The Yale Globalist - Chain

6 Sylvia Gregorczyk-Abram

Leydicker

10 Ömür Kula Çapan

de Vernou

15

Laura Alonso

Adam McPhail

20

Ismail

Words from

World Fellows

EDITOR’S NOTE 26 Rayhan Asat Intervewed by Ben Sterling editors' note

Dear Globalist readers,

The end of the Fall 2021 semester was one for the books. Switching finals to online and meals to gr ab-and-go with rising Omicron cases was less than ideal but we made it through!

Prior to the chaos, the Glo community had chosen the theme CHAIN for its multiplicity of meanings and its relation to global themes such as political and economic interdependence, interconnected ness, and suppression. CHAIN resonated with the continued restrictive effects of COVID in the interna tional arena as well as the complicated links be tween world powers and neighboring states.

CHAIN also emerged from our connections with the most recent class of Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows—innovators and leaders who brought expertise and knowledge from all over the globe to our campus, connecting us to the state of affairs of countries like Argentina and Yemen. Their individ ual passions, careers, and life stories are intercon nected through themes like resistance, democracy, justice, and civic engagement. We want to

especially highlight the story of Rayhan Asat (see