Feldman plans to use UV spectroscopy to make measurements of the comet’s surface composition and to measure the comet’s activity as it flies by the Sun. Clearly, whether in the classroom, in the laboratory, or in space, Professor Feldman is content to look to the stars for inspiration and better understand the workings and wonders of the universe. 13

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Deoxy Research Using Chemistry Jason Liebowitz/ HURJ Staff Writer Radiation has been used to treat cancer since the late 1800’s, long before Watson and Crick introduced their double helix model of DNA. As tremendous progress has been made during the twentieth century in understanding disease at the genetic level, it makes sense to evaluate different approaches to DNA damage and repair. With this in mind, Dr. Marc Greenberg, Professor of Chemistry, has called upon his background in synthetic and mechanistic chemistry to develop a novel experimental method for studying how DNA is damaged in a more precise manner than older techniques. In his research, Dr. Greenberg has delved deeply into understanding how nucleic acids are damaged and into discovering the biological ramifications of such impairment. While DNA damage may lead to disease, it also can be used purposefully as therapy for illnesses such as cancer. For example, in gamma-radiolysis, DNA is the cytological target for gamma-rays, which seek to destroy the cancerous cells. However, DNA is a heterogeneous polymer and using gamma-radiolysis as treatment is, in the words of Dr. Greenberg, “like hitting a crystal with a sledge hammer.” This makes it very difficult to understand how DNA is damaged using gamma-radiolysis directly. Dr. Greenberg prepares synthetic DNA containing one modified nucleotide at a defined site and exposes this molecule to light. This generates a single radical intermediate, which is one of

many generated by gamma-radiolysis. The approach developed by Dr. Greenberg greatly simplifies studying how DNA is damaged and has revealed complex, biologically-relevant chemical mechanisms that are obscured when one uses gamma-radiolysis. Just as Dr. Greenberg is helping to promote the evolution of chemistry as a tool for biological research, so too did his interests evolve as an undergraduate student and then as a graduate researcher. Although Dr. Greenberg began lab work in physical organic chemistry and photochemistry (using light to induce chemical reactions through excited states) as an undergraduate, he initially thought he would pursue a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and then go to work for a company like DuPont or Dow. However, as a graduate student at Yale, he was inspired by his talented and highly motivated mentor, Professor Jerome Berson, to pursue academic research. During his postdoctoral fellowship sponsored by the American Cancer Society at CalTech, Dr. Greenberg continued to practice mechanistic chemistry and realized that the biological side of chemistry still had many unsolved problems that required further research. As technological advances created opportunities in the field of nucleic acid chemistry, Dr. Greenberg was attracted to work in this area, and went on to teach and conduct research at Colorado State University and now at Hopkins.

Dr. Greenberg is known to many students as one of the professors teaching Introduction to Organic Chemistry, a course usually regarded as quite difficult and seen as an obstacle on the pre-med path. However, Dr. Greenberg explains that “orgo” can be mastered with the correct analytical approach and is indeed much more intertwined with medicine than one may think. To succeed in organic chemistry, students must understand the basics and practice applying their fundamental knowledge over and over again in the context of different problems. As the era of molecular medicine progresses, using simple organic reactions to demonstrate the processes of biomolecules helps to provide physicians with a better understanding of what is happening in the body. Although a general practitioner may not rely on his extensive knowledge of organic chemistry from day to day, it is clear doctors should have at least an elementary understanding of the way in which the drugs they prescribe function in their patients. Additionally, as pharmaceutical companies seek to tailor medications to a person’s individual genome, chemistry will only continue to play a large role in the delivery of healthcare. In terms of his own research, Dr. Greenberg has started to develop biosensors for particular DNA lesions by using chemistry to selectively tag these molecules and then use a reporter group that can measure how much of the le-

sion is present. By developing these tools, it will be possible to look at DNA repair in cells and. In addition, knowing that there are hotspots for mutations in DNA, one can ask: are there particular lesions associated with those mutations? Detecting lesions at particular sites means they can serve as biomarkers for predicting the development of cancer. In addition, tracking the recruitment of certain proteins to repair particular DNA lesions in the cell will enable one to screen libraries of drug candidates that inhibit repair of DNA being targeted for destruction (Imagine using a therapeutic agent that targets the cell by damaging DNA, and then administering a second molecule that inhibits the repair of that DNA and makes the first reagent more effective.). Dr. Greenberg is also interested in understanding how DNA is damaged by studying reactive species in nucleosomal DNA, in which the nucleic acid is wrapped around histone proteins. By examining the reactivity of these species, Dr. Greenberg seeks to scrutinize the effects of having DNA wrapped around histones, as it is found in the body as opposed to in its naked form in the lab. In pursuing this type of “curiosity driven” research, Dr. Greenberg continues to expand our knowledge of biochemical processes and create a broader understanding of nucleic acid chemistry.

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to Solve Biological Quandaries

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Wnt Pathway Ishrat Ahmed/ HURJ Staff Writer Research on cellular signaling pathways is providing greater insight on the inner workings of the cell and their broader implications in terms of development and disease. Interest in this area first developed in the 1970s when the term “signal transduction” was coined. Today, researchers are discovering and studying a myriad of signaling pathways in an attempt to understand how cells interact and allow for living, functioning, and even thinking organisms. Dr. Rejji Kuruvilla’s research focuses on the signaling pathways involved in neuronal development and the formation of functional circuits. Dr. Kuruvilla, an assistant professor in the Department of Biology, began her studies in Calcutta, India as a chemistry major. She pursued her education in Houston, Texas where she became interested in lipid metabolism and diabetic neuropathy. During these years, she realized that she was most fascinated by “chemistry, but in living things.” She completed her post-doctoral studies in Dr. David Ginty’s laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where she found her true calling: signaling pathways. In 2005, Dr. Kuruvilla started her own laboratory at Hopkins where her interests in signaling paved the way for several projects on cellular trafficking and signaling crosstalk. In general, pathways require a signaling molecule or an external stimulus, a signaling cascade to propagate the message, and finally a cellular response, such as the activation of specific genes. 16

Cross talk between pathways can occur at any of these stages. Dr. Kuruvilla’s project more specifically focuses on the role of nerve growth factor (NGF) in regulating the Wnt pathway, which is essential in neuronal development. Wnt signals back on the neurons in an autocrine manner, instructing the neurons that they have reached their targets. In the same vein, a second project focuses on two different ligands, NGF and NT3, which act through the same receptor, but elicit different responses in terms of neuron survival. To Dr. Kuruvilla, “recycling the same molecules but using different signaling pathways really gives us an idea of the economical nature of biology.” Through biochemical analysis, various imaging methods, and mouse genetics, Dr. Kuruvilla’s lab is also investigating the effect of trafficking and endocytosis on neuronal development. Although much is known about retrograde transport or the movement of signaling molecules such as neurotrophic factors from the tip of the axons to the cell body, Dr. Kuruvilla’s research is mainly concerned with the anterograde movement of newly synthesized molecules, such as receptors for neurotrophic factors, from the cell body to the axon tips. Usually, ligand-receptor interactions result in the internalization of the receptor. Her lab has recently discovered that there is a continuous cycling of cargo from the cell to the plasma membrane and back inside the cell even without ligand binding. This creates a large intracellular reservoir of cargo

ready to be expressed at the cell surface when needed. To clarify this phenomenon, she explains: “professors, who represent matured, seasoned receptors, are often shipped around within a department to teach different courses as needed rather than recruiting and training new professors, which takes much longer.” Axonal transport is essential during development. For example, target cells release neurotrophic factors which are taken up by the axons and transported to the cell body, thus informing the cell that a functional connection has been made. Without these neurotrophic factors, the neuron cannot survive. The implications of axonal transport disruption during development also extend to adulthood where neurodegenerative diseases are often linked to disrupted transport. Just as she enjoys discussing research and advances in the field, Dr. Kuruvilla encourages students to “talk about science, indulge in conversations, attend seminars…and simply be more involved in scientific discussions.” In fact, during the fall semesters, Dr. Kuruvilla teaches a signaling course where she not only updates students on signaling discoveries but also exposes them to research by explaining the hypotheses, the experimental setup, and the process of arriving at conclusions. For Dr. Kuruvilla, research is really the ability to have ideas, to investigate these hypotheses, and to contribute to the world by going wherever her curiosity leads her.

Crossing a Barrier, Exploring the World Nicole Angeli/ HURJ Staff Writer Clara Han, MD/PhD, newly arrived assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology is an individual that many Hopkins students would love to emulate. As many students are wrestling to juggle their social science and natural science interests, Dr. Han has already studied both medicine and anthropology as a graduate student. Although Dr. Han insists that she no longer straddles the two disciplines, she had the education and background to be able to make that decision. When we spoke, Dr. Han prefaced my query for a general review of her life with reference to her childhood home, Los Alamos, NM. Living within the community which gave nascence to the atomic bomb gave her a sense of the critical, a sense of asking questions and the chance to become an analytical observer. As her career progressed to the undergraduate level, Dr. Han was placed within another strange and novel field: molecular biology. Dr. Han’s undergraduate years coincided with the first years of widespread PCR technology as a molecular tool, which, simply defined, enables researchers to replicate DNA. In labs, Dr. Han’s undergraduate Princetonian peers utilized tools that represented the most recent advances in biological sciences. During this period she took a class which has served as the stepping stone into her academic career. “Introduction to Medical Anthropology”, in Dr. Han’s words, “changed (my) worldview”. She subsequently took many anthropology classes and traveled to Kenya in a role slanted towards public health, helping to adminis-

ter household surveys designed to investigate upper respiratory tract infections in relation to childhood morbidity in rural populations. During this time she remembers becoming critical, maybe too critical, of large scale international aid and its distribution. These events serve as the backdrop to Dr. Han’s second-most recent role, as an MD/PhD recipient from Harvard University School of Medicine, in the Departments of Social Medicine and Anthropology. Dr. Han’s research in Santiago, Chile is a nine-year journey developing ties of trust and understanding with families and the community of La Pincoya, a working-class sector on the periphery of the city. Her interest in how relations of economic indebtedness provide both conditions for survival, subjection, and depression among the working-class in Santiago lays the groundwork for much of the anticipated inquiry in a documentary she is developing. A particularly intriguing aspect of Dr. Han’s documentary addresses how the government has sought to provide reparations to victims of torture. Focusing as a reference point on the moment when the National Commission for Political Imprisonment and Torture issued its report, Dr. Han examined the reactions to this document throughout Chile’s populace, especially in relation to the experience of ‘torture’. In one breath mentioning both physical torture and the torture inflicted by debt upon the psyche of Chileans, Dr. Han attempts to address how a history of political violence and the state’s attempts to address this violence in the pres-

ent have paradoxically ‘provoked feelings of damage’ and pervasive feeling that torture is presently experienced as economic insecurity and overwhelming economic indebtedness. Continuing with her study of debt, Dr. Han will engage in ethnographic and survey work to examine patterns of indebtedness in a larger sample of families over time,. Whereas in her ethnographic work, Dr. Han sees trends of a constant weekly or bi-weekly scrambling for money in the midst of job insecurity, a new research group comprised of community activists and herself will chart weekly household finances to help understand how pervasive economic insecurity is experienced on the local level and how this intersects with a concerning expansion of addiction to crack-cocaine and the lack of life chances in the wake of a crumbled welfare state. Dr. Han says she has not closed her mind to the idea of treating patients. However, anthropological research, writing, and teaching would be difficult to handle with the time constraints of medical residency, and her life now is committed to anthropological inquiry, asking questions that formulate a narrative of how people live and provide a critique of taken-forgranted notions of progress and well-being. Perhaps, someday, Clara Han will return to forming medical, rather than ethnographic narratives. For now, her opportune inception into the Department of Anthropology provides Hopkins undergraduates with an intriguing example of motivation and academic passion. 17

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David Attarzadeh / HURJ Staff Writer On August 13, 2007, news developed that three prominent reporters, Ali Iman Sharmarke, Mahad Ahmed Elmi, and Sahal Abdulle, had been killed in Somalia. Sharmarke, the managing director of HornAfrik Radio, was, ironically enough, driving back from Elmi’s funeral (Elmi was director of Radio Capital Voice) when his automobile was hit by a remote control bomb. Abdulle, a Reuters reporter, happened to be in the same car as Sharmarke. The reporters’ work described violence and lawlessness occurring in Somalia, but soldiers and assailants feel as though there is some “legitimacy,” in preventing news from ever reaching the people. Warlords and militia leaders claim to be “protecting the people,” but I personally question this claim. My response is, “Protecting which people?”

Elmi, upon hearing about how a warlord and Islamist militia leader claimed to be supporting the people, cleverly stated “The only people getting killed are innocent civilians, the people you claim to be saving…Are either of you prepared to take responsibility for that? For what you are doing to this city? To the people?” Whether in the name of religion or in the name of personal gain, assassins across war-torn Africa and the Middle East are not hesitant to silence the press in order to pursue their personal agendas. And freedom of the press is not just impeded upon by antigovernment forces, either. General Nuur Mohammed Mohamud, deputy chief of Somalia’s national security department, was quoted as saying: You cannot report about the Somali government and Ethiopian military operations because they are top secret. You cannot report about the civilian population fleeing the city under any circumstances or the remnants of the Islamic Courts Union. As there is an emergency state in place, there is no so called freedom of expressions. The government will nominate editors for radio stations and you must co-operate with them.

Ironically, the government in Somalia is US-imposed. Somalia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea are among several countries that impose restrictions on their press. Independent journalism is still a western concept and will continue to be one for years to come. Why should this be? One reason is the existence of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to free press, and was created as a way to allow criticism of an unstable and often corrupt government. The founding fathers of our country had been placed under the rule of a tyrannical government, a government that minimized political censure, a government that did not want anyone to know of its atrocities or secret affairs. Are these not the conditions in which the people of present dictatorial countries are forced to live? Active protection and acceptance of a free press is necessary to ensure that people can pursue just lives

free of human rights abuses. As the Virginia Declaration of Rights (Section 12), a major influence of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, states, “the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.” In the United States and much of Western Europe, there are various ways to access unrestricted, fairly objective news and information at virtually no cost. Newspapers, magazines, and, more so, the Internet, are havens for independent journalism and have revolutionized the way our society receives news. Whether covering an analysis of our government’s role in the September 11 attacks or opinions about the mainstream media, independent journalism has its own structure and function in American society. It utilizes and staunchly advertises our freedom of speech, a right which is often very difficult to exercise in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. As a lucid example of the impact of bloggers, online journalists and web activists on the American consciousness, a recent article in the Washington Post gave credence to the immaculate evolution of the ‘Net Roots’ movement from afterthought to front-and-center. More than 1500 representatives of independent online media found themselves being courted by the leading Democratic candidates for presidency, each with the intent of tapping into the influence and efficiency of the internet information market. Modern independent journalism has arisen as a response to misinformation and a lack of information. Newspapers and magazines outlets can only ask so many questions. And, when the mainstream media neglects or refuses to ask the questions that “the people” (in a government that is “of the people, for the people”) wish to hear, it fails to do its job of creating an atmosphere of honesty and integrity, in which the actions of the government are transparent to all people. Take, for example, the human rights violations taking place in China. Amnesty International highlights the long list of violations committed by the Chinese

government against people who support civil liberties, economic rights, women’s rights, political rights, religious rights and other causes. Li Dan, an AIDS activist in China was detained while attempting to protest the government’s response to the disease. Dan had created a school (eventually closed down) for orphans with AIDS in a region where approximately one million people had become infected after selling their blood plasma to “unsanitary, state-sanctioned blood collection stations.” One of the only reasons such stories representing the Chinese government in negative light can be publicized throughout the world is due to the availability of the Internet. The World Wide Web has opened up avenues for free speech and opinion that we never before imagined to be possible. We have access to any website we may wish to find, including many “questionable” sites that may or may not have legitimate value. We should appreciate this freedom since, as noted above, many other countries do not have such a liberal resource. TheOpenNet Initiative highlights the countries where there is some type of internet filtering (i.e. people cannot necessarily access the information they want), or political and social restrictions preventing the spread of information. Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia all currently have high levels of filtering and restrictions compared to Western countries. In these countries, an independent press which publishes freely cannot exist. In Iran, for example, the judiciary has closed more than 100 publications and detained dozens for posting information online. These types of restrictions occur in many other countries also, contrary to a common misconception that such restrictions are centralized in the Middle East. The purpose of this previous analysis is to recognize that the governments which commit such heinous violations against free speech also have some of the worst human rights records. This seems rather obvious for countries such as China and North Korea, highlighted above. There seems to be direct correlation between limitations on free press and human rights violations. When publications are closed down and reporters cannot inform the public of news and recent occurrences,

human rights violations abound. There is one simple reason for this correlation: there is no one to report the violations that occur. If you violate the human rights of reporters, killing them, torturing them, restricting their right to free speech, you in turn destroy and prevent any way of reviewing the actions of the government. This, unfortunately, is the road to tyranny. All of the countries which are listed above, in addition to at least a dozen others, have not only restricted the rights of journalists and the independent press, but have also committed countless human rights violations. The majority of Western countries which have a free press, however, are not committing atrocities even close to those of the restricted nations. Furthermore, any human rights violations occurring in Westernized countries are well known to the public by means of the media and are eventually put to an end. Although there are examples of human rights violations in Western countries, such as the inappropriate treatment of detained prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Western reporters were eventually given the opportunity to publicize such violations, unlike reporters in Saudi Arabia or North Korea who do not have this freedom, and who would be putting their lives at risk by publishing. In the eyes of the governments of many of these countries, such news is not “pro human rights,” it is “antigovernment.” The examples listed throughout this article are only the tip of the iceberg. There are an enormous number of human rights violations that occur in the world everyday, and it is likely that a majority of violations are not even known to occur. However, there is a pretty clear relationship that surfaces: transparency equals legitimacy. If reporters were given the complete freedom to document and disseminate news (including human rights violations) free from bias and altogether free from government intervention or secrecy, there would be many fewer human rights violations. Free press is a Western ideal that is compatible with democracy. But, as shown by years of struggle in parts of the Middle East, Africa, and much of Asia, democracy doesn’t come easily.

Bibliography: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. . . 8. 9.

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. “Somalia: Reporters Killed Amid Concerns Over Human Rights Abuses.” AllAfrica. 13 Aug. 2007. <http://allafrica.com/stories/200708131104.html>. Sengupta, Kim. “Somalia: the Most Deadly Country in Africa for the Media.” 27 Aug. 2007. The Independent. <http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2896400.ece>. “Bill of Rights: the Virginia Declaration of Rights.” The National Archives. <http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/virginia_declaration_of_rights.html>. “9/11/2007.” 911 Truth Now. We Are Change. <http://www.loosechange911.com>. Cillizza, Chris, and Shailagh Murray. “The Net Roots’ Moment in the Sun.” Washinton Post 5 Aug. 2007. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/04/AR2007080401320.html>. “Report 2005: China.” Amnesty International. <http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/chn-summary-eng>. “Internet Filtering (Political).” OpenNet Initiative. <http://map.opennet.net/filtering-pol.html>. “Iran.” 2007. OpenNet Initiative. <http://opennet.net/research/profiles/iran>. “Amnesty International Report 2005.” Amnesty International. <http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/index-eng>.

Teaching for Citizenship: How Human Rights Education Can Change our Society

Adriane Alicea / HURJ Staff Writer

“That is, to me being well educated means not just sort of a mastery of information, not just a quantity of information, but to me being well educated means being educated in what is important and what is not important, educated in having a sense of proportion about what knowledge is significant, what knowledge is not significant, what knowledge is trivial and what knowledge has powerful ramifications, what knowledge can contribute to the betterment of society.” – Howard Zinn, Historian

In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly established the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR was created primarily in response to the disastrous effects of World War II upon the world. The creators intended to construct a new type of society that strived for peaceful conflict resolution rather than one that relied on war, nuclear weapons, and genocide to solve social, racial and economic issues. The contributors to the UDHR were among the world’s most prominent fighters of injustice and included Eleanor Roosevelt and writer H.G. Wells, who thoroughly understood how issues like poverty, racial discrimination, and illiteracy led to larger global conflicts. The UDHR aims to ensure that all human beings have access to basic necessities like housing, food, equal protection of the law, and education. During the formulation of the UDHR many people were cynical of how idealistic the declaration appeared—especially after witnessing the horrors of World War II, mass murder and the Holocaust. Even today, some believe that it is impossible to establish or enforce human rights on a global scale and criticize this idea as being overly utopian. However, the guidelines set forth by the UDHR do not intend to mend all of the world’s ills. The architects of the UDHR may have been optimistic about the prospects of global change, but they were not completely naïve; they knew it would take the cooperation of every nation and government in order to create a world that valued human rights. Today, one of the most important ways that the UDHR’s objectives can be accomplished is with the leaders and educators of the world promoting and teaching human rights to the youth, thus creating a generation that respects and understands human dignity, respect, and interaction across cultures. It has been considerably more difficult than expected to create this generation, even in a country that is often regarded as the leader in promoting and emphasizing the importance of human rights. However, the actual state of affairs is quite different in workplaces, in homes and—most of all— in classrooms within the United States. For years, classrooms all over the United States have been places where children go to learn how to divide numbers, read and

dissect novels, and even discuss prominent events and historical figures like Thanksgiving and Christopher Columbus. However, these same classrooms are not places where educators make the topic of human rights a part of the curriculum; concepts such as poverty, the AIDS epidemic and genocide are left virtually unaddressed. The idea of human rights education is to educate the student through a human rights perspective— that is, to focus on the root issues and problems that children will be confronted with in their lifetime. The goal is not necessarily to employ a new curriculum, but instead to implement a new philosophy of teaching. For instance, educators can easily intertwine a study of the genocide in Darfur with a lesson on the Holocaust, which is taught for at least a brief period of time in many US history classes. The main objective of human rights education is to educate students on the ideas of poverty, respect and social justice, so that that they one day can become members of a society respectful of other races and cultures. Former Executive Director of Amnesty International William F. Schulz has said, “Creating a new generation that has an inherent respect for human dignity worldwide is perhaps one the most effective means of preventing human rights abuses in the decades to come.” If the next generation ever hopes to live up to even a portion of the standards of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, then children of all ages must be informed of their rights. Perhaps, even more importantly, students must be informed of lost civil liberties and social inequalities that continue to exist around the world, such as the lack of rights for children living in refugee camps in Chad or the disparities within living conditions for American children, seen in the internally displaced children of Hurricane Katrina and the 3.4 Latino children living without healthcare. It is not enough to assume that students will eventually acquire an understanding of human rights issues sometime in their academic careers; instead educators must ensure that they teach for citizenship, not just for tests. Classrooms are overflowing with educators who teach only facts and dates for standardized testing, rather than ideas and themes for active living and learning. Of course, this is not entirely the fault of

the teachers—a government-sponsored policy like No Child Left Behind makes it difficult for educators to teach anything outside of the established curriculum. Inadequately preparing children for exams often results in opposition from principals who want to ensure that their schools receive sufficient funding the following year. No Child Left Behind prevents any attempts from educators to inform students of current events and human rights issues around the world. It gives educators little opportunity to teach children about the cost of freedom of speech in China or the real reasons why Islamist radicalism has risen so significantly in underdeveloped countries. In fact, human rights education seems to have in many ways become a private school thought; that is, wealthier children are learning about their rights. Private school students are more often given the tools and opportunities they need to dissect and understand the world. However, it is equally, if not more, important to teach through a human rights lens in poorly-funded public schools than among the wealthy community. Children living in impoverished areas are forced to attend schools that are often not proficient at teaching students basic math, let alone human rights. Students in these schools are at great risk of having their rights infringed upon due to their socioeconomic statuses and lack of political powers. These students indeed need the tools that human rights education gives, so that they can not only overcome injustices, but also learn to advocate and educate those who are not yet aware of their rights. The United States, as a leader of human rights around the world should lead their students the same way. There is no other effective way to create a generation that fights for human rights, humanity and peace around the world. The United States is running past it’s peak in globalization and the outcome has little to show. Many Americans have no understanding of the people and world outside of US borders. If this generation is living during an age of globalization, it will not only be beneficial for students to have knowledge of other cultures, but also necessary for them to delve into statistics concerning current issues such as the growing AIDS epidemic and the conflict over diamonds in Sierra Leone—so that they may accurately and thoughtfully live, interact and work with people from around the world. Future

businessmen cannot expect to make deals, future humanitarians cannot expect to assist refugees, and future doctors cannot expect to attend to patients of other cultures without having any knowledge of their clients’ cultures and backgrounds. The students of the United States must learn that in order to make globalization successful, our nation must assist others in taking steps necessary towards development. In fact, assisting in the development of other countries is the only way that future generations can ensure that globalization will be to the advantage of both the world’s wealthiest and the poorest. As General Roméo Dallaire, Force Commander of the UN Assistance Mission to Rwanda, has said, “Human beings who have no rights, no security, no future, no hope and no means to survive are a desperate groups who will do desperate things to take what they believe they need and deserve.” The next generation of Americans must understand that the only way to prevent war, terrorism, and disease is to assist those who have had their human rights stripped from them. Education is the only way children can become empowered to make a difference. Poverty, AIDS rates, the plight of refugees--these are the issues that students will need to understand in order to eliminate injustice around the world and prevent human rights catastrophes in the future. Bibliography: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. . . 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 1 . 1 . 18.

1. Amnesty International. The Fourth R. Volume 16. Fall 2006. 2. Coursen- Neff, Zama. “The Taliban’s War on Education: Schoolgirls are still under fire in Afghanistan.” The LA Times. 31 July 2006. <http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/21/afghan14057.htm> 3. Dallaire, Roméo. Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. New York, New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2003. 4. Human Rights USA Final Youth Survey conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates. 5. Ishay, Micheline. The History of Human Rights. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2004. 6. Seierstad, Asne. The Bookseller of Kabul. New York, New York: Back Bay Books, 2002. 7. United Nations. Teaching Human Rights. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations Publication, 2005. 8. Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York, New York: Harper Collins, 2003. 9. Zinn, Howard. Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics. New York, New York: Harper Collins, 2006.

Cuong Nguyen / HURJ Staff Writer Since the Age of Enlightenment, modern philosophers have dealt with the contemporary issue of human rights and its relation to morality and human nature. Philosophers of this period have written extensively on the issue and have exchanged thoughts and ideas on the true definition of human nature and its correlation to how humans act with one another. With regards to his philosophical ideas, Immanuel Kant would favor human rights as the law for all humanity through one single trait that all rational beings possess, which is reason. I. The Gist of Immanuel Kant’s Moral Philosophy In Kant’s moral philosophy, the categorical imperative directs an individual to act in such a way that respects his or her fellow human as an end in themselves and never as a means to an end, due to his or her humanity. But what is humanity in this regard, and why does Kant believe one’s humanity causes us to respect one another? Through Kant’s teleological perspective, humanity’s ability to reason

is the essential catalyst that propels it away from its irrational bestial state of being controlled purely on ‘animal-like instincts’ to a state of ‘equality with all rational beings’ (1). In this sense, morality is the definitive end of humanity’s maturation from irrational animal-like behavior to rational and intelligent behavior. Concerning morality in itself, when nature becomes teleologically subsidized, only the most rational of animals (humans) may realize that they themselves are the ends of the state of human nature. Hence, Kant rationalizes that human beings are ends in and of themselves and should never be used or manipulated as a means to another end. He creates the moral conception of the categorical imperative to sum up morality in one undeniable, ultimate commandment of reason, from which all humanity’s duties and obligations are derived. This categorical imperative deals with the issue of autonomy, free will, human rights, and the unique position of humanity in comparison to all other living beings.

II. What is Man? To truly understand how Kant arrives at the categorical imperative, it’s essential to understand the development of humanity. Since the beginning of human history, humanity has continued to progress intellectually and politically. In Kant’s written works, he states that the “highest possible expression [of human achievement, i.e. culture] can only be the product of a political constitution based on concepts of human right” (2). He continues on to explain that Providence, the ultimate end of man, is humanity’s engagement of “ever continuing and growing activity and culture” and “the destiny of the human race as a whole is incessant progress, and that its fulfillment is . . . the goal to which we have to direct our endeavors” (3). From this description given by Kant, it is the realization and expansion of an ever evolving, ever progressing culture that is the ultimate end of man [Providence]. Kant’s basic premise in Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History comes straight from Genesis in which he traces the steps of humanity as an irrational savage beast to a position of equality with all other capable, rational beings. Through Kant’s philosophical inference, when humanity was able to “awaken” its ability to facilitate reason, humans were able to realize their potential and use reason to drive humanity from “the worse to the better” (3). Reason is then the cause that pushes humanity to strive and achieve, to progress and better itself, to bring itself to higher developments (4). There is no exaggerating how vital the concept of reason is to Kant’s moral philosophy. Reason’s power to reinvent human desire (with the help

of imagination) away from basic bodily needs and natural impulses causes humanity to reexamine its values. Reason is not entirely good, however. According to Kant, reason’s subsequent backlash is the creation of worries and anxieties that afflict other human beings. Reason, though, continues to prod humanity to move beyond these animal instincts and problems and create new desires in human beings such as love, culture, facilitation of provisions for the future, and aesthetic appeal of the senses. This is basically the transformation of man and creates the separation of humans from other living animals. At the end of this transformation is the greatest distinction of humanity from every living being: morality. No longer a “common animal,” man has evolved to a moral being gifted “with sight capable of scanning the heaven and seeing the wonders of the universe” (5). Since man has developed to a rational, moral being, he or she is gifted with the ability of rational choice (the ability to confer its values). Man is the only one that enjoys the capability to determine ends such as defining an eventual goal in which a series of choices would lead. Korsgaard states that: It is Kant’s view throughout his moral philosophy that every action “contains” an end; there is no action done without some end in view. The difference between morally worthy action and morally indifferent action is that in the first case the end is adopted because it is dictated by reason and in the second case the end is adopted in response to an inclination for it… the morally worthy man has adopted this end because it is a duty to have such an end. (6)

Since man is the only capable being able to rationalize ends, only man is able to understand the true end to nature. Being endowed with rationality, only man is able to realize nature’s ultimate destiny and its final purpose. To state that man is the true and only end of nature, one must view all rational individuals as subjects of morality and in possession of moral values. Through this rational conclusion, the derivation of human rights and the treatment of other moral individuals as an end in itself are rationalized

through the respect and prestige humanity has over everything else in the world. One must respect his or her fellow human beings because they also possess the ability to moralize and find an end in things. This claim of “treat every person as an end and never as a means” is the Formula of Humanity and will be discussed in part III. III. The Formulations of the Categorical Imperative As discussed in part II, man’s ability to realize and rationalize ends elevates man above all other living beings in the world. Unlike animals that follow commands without realization of possible consequences, man is able to reason possible ends and decide on varying choices to create different ends. This ability is vital because in terms of morality, the duty of the Formula of Humanity, the second formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, must be upheld. This duty states that with recognition of man’s ability to determine ends, every person possesses free will and autonomy and must regard each other (and oneself) as an absolute end and never as a means. The result of acting in this manner, according to this recognition of autonomy, causes all people to follow this rightful duty. People realize their humanity by developing their talents and powers, which are essentially their rational capacities. Because of this, people must acknowledge that other rational beings are also sources of value as well, much like oneself, and treat the ends they pursue as good. By observing the Formula of Humanity, a person creates a “constitut[ing] moral personality… a good will and moral character” (7). By performing the duty expressed in the second formulation of the categorical imperative, people become aware of the strength of moral law. The awareness of the interlinking of humanity’s rationality with morality reveals “humanity’s capacity to act independently from the natural order of things [free from natural desires and so forth]” (8). This is humanity’s conception of freedom which is a law based on the principles of free will and autonomy, whose attributes are expressed through the categorical imperative. The Kingdom of Ends, the third formulation of the Categorical Imperative, reiterates and supports the Formula of Humanity within its binding maxim. It states that “every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.” Truly autonomous individuals are not subjected by any other individuals and are subjected only by the laws which they makes for themselves. Kant states, though, that rational individuals must regard the laws that they make for themselves to be the same for others, because if they did not, these laws would not be universal and, therefore, not laws of conduct. Kant states that according to the Formula of Universal Law, the first formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative,

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (9). In Kant’s political and moral philosophies, the Formula of Universal Law is the critical foundation of the categorical imperative. Retracing the movement of human history when humanity first discovered reason and separated itself from a life governed by bestial, animal-like instincts, the Formula of Universal Law became a representation of Kant’s examination of moral self. As John Rawls states to the reader, “Kant is concerned solely with the reasoning of fully reasonable and rational and sincere agents” (10). This formulation is important in understanding human rights, because it concerns itself with the moral conduct of the individual and the use of reason in legislating-limiting freedom. The analysis of oneself as an autonomous agent is the general understanding of human autonomy; individuals with the ability to self-legislate themselves are autonomous. Korsgaard even concludes that “the categorical imperative is in a special way the principle of autonomy” (11). Because of the Formula of Humanity and Formula of Universal Law, societies must uphold the universality of autonomy and humanity of all rational individuals as a universal law. Reason dictates that autonomy equates to human rights, and, because reason commands us through the categorical imperative to make autonomy a universal moral law, then synonymously human rights must be upheld under the Formula of the Universal Law. This creates the third formulation, the Kingdom of Ends, and the importance of human rights in respect to autonomy. Kant proposes this hypothetical thought, known as the Kingdom of Ends, in which he proposes that all individuals are both members and high ranking officials. One must act only by the maxims that would harmonize the kingdom of ends. Not doing so would disrespect autonomy and violate the three formulations of the categorical imperative. John Rawls summarized the main points of the categorical imperative as such: (1) [Moral law] applies to all reasonable and rational beings. (2) [The categorical imperative, or the Formula of Universal Law] is directed only to those reasonable and rational beings that, because they are finite beings with needs [i.e. subject to the importunities of desire, and affected by, but not determined by, natural desires and inclinations] experience the moral law as a constraint. [Humans] are such beings [who although capable of reason are, however, imperfectly rational]. (3) [The “categorical imperative procedure”]—the CI procedure—adapts the categorical imperative to [everyday] circumstances by taking into account the normal conditions of human life and [the] situation [of human beings] as finite beings with needs in the order of nature (12). The ideas that Immanuel Kant expresses in the Categorical Imperative can then be simplified in three formulations

stated below: 1) Universality is the form of the moral law. 2) Humanity as an end in itself, i.e. man’s rational nature, is the material of the law. 3) Autonomous legislation is the way to enact moral law and in the process to a complete determination of ends (13). Through Kant’s philosophical analysis, the idea of autonomy and free will of the individual becomes prevalent in understanding the idea of human autonomy. Human beings, through their ability to reason and self-given legislation, are autonomous. A truly autonomous will that creates its own sets or rules would not be subjected by other wills. This idea shows the importance of the categorical imperative confirming the intuition about morality. In essence, each formulation of the categorical imperative represents the procedures of moral conduct between individuals. When an individual understands the categorical imperative, every man and woman becomes an autonomous agent and with this status, creates equal footing between all rational beings. IV. Civil Society and the Ultimate End of Man As stated in part III, morality is the end point of rationality and humanity and the union between morality and humanity is founded through the civil society. This civil society must be a liberal regime, because only this kind of regime respects an individual’s autonomy. The type of society that would idealize this respect to autonomy is one whose policies are established upon principles of a republican constitution. Kant states this in his philosophical dissertation on “Perpetual Peace.” Only civil states based on a republican constitution can establish a structure of external relations for individuals based on the importance of autonomy. Only through these policies can individuals find the most room to exert their rational facility, cultivate moral autonomy, nurture freedom, and exercise influence, all in an effort to be worthy of the status as a human being, a position of equivalence given to all rational beings under the formulations of the categorical imperative. By organizing Kant’s teleological view on human history and political thought, we find that his a priori principles are key in setting the foundation of his idealized civil state. “The civil state, regarded purely as a lawful state, is based on... a priori principles” (14). These a priori principles, as Kant lists, are as follows: 1) freedom as a human being, 2) equality as a subject, and 3) independence as a citizen (15). In “Disagreement between Morals and Politics in Relation to Perpetual Peace,” Kant emphasizes again the importance of the a priori principles in establishing a state: “[I]t is a principle of moral politics that a people should combine to form a state in accordance with freedom and equality as its sole concepts or right, and this principle is based . . .

on duty, i.e. an obligation whose principle is given a priori by pure reason” (16). The duty of man, guided by reason, is the infallible a priori standard that, as Kant states, “alone determines what is right among men” (17). If politics and civil society have the entire will and power to unite individuals together, it is because politics and civil society are solely based on a priori principles. These a priori principles create the foundation in which civil states are established. A priori principles are so important to the relationship between morality and politics that “morality can cut through the knot which politics cannot untie” (18). Before an individual can “unite with everyone else (with whom [s/he] cannot avoid having social intercourse) in order to submit to external, public and lawful coercion,” an a priori of pure reason must be established as the principle of the civil state, where everyone and his or her autonomy is protected by law and is guaranteed power within the state to exercise his or her autonomy (19). In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant explains his autonomous state, the elements essential for a legitimate constitution (sovereignty a.k.a. the legislative-ruling power, which belongs solely to the united will of the people, the judicial power, and the executive power), the three a priori principles (independence, freedom, and equality), and the distinct relationship between the government and its people. For the relationship between the government and its people to be legitimate as an expression of the people’s will, this civil state must be established by the people themselves. As Kant states, “The act by which the people constitut[e] a state for [themselves], or more precisely, the mere idea of such an act . . . is the original contract” (20). But what is this original contract? It is the idea that the people are uniting together as a collective, legislative-ruling power. It is the first time when the sovereign and the legislated create a “contract” for themselves, making a legally-binding constitution that states their collective will in a genuine, valid manner. In this contract, individuals relinquish parts of their freedom in exchange for a civil society. Kant elaborates in this exchange stating that, “all members of the people . . . have in fact completely abandoned their wild and lawless freedom, in order to find again their entire and undiminished freedom in a state of lawful dependence (i.e. in a state of right) [which] is created by their own legislative will” (21). A republican constitution, then, is the only type of government for an ideal civil state. This cannot be over emphasized enough, because it is essential to understanding that only this type of government can find and achieve “highest possible expression [of human beings’ culture] (which) can only be the product of a political constitution based on concepts of human right” (22). As an acknowledgment to human potential for moral goodness, the idea of rights (which is conceived from the

general will of the people) highlights the necessity to establish a conglomerate of free states to escape the allpervading condition of chaos which man, being animus domindi, is subjected to. The fact that every state within Kant’s time pays some homage to the concept of right “proves that man possesses a greater moral capacity . . . to overcome eventually the evil principle [the will to dominate-subjugate others] within him” (23). Kant suggests that to overcome the “evil principle” within humanity or nations, “a lawful federation under a commonly accepted international right [based upon enforceable public laws to which each member state must submit]” becomes the only rational solution. Kant reasons that the answer is to unite international right and “couple it with a federation [of free states]” which supports and strengthens the conception of right (24). V. Kant’s Concept of Human Rights and Its Relation to Today’s Idea of Human Rights The concept of rights is the link that connects Kant’s teleological view of humanity’s end “whose highest possible expression . . . [is] based on the concepts of human right” and the present-day ideas and thoughts on what human rights are and what human rights should be (25). More specifically, it is Kant’s perfectionist morality which includes international and cosmopolitan right. Similar to the civil and political rights discussed in part IV, the international rights of individual nations are conceived under shared common laws in which each member state is subjected. In the Metaphysics of Morals, under the section of “International Right,” Kant reveals the character of international right which “involves not only the relationship between one state and another [state] within a larger whole, but also the relationship between individual persons in one state and individuals in the other [state] or between such individuals and the other state as a whole” (26). Under this statement, in the international environment, states must conduct “international affairs” as if they were moral, autonomous individuals. As Kant concludes in On the Relationship of Theory and Practice in International Right, “On the cosmopolitan level . . . whatever reason shows to be valid in theory is also valid in practice” (27). Under this logic, Kant explains that in this universal community, there is a point where “a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere, the idea of a cosmopolitan right is therefore not fantastic and overestimated; it is a necessary comple-

ment to the unwritten code of political and international right, transforming it into a universal right of humanity” (28). Because it is an individual’s duty to act morally in all conditions according to the formulations of the categorical imperative, Kant declares that the cosmopolitan right to be “transform[ed] into a universal right of humanity” implies the connection between individuals and states is parallel to those between two moral agents (29). In this respect, states should treat people within their jurisdiction always as an ends and never as a means to an end because of their humanity. If states respected individuals and enforced “a universal right of humanity,” it essentially would be Kant’s formulations of the categorical imperative set down as moral guidelines and principles for civil states to observe. This universal right of humanity is expressed in terms of today’s conceptions of human rights. If the final goal of human history is peace and enlightenment as Kant suggests, then contemporary ideas of human rights are devices for the realization of such a goal. The similarity of Kant’s idea of human rights and today’s view on human rights relies on the ontological assumption of the basis of human nature. While human nature is fixed and absolute, what is also fixed and absolute is the human capacity to reason. Kant’s conception of human rights derives from the a priori of the principles of morality and

becomes the moral foundation in which political constitutions base themselves on. Looking at the history of humanity Kant sees that, under this basis, human cultures flourish because these conceptions, being products of pure rationality, are in equivalence with human nature. They nurture human nature and make it worthy of being considered humane and moral. In order to maximize enjoyments in life, human rights must be instruments that protect and guarantee all individuals his or her right to multitudes of freedoms, i.e. free speech and inquiry. Grounded on Kant’s philosophical premise that all individuals have equal moral worth because of his or her humanity, the concept of human rights guarantees individuals keep their dignity and inherent worth as autonomous beings by setting series of standards and rules, which civil states must comply with as well. Not doing so would deny an individual’s humanity from enjoying a life that is only possible with human rights, a virtue of an individual’s status of being human. Since all interactions

and communications between people take place inside the civil state, and life outside the civil state is improbable, there must be some sort of interaction and communication between individuals and the state. Under this condition, an individual’s interaction between the states must be governed by human rights of some sort to protect his or her status as an autonomous individual. Living a life without human rights is living a life unworthy of being human. Doing so is condemning oneself to life deprived of intrinsic moral value and human dignity. If humans are not treated merely as a means to an end but always as an end, then there must be certain ways in which individuals must be treated and certain ways in which individuals should not be treated. For the functioning of the civil society and the protection and betterment of the people, human rights must exist and be the foundation of society in general.

References: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. . . 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 1 . 1 . 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 2 . 2 . 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

“Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History,” in Kant Political Writings, p.226. Kant Political Writings, p.219. Kant Political Writings, p.220. Kant Political Writings, p.223. Kant Political Writings, p.158. Korsgaard, 1996 18. Rawls, 1993 297. Glasgow, p.20 (essay) Kant, Immanuel; translated by James W. Ellington [1785] (1993). Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals 3rd ed. Hackett, p30. Rawls, 1993 292. Korsgaard, 1996 23. Rawls, 1993 292. Kant Political Writings p.122 Korsgaard, 1996 23. Kant Political Writings, pp.74, 99, 123, 139. Kant Political Writings, pp.123, 124. Kant Political Writings, p.123. Mendus, p.331 (essay) Kant Political Writings, p.123. Kant Political Writings, p.140. Kant Political Writings, p.140. Kant Political Writings, p.219. This point harks back to the Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History. As indicated in the beginning of the paper, Kant posits and maintains that the true end of Providence and the ultimate destiny of man is not happiness but “incessant progress” which finds its fullest expression in “ever continuing and growing activity and culture.” Kant Political Writings, p.103, see also p.124. Kant Political Writings, p.105; see also pp. 92, 103, 127. Kant Political Writings, p.82. Kant Political Writings, p.165. Kant Political Writings, p.92. Kant Political Writings, pp.107-8. Kant’s Perpetual Peace, p.388. (essay) Kant, Immanuel. Kant: Political Writings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Korsgaard, Christine . Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Rawls, John. Political Liberalism. Cambridge, UK: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Behind the Blindfold: American Foreign Policy and Torture Ambroshia Murrietta / HURJ Staff Writer

They ask me my name, age, and place of residence. The anticipation is worse than the burnsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;wondering if this answer is good enough. But for every answer I give, they burn me. Every time I am silent, they burn me. They ask the same questions again and again. My throat becomes raw from screaming.

American Foreign Policy is inclusive of democracy promotion, economics, and human rights, which do not always accord with one another. As a result, our foreign policy has come to be viewed as a double-edged sword; numerous administrations have sought to promote American economic interests and democracy through problematic methods. American endeavors to promote democracy stem from the Wilsonian idea that democracy everywhere will lead to the enhancement of national security in the United States. However, when national security somehow legitimizes human rights abuse, the promotion of democracy abroad becomes a more complex issue. In countries like Japan and Germany, the United States was able to successfully promote democracy during the Post WWII Era. These two countries received the most concerted U.S. efforts through the establishment of the Marshall Plan, which provided Germany with direct support from the U.S. after WWII in order to help rebuild the country and promote democracy. Time also contributed to the success of these two countries because the U.S. was able to help establish successful democracies without having to dedicate a significant amount of time to the endeavor. Japan and Germany were countries that were more developed and more politically stable, thus having a foundation for democracy. As seen in Guatemala and El Salvador, the U.S. is not always successful in promoting democracy. This failure can be traced to the American training of brutal foreign militaries, human rights abuse performed by individuals trained at the School of the Americas, and U.S. aid being placed in the hands of dictators and governments of countries that have violated human rights. Monetary aid flowed in and out of these countries, while human rights were violated and great distrust was placed in the U.S. as a result. In response to the violations of human rights that resulted from democracy promotion, as well those that occurred in times of peace and war, many declarations and conventions that recognize and protect the lives of individuals were created. Examples include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention Against Genocide, and the United Nations Convention Against TortureÂł. Nations throughout the world, including the United States, are signatories and/or have ratified many of the declarations and conventions with regards to human rights, but do not always adhere to their assertions. A prime example of the U.S. failing to follow these treaties is on the subject of torture. This 32

powerful topic is capable of invoking social and political sentiments, as well as conjuring vivid memories for those who have witnessed first-hand and survived the pain associated with torture. As citizens of a country built upon inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the condemnation of the atrocities of torture should not be difficult, but the use of governmental torture has become uncomfortably accepted by many citizens and political leaders within the United States, as well as those beyond U.S. borders. Over 150 countries throughout the world, including the United States, practice torture. Few acknowledge its presence because to do so would not only welcome criticisms from the national and international community, but would label these states as human rights violators and decrease their political and social credibility. Those that seek to justify the use of torture point to the cause of preserving national security as defense against the criticisms; however, the ethical dilemma surrounding the use of simulated drowning/waterboarding, slapping and freezing, withholding food, sleep deprivation, forced stress positions, electrical shock, and sexual abuse undoubtedly brings into question the morality of acquiring information in the name of national security. The debate over whether American security trumps human rights has been present throughout history, but has become magnified after the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. With security given priority over human rights, torture and unlawful detentions have become common practice at GuantĂĄnamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. All of these practices are done in the name of promoting national security, but when the imprisoned include innocent men, women, and children, it becomes necessary to question these efforts to promote security. In fact, torture has been labeled as an effective tool for acquiring misinformation because individuals will admit to anything with the hope of stopping the infliction of pain. Not only is torture ineffective, it also finds the United States in violation of international law and discredits its international role as a moral compass, as the country abuses human rights, rewrites and rejects conventions and treaties, and makes reservations to treaties that justify inhumane and degrading treatment of human beings. American involvement in the practice of torture has been occurring for years, but it seems that only recently that the blindfold has been removed. An understanding of what constitutes torture, how it is used, and where it is practiced is necessary, but until individuals hear the testimonies, interact with

survivors, or actually endure the suffering, real understanding may be difficult to attain. In hopes of deepening this understanding, here is a snapshot into the evil realm of torture. They’ve taken my sweatshirt off and are explaining the rules. “We’re going to ask you some questions. If you give an answer we like, we’ll let you smoke. If we don’t like the answer, we’ll burn you.” “The rules are unfair,” I venture. They burn me. They ask me my name, age, and place of residence. The anticipation is worse than the burns— wondering if this answer is good enough. But for every answer I give, they burn me. Every time I am silent, they burn me. They ask the same questions again and again. My throat becomes raw from screaming. I’m curled up on the cement floor, blindfolded. The men are about to rape me again. “Hey Alejandro! Come and have some fun!” one of them calls. I recognize the name. They’ve mentioned it before. They said Alejandro was their boss. “Shit!” a new voice responds, in perfect, unaccented American English. Then he switches to Spanish, which he speaks with a marked American accent. “You idiots! Leave her alone. She’s a North American, and it’s all over the news.” Alejandro removes my blindfold. He is tall and fair-skinned. “Are you an American?” I ask him in English. “Why do you want to know?” He understands me but insists on answering in Spanish. This is just a portion of one survivor’s story. Sister Dianna Ortiz, an Ursuline nun from a rural town in New Mexico, left the comforts of her home at an early age in hopes of teaching children in other countries. Soon after she took her vows to the Ursuline sisterhood and upon receiving her degree in early education, Dianna ventured off to Guatemala to work with rural Mayan children. As she taught the children to read and write, she began to witness and also experienced the oppression of the Mayan

people. Her presence, her passion to serve and help others, and her knowledge, however, were enough to make her a threat to Guatemalan national security. Upon her abduction by the Guatemalan government on November 2, 1989, she was brutally tortured and gang raped for 24 hours. Her torture occurred in Guatemala City at a place called the Politecnica, the military academy of Guatemala, and among her torturers was a fellow American citizen. Was this a coincidence? Again, American efforts to promote democracy in Central America must be revisited. During the time-period in which she was tortured, the Guatemalan government was also torturing and murdering thousands of other human beings with the assistance of the United States. Monetary aid, given by the U.S., was distributed to dictators and governments that endorsed human rights abuse, and the Guatemalan and American torturers were being trained at the School of the Americas, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, located in Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia. With torture finally emerging from the shadows, it has become a subject sensitive to political debate. As the United States creates and implements its foreign policy, it is essential to revisit this humanitarian issue. Dianna knows that she survived her torture for a reason. She has an obligation to be the voice for those who have been silenced and to help heal a broken world. But she also has hope—hope for a world that will one day be free of torture, hope for a world where human rights are respected, especially when pursuing national security and promoting democracy, and hope for a world where “thou shall not be a victim, thou shall not be a perpetrator, and above all, thou shall not be a bystander”.

Bibliography: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. . . 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Tony Smith. America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994; “Chapter One: The United States and the Global Struggle for Democracy,” pp. 3-33. Liang-Fenton, Debra. Implementing U.S. Human Rights Policy. United States Institute of Peace, 2004. Burgerman, Susan. “First do no Harm: U.S. Foreign Policy and Respect for Human Rights in El Salvador and Guatemala, 1980-96,” pp.267-297. Convention Against Genocide; <http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html>. Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women; <http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm>. Universal Declaration of Human Rights; <http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html>. United Nations Convention Against Torture; <http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html>. Amnesty International. “Ask Amnesty: Torture”; <http://www.amnestyusa.org/askamnesty/torture200112.html>. Baer, Rob. “The Pointless Scuffle Over Torture”. TIME. October 7, 2007. <http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1668971,00.html>. Human Rights First. “Why Torture Makes Us Less Safe”; <http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/primetime/safe.asp>. Ortiz, Dianna and Davis, Patricia. The Blindfold’s Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth. Orbis Books, 2004; “Chapter Four: The Rules of the Game,” pp.37-50. Ortiz, Dianna and Davis, Patricia. The Blindfold’s Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth. Orbis Books, 2004; “Chapter Three: The American,” pp.14-36. SOA Watch. “About the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation”; <http://www.soaw.org/>. Bauer, Yehuda; <http://www.adl.org/education/dimensions_18_1/default.asp>. Torture on Trial. “Excerpt from Letter of Provincial”. October 24, 2007. <http://tortureontrial.org/statements.html#jesuit>.

The Shadow of Child Soldiers

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.â&#x20AC;? -Dietrich Bonhoeffer 34

Johnson Ukken/ HURJ Staff Writer In humanity’s quest to invent more terrifying weapons, a new breed of soldier has emerged. These soldiers are drawn from humanity’s most precious resource, its instruments of change, its hope: its children. At the time of this essay, about 300,000 child soldiers are involved in over 30 worldwide conflicts. If one were to rescue just three of these children each day from the terrors that comprise their every waking moment, one would never succeed in ending the practice of child soldiering in a lifetime, or in two lifetimes. And yet the existence and reversal of the practice of child soldiering remains a low priority for governments and a secondary priority for NGOs alike. For the past two decades Sri Lankan children have been caught in the midst of an escalating struggle between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government of Sri Lanka. The LTTE has the terrible distinction of being “masters of the suicide bomb attack” and are intensely successful at recruiting child soldiers. Many children are abducted from their homes and brainwashed with a baseless nationalistic fervor that allows them to “self-detonate” for the LTTE cause. Some children do manage to escape the lives of terror they lead under the LTTE, but go on to begin a painful and difficult transition back into society, holding onto dreams of education and careers, and rebuilding their lives from the bottom. “Child soldiers”, a seemingly oxymoronic term, requires definition. The line between childhood and adulthood is a blurred one that each culture has a different means of defining. However, with the creation of the United Nations and the subsequent growth of international relations, world leaders saw the need, especially for purposes of war, to clearly define that line; on the one side lay legal armies and on the other, war crimes. Anyone “under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity” is deemed a “child soldier” according to the 1997 Cape Town Principles. At eighteen, most children

are judged to show the psychological, emotional, and physical maturity of an adult. War, which affects all three aspects traumatically, requires such maturity. Yet, through the turn of the millennium, boys and girls as young as six and seven are recruited for combat by unscrupulous guerilla warlords in such diverse places as East Timor, Ethiopia, Liberia, Tajikistan, Russia, Iraq, Mexico, Colombia, Yugoslavia, and the Philippines, in addition to Sri Lanka. Child soldiers are broken by their commanders through horrendous and repeated episodes of psychological, physical, and emotional torture. They are often forced to witness and even participate in the murder of close relatives or friends: I had a friend, Juanita, who got into trouble for sleeping around. We had been friends in civilian life and we shared a tent together. The commander said that it didn’t matter that she was my friend. She had committed an error and had to be killed. I closed my eyes and fired the gun, but I didn’t hit her. So I shot again. The grave was right nearby. I had to bury her and put dirt on top of her. The commander said, “You did very well. Even though you started to cry, you did well. You’ll have to do this again many more times, and you’ll have to learn not to cry.” --Angela, joined the FARC-EP in Colombia at age twelve Children are often too young to have fully understood the concepts of life and death. They become easy prey to guerilla leaders who teach them to murder indiscriminately. According to a chilling Amnesty International report on the circumstances of child soldiers, many are “forced to kill, to rape, to kill [their] own families; forced into cannibalism and sex acts with corpses; given drugs and alcohol to numb/cloud feelings.” Thus they often operate solely on the threat of violence should they act contrary to their orders, rather than on a conscious desire to advance the agenda of the guerilla force. In some extremely dis-

turbing cases, they act under the influence of powerful narcotics like cocaine. In 2003, The New York Times reported the case of 14-year-old Liberian child soldier Dukuly Togbah who was first recruited at the age of ten by a guerilla faction opposing the government of Charles Taylor, a warlord notorious for using child soldiers. Togbah fought for his rebel group often under the influence of cocaine which made him feel “brave.” He was eventually captured and forced to fight for the government. By some estimates, Liberia is home to nearly 21,000 active and recently freed child soldiers. Now Liberia is trying to pull itself up from the destruction wrought under Taylor and by years of civil war. But this is neither the only nor most heinous example of the use of child soldiers. Colombia is also engaged in conflicts between government and paramilitaries who use child soldiers indiscriminately. As recently as four years ago, a ten-year old would-be bomber who fought for guerilla anti-government forces was accidentally killed when his bomb exploded prematurely. Government forces claim to have successfully demobilized many guerillas, but thousands more remain. Nearly 80% of child soldiers active in Colombia belong to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest rebel force in the country; several thousand of these child soldiers are under the age of 15. The government of Colombia claims to continue the demobilization and disarmament of child soldiers; however, many human rights organizations remain strongly skeptical. In heated combat zones where the existence of child soldiers is not uncommon, soldiers of established governments or even peacekeeping forces face an unprecedented challenge. Confronting a child who is armed to kill on the battlefield creates a unique and emotionally difficult situation for soldiers. Soldiers can be immediately overwhelmed by a combination of uncertainty and horror. In turn, guerilla leaders

count on this uncertainty to provide them with battle opportunities. In the current conflict engulfing Iraq there have been reports of child soldiers on the side of the insurgency who are made to fight against American forces deployed there. A 19 year-old British soldier who was going to be deployed in Iraq took his own life to avoid the possibility of shooting at potential child suicide bombers used by insurgent forces. Conversely, children, having no concept of modern rules with regard to warfare, are completely ignorant of international combat laws and will fight and act arbitrarily; guerrilla warlords also count on this. Perhaps the worst effect of child soldiering happens to those who survive and escape combat. Life under terror and violence shadows their transition back into society. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that childhood years are the most crucial and formative. Many child soldiers remain in conflict regions, but live removed from the area their outfit operated in; in such cases, access to psychological assistance is usually limited or nonexistent. Severe trauma obstructs and complicates a child’s transformation into adulthood. They are prematurely thrown into a world of violence; while their minds and emotions struggle to catch up, guerilla leaders systematically destroy their sensitivity and spirit. Often, when abducted from families, one or both of a child’s parents are murdered; moreover this act is used as the first “breaking” tactic. Child soldiers are constantly plagued by memories of this first and many subsequent instances of bloodshed: Most times I dream, I have a gun, I’m firing, I’m killing, cutting, amputating. I feel afraid, thinking perhaps that these things will happen to me again. Sometimes I cry…When I see a woman I’m afraid of her. I’ve been bad with women; now I fear that if I go near one she’ll hit me. Perhaps she will kill me. --Z., age fourteen

After years of repeated exposure to violence, many child soldiers become physically and emotionally desensitized, forever altering their perception of life. In the disturbing words of one New York Times journalist: “what this rattled generation might one day wreak is impossible to know.” However, the situation is not completely without hope. As recently as January of 2007, The Hague announced that Thomas Lubanga, indicted in the International Criminal Court for the use of child soldiers, will be tried for war crimes. Lubanga led the Union of Congolese Patriots in ethnic cleansings which were often carried out by children. He will not only be the first criminal to sit before the ICC but will also be the first to be tried for the use of child soldiers. Perhaps this trial will send a message around the world to other guerilla outfits who are torturing and turning children into killers before they can even spell their own names. However, as this subject receives only a low priority in the media, the chances of that message being heard are slim. For today’s global citizens, the most definite and effective means of activism against child soldiering lie in support of humanitarian NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, UNICEF, or Amnesty International, who are among the few bodies that continuously fight for child soldiers. In national politics, widespread public outcry is the only

weapon capable of moving and convincing politicians to make the reversal of this ghastly trend a priority. Rather than create preemptive wars to indulge a warped sense of self-preservation, nations must reach out in a unified and diplomatic manner to other nations bleeding from war in order to stop the conditions and leaders responsible for child soldiering. Grassroots and national activism are key methods of generating the interest and momentum that are necessary to solve this problem; compassionate citizens around the world must lend their voices to the cause against child soldiers. Five years ago, the UN General Assembly created the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflicts in a move designed to reduce the practice of child soldiering. This is the latest in a long series of international anti child soldier resolutions stretching back for the past eight decades. Sadly, guerilla leaders do not take much stock in documents. Now is the time for the world to remove itself from behind pieces of paper, dispel the fog with which it has covered its eyes, and rescue child soldiers from the atrocities it has allowed them to endure. In the words of Noam Chomsky: “If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.” Let humanity choose otherwise.

Bibliography: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. . . 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 1 .

Factsheet: Child Soldiers. <http://www.unicef.org/protection/childsoldiers.pdf> Mitchell, James A. “Soldier Girl?” The Humanist Sept-Oct 2006. 20 Jan. 2007 <http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/articles/ Mitchell-SeptOct06.pdf>. “Cape Town Principles and Best Practices” UNICEF 30 April 1997. 8 Feb. 2007 <http://www.unicef.org/emerg/files/Cape_Town_ Principles(1).pdf>. Children’s Rights: Voices of Child Soldiers. 2006 Human Rights Watch. 8 Feb. 2007 <http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/crp/voices. html>. “Sham demobilisation hides rise in Congo’s child armies.” The Guardian 09 Sept 2003 26 Feb 2007 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/ congo/story/0,,1038166,00.html>. TIM WEINER. “At 14, a Liberian War Veteran Dreams of Finding a Way Home.” New York Times (1857-Current file) [New York, N.Y.] 25 Aug. 2003,A1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2003). ProQuest. 22 Jan. 2007 <http:// www.proquest.com/> Liberia: The Promise of Peace for 21,000 child soldiers. Amnesty International. 3 Nov. 2007 <http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engafr340062004> Human Rights Watch: Colombia. 2006 Human Rights Watch. 8 Feb. 2007 <http://hrw.org/reports/2004/childsoldiers0104/5.htm> Human Rights World Report. 2006 Human Rights Watch. 12 Feb. 2007. p.195-196 <http://www.hrw.org>. Ibid. Singer, P.W. Children At War. 1st. New York: Pantheon Books, 2005. p. 22 “Soldier who feared shooting Iraqi children took overdose.” The Guardian 25 Aug 2006 26 Feb 2007 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/ military/story/0,,1858133,00.html>. Singer, P.W. Children At War. 1st. New York: Pantheon Books, 2005. p. 194 Somini Sengupta. “Innocence of Youth Is Victim of Congo War. “ _New York Times (1857-Current file)_[New York, N.Y.] 23 Jun 2003,A1. _ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2003)_. ProQuest. 22 Jan. 2007 <http://www.proquest. com/> “Warlord faces trial for using child soldiers.” The Guardian 29 Jan 2007 26 Feb 2007 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/congo/story/0,,2001489,00.html>. Singer, P.W. Children At War. 1st. New York: Pantheon Books, 2005. p.141-143

The Brazilian Amazon’s Forgotten People Lena Denis / HURJ Staff Writer

he current economic progress of countries like China and India has attracted the attention of the entire world, but not far behind these Eastern powerhouses is a very different land on the other side of the world: Brazil, South America’s largest country and “sleeping giant.” In early November, the Brazilian oil company Petrobras announced the discovery of between five and eight million barrels of recoverable light oil off the Brazilian shore. This type of oil is valuable and cheap to refine, and in light of its discovery, Brazil’s oil supply is plentiful enough to compete with those of countries like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia (2). Thanks to ethanol production and self-sufficiency in petroleum supply, a prosperous age seems to be dawning on this enormous nation, which is still struggling to transcend the difficulties brought on by Portuguese colonialism, American military and economic intervention, and violent clashes between its diverse peoples. As Brazil grows wealthier and more influential on an international scale with each year, its people enjoy more privileges than ever. The country has a happy and healthy middle class, beautiful models who grace the pages of American magazines, music and other forms of entertainment enjoyed all over the world, and many other attractions, from the natural treasure horde of its rainforests to the vistas seen from its beaches. However, there are constant reminders that Brazil remains a developing country rather than a superpower, and that much work needs to be done along the farthest reaches of its borders, where life is not so glamorous and people do not live as free men and women. To find this marginalized population of landless workers, rubber tappers, traditional farmers and fishermen, and indigenous tribes, one needs only to look northward to the most massive rainforest on Earth.

or most people, the word “Amazon” conjures images of lush, green beauty and millions of different wildlife species. Most people also recognize that it is a threatened space, subjected to devastating deforestation on a yearly basis, and consequent loss of many of the animal and plant species that make it such a unique part of the planet. However, many have never heard of the Yanomami Indians or the slave-laborers of Rondônia, two groups of people united by the misery they have suffered at the hands of ranchers, loggers and inefficient or opportunistic politicians. Furthermore, they are only two examples of the various population groups denied their human rights in the Amazon region. n the Amazonian state of Acre, the National Rubber Tappers’ Council was established in the 1980s to protect the rights of rubber tappers whose land was being encroached upon by cattle ranchers. Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, ranchers displaced from other regions moved into the Amazon and forced the rubber tappers, who had been making their living for generations by extracting natural latex from the trees that grow in the Amazonian rainforest, to clear out enormous patches of land each year to make room for more farmland, in what was termed the “burning season” 5. Subjugated workers who attempted to resist were silenced. In 1981, Wilson Pinheiros, the president of a rural workers union in Acre, was murdered by hit men sent by ranchers, and the Council’s cause began to unite and grow 5. In 1988, the rubber tappers’ leader, Chico Mendes, was similarly assassinated. International uproar over this incident helped propel the cause of the Acre rubber tappers into the world’s conscience and establish regular contact with other populations like indigenous groups, who for

the first time found a public that would take their side. The international community, no longer solely concerned with the Amazon’s environmental issues, began to think of the social crises in the Amazon and take steps to ameliorate them 5. However, the problems did not end. n other Amazonian states, such as Pará and Rondônia, traditional workers are frequently forced into similar subjugation by cattle ranchers and loggers. In both states, violence is very common, in large part because of the Colombian, Peruvian, and Bolivian drug trades’ encroachment into Brazil through the Amazon region. The Amazon serves as a gateway for both drug lords from these countries and arms dealers from Suriname. Gold miners transport drugs in Rondônia and traffickers establish organized crime rings through which they deal drugs, especially cocaine. Due to the inability of the federal government to combat the region’s lawlessness, big landowners have an easy time of expelling poorer individuals or making them live in virtual slavery, as was the case for the rubber tappers and continues to be the case for other traditional populations of farmers and indigenous groups. In southern Pará, violence is especially high and human rights are frequently ignored 5. The region made world news in 2005 with the tragic assassination of an American nun named Dorothy Stang. She had lived in Brazil for thirty years and had dedicated her life to advocating the rights of workers in the region. Like Mendes and other dissenters, she constantly received death threats and was eventually shot dead outside her home by hit men sent by loggers 5. Illegal logging is common in both Pará and Rondônia because extracting illegal mahogany is a lucrative business, as the English journalist George

onbiot discovered in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He found that Britain buys the most mahogany in the world, followed by the US, and that one English company even buys 95 percent of its timber from a single supplier in the Amazon. There is no way for the buyers to monitor the ethics of how the timber suppliers work, and the chance that these suppliers employ farmers forced into slavery is unsettlingly probable 6. nother problem in the Amazon region lies in the treatment of imprisoned adolescents. Human Rights Watch investigated several juvenile detention centers in northern Brazil, particularly in the Amazon region. In all, they visited seventeen centers in the Amazonian states of Amapá, Amazônas, Pará, and Rondônia, as well as the northeastern state of Maranhão. The organization found instances of adolescents aged twelve to seventeen, who make up the populations of these detention centers, being beaten by each other and by guards, being denied food, and being denied medical care, particularly in the case of girls, who did not receive gynecological care. Girls were also sometimes solicited for sex by the centers’ guards. The detainees were kept in tiny cells and sometimes forced to share space with offenders who had committed much more serious crimes than they had, who were sometimes bigger and older than they were, and who would beat their younger cellmates 1 . he biggest losers in the midst of all these issues are indigenous tribes and groups. The mahogany offenders typically extract their illegal timber from supposedly protected indigenous reserves. Monbiot found in his investigations that much timber, and also mining, came from the reserves of the Uru Eu Wau Wau Indians. In the past ten years since

the period when Monbiot was reporting, the land had been encroached upon at an alarming rate by businessmen and wealthy landowners, and around 1200 Indians had died violently at the hands of the encroachers 6 . In addition, gold miners have massacred Yanomami Indians, who live in the northern Amazon on the border with Venezuela. Seventy Yanomami died in a raid in 1993, possibly in retaliation to the Yanomami tribe’s acting as guides to Venezuelan authorities trying to combat illegal mining 7. raid in 1996 on a farm in Rondônia resulted in authorities finding 200 modern-day slave-laborers. Their documents and possessions had been taken from them and they were working in isolation on the farm with no pay and a threat on their lives if they tried to leave. The laborers are often drawn to the forest with promise of high wages and poor prospects for finding work at home. Once they arrive, they are forced to work to pay off their supposed travel expenses and become subjects of debt bondage 3. This tragic circumstance also occurs in Pará, where dozens more slaves were found in 2004 4 . Searching for slaves is difficult in a region this dense and filled with corruption, but more are found all the time. The majority of this trouble comes from inefficient governing systems, which rely on the state governments to take care of troubles in the Amazon. State governments have trouble carrying out such operations and execute orders with the state military police force, which is a highly corrupt entity in Brazil. The fault lies with the police for various offenses ranging from abuses in detention centers to corruption to lack of enforcement of land laws, such as the stipulation that rainforest landowners are supposed to leave 80 percent of their land untouched, which is rarely followed 5. In the

end, the rubber tappers, the farmers who find themselves enslaved, and the massacred Indians all end up as one thing: forgotten. The international community is reminded every once in a while of their presence, through media reports of horrible incidents and through the words, actions, and murders of people like Chico Mendes and Dorothy Stang; otherwise, its attention remains focused mostly on less remote and outlandish places. he case of the Brazilian Amazon is by no means an easy one to fix. The region has been mismanaged and abused by outside forces since the Portuguese came to Brazil in the 1500s, and a long-serving military dictatorship, a string of corrupt left-wing politicians, and a horrifically brutal police force have only compounded its gradual disappearance with their perverted visions of progress. Human avarice has wounded this beautiful land and its resilient populations, but now, more than ever, it is crucial to try to reverse the process. Brazil is on the way to commanding international status, thanks to its abundance in much-needed natural resources like petroleum, and its economic and environmental ambitions, from which many countries on the planet could take notes. At this point in history, Brazil could be a great asset to international politics as a country with a chance to change how people think about workers’ rights, solutions to global poverty, and ways to reduce energy use and thereby straighten out the complicated politics that accompany this issue. International pressure is at a boiling point to both get troops out of the Middle East and go green, and Brazil may provide some inspiration to make these dreams a reality. t the same time, however, Brazil needs help and insight itself from the international community to remove some

of its century-old stumbling blocks. Reform of amoral political systems can be achieved with international pressure and economic manipulation, as can be seen in various modern cases, from the dissolution of the Soviet Union to the overturning of South African apartheid. The Amazon could be preserved if the Brazilian legal system were restructured and various newer sectors of the economy were strengthened, so that the old corrupt system could gradually be phased out. No human being should be forced into servitude due to inescapable unemployment, and no child should have to fear rape or abuse by police officers. Both of these tragic occurrences could be fixed with time, awareness, and determined effort. Simply put, the best way to save the Amazon, and thereby improve the world in a major way, is not to give up on it. For now, the greatest hope for the Amazon region is that the world remembers its people, its trials, its unique ecosystems, and its need for delicate balance, which can only be achieved with intense reform and pressure generated by global appreciation of its importance. Bibliography: 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. .

“Cruel Confinement: Abuses Against Detained Children in Northern Brazil.” Human Rights Watch. 15.1 (2003): 1-12. Duffy, Gary. “Brazil Announces New Oil Reserves.” BBC News, São Paulo. 9 November 2007, Foster, Angus. “Lost to Slavery in the Amazon: Angus Foster on Brazil’s Latest Campaign Against Rural Labour Abuses.” The London Financial Times. 8 May 2006 News: The Americas. Gamini, Gabriella. “Brazilian Slaves are Freed in Jungle Raid.” The London Times. 21 February 2004 Overseas news. Hochstetler, Kathryn, and Margaret E. Keck. Greening Brazil: Environmental Activism in State and Society. Durham: Duke, 2007. Monbiot, George. “Environment: Against the Grain - Wood Cut Illegally from the Brazilian Amazon is being Bought by Companies Supplying Some of the Biggest Timber Retailers in the UK and US.” The Guardian. 3 May 1991. “Victims in the Forest.” The Economist. 28 August 1993: 3738.

Building Up by Kicking Out: Nancy Tray / HURJ Staff Writer A young mother is sleeping alone in her room when all of a sudden, armed men grab her by the shoulder and force her out of the house. A gun is pointed at her head, and she must watch helplessly as her beloved house is demolished and her cherished possessions are buried under the ruins. In an instant, she is left with nothing. Sadly, this is a recurrent scene that is observed across the African continent. Since the year 2000, more than three million Africans have become victims of forced evictions. As quoted by Kolawole Olaniyan, the Director of Amnesty International’s Africa Program, “The figures are truly staggering and clearly indicate that forced evictions are one of the most widespread and unrecognized human rights violations in Africa.” More often than not, these families are left without compensation or an alternate accommodation. Furthermore, most of these evictions are followed by other violations of human rights. Forced evictions are often carried out under the guise of pilot urbanization programs. In this article, Angola will serve as a case study of the eviction problem endemic to the rest of Africa. The year 2002 marked the end of the nation’s 27-year long civil war and the beginning of its postwar reconstruction. In recent years, Angola has experienced rapid economic growth, mostly attributed to its oil exports. Since oil production makes up 40% of the economy and 90% of the exports, rising prices and production have resulted in an impressive economic boom. Presently, the International Monetary Fund estimates economic growth to be 14.6% per year, and that number continues to increase. The oil industry has attracted many foreign companies to the country, with an influx of company executives and traders who desire luxury housing. With the newly found revenue, the Angolan government has implemented several urban programs to create the Nova Cidade de Luanda, or “the New City 42

of Luanda,” aimed to accommodate these investors. However, in order to acquire land for the new developments, the Angolan government has turned to forced evictions as a solution. Developers target poor neighborhoods with the plan to transform them into upscale housing areas, resulting in the widespread cases of forced evictions. Though the government claimed to be acting on good intentions and justified its actions in the name of national progress, the execution of the plan was disastrous. Since 2001, at least 6,000 families have been displaced without proper compensation. Some families are relocated to other areas; however, these areas lack sanitation, clinics, and schools, which denies these families access to healthcare and education. Jean du Plessis, the Executive Director of the Center on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), described these forced evictions as “counterproductive,” noting how the government is “…pushing people into poverty – not pulling them out of it.” In addition to becoming homeless, many families have experienced violence during the ordeal. There are hundreds of documented cases in which police abuse individuals, rape girls, kick pregnant women into hemorrhaging, and murder defiant residents. The practice of forced evictions is undoubtedly a gross violation of human rights; in particular, the right to adequate housing. Such activities violate both the national law and international human rights laws. Article 85 of Angola’s national Land Law states that those who are evicted must be given the opportunity to acquire title to land. In reality, most evictees are left without shelter and are never given the option of alternate housing. Moreover, according to international law, States must protect their citizens against forced evictions, and ensure the right to adequate housing. Forced evictions clearly violate this as well. The root of this problem is gentrification.

Urbanization by Forced Evictions in Africa Should the government be allowed to kick people out of their homes to promote national development? Is it worth the cruelty that thousands have suffered? Upscale housing is not a precondition of the economic boom; therefore, investors who wish to take advantage of the opportunities offered by Angola’s oil industry will still migrate into the country regardless of living conditions. Forced evictions serve only to change the local demographics of the population, while dispersing the poor to other parts of the nation and creating more slums in the process. In some cases, families have been evicted on more than five different occasions. Many international organizations have stepped up their effort to change this practice. Amnesty International, in particular, has launched a campaign to fight for the right to adequate housing at the global, national, regional, and local levels. Its priority is to eliminate forced evictions in Angola and other African nations, as well as demand the restoration of basic human rights, including access to education and healthcare. In May 2007, Amnesty International insisted that the African Commission condemn the practice of forced evictions in Africa and asked African governments to publicly acknowledge adequate housing as a fundamental right. Its 2007 report shows that the Angolan government has complied, to some

degree, with their requests. The government has recognized forced evictions as a violation of human rights and has pledged to begin compensating the evictees. Other organizations are also taking charge to improve the situation. Human Rights Watch, the largest human rights organization based in the United States, and SOS Habitat, an Angolan organization, are both urging the Angolan government to adhere to the UN Comprehensive Human Rights Guidelines on Development-based Displacement. They demand that the government provide families with reasonable notice prior to demolishing their homes, as well as punishing police who use excessive force while carrying out the forced evictions. Additionally, both groups ask the government to provide families who were evicted in the past with alternative accommodations or assistance. When human rights are neglected in favor of national development, an unfortunate irony arises: economic growth, which is supposed to open up new opportunities for a state’s citizens, becomes the justification for robbing individuals of potential success and prosperity. With help from the international community, these disheartening events in Angola and other African nations are slowly being recognized as problems that require immediate remedy.

Bibliography: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. . . 8.

Africa: Forced evictions reach crisis levels. (2006, October). Africa Focus. Retrieved from http://www.africafocus.org/docs06/ evic0610.php Gagnon, Georgette, Ed. (2007, May) “They Pushed Down the Houses: Forced Evictions and Insecure Land Tenure for Luanda’s Urban Poor.” Human Rights Watch, 19(7) Retrieved from http://hrw.org/reports/2007/angola0507/7.htm#_Toc166498938 Economic Overview. Royal Netherlands Embassy in Luanda: Economic Overview. Retrieved from http://www.mfa.nl/luaen/trade_ and_economy/economic_overview Angola: Lives in ruins: Forced evictions continue. (2007, January). Amnesty International. Retrieved from http://web.amnesty. org/library/index/ENGAFR120012007 Angola: Forced evictions violate basic human rights. (2004, November). Amnesty International. Retrieved from http://web.amnesty. org/library/Index/ENGAFR120082003?open&of=ENG-AGO Africa: Forced evictions continue. (2006, November/December). Retrieved from Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns: http://www. maryknoll.org/GLOBAL/NEWSNOTES/newsnotes_11206a.pdf World Habitat Day: Focus on Africa. (2006, October). Amnesty International. Retrieved from http://web.amnesty.org/wire/October2006/Habitat Angola: Thousands Forcibly Evicted in Postwar Boom. (2007, May). Human Rights Watch. Retrieved from http://hrw.org/english/ docs/2007/05/11/angola15912.htm

HURJ

Spring 2008 Issue 8

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Human Rights

Teaching for Citizenship: How Human Rights Education Can Change our Society

Behind the Blindfold: American Foreign Policy and Torture The Shadow of Child Soldiers

The Brazilian Amazon s Forgotten People Building Up by Kicking Out: 46

Urbanization by Forced Evictions in Africa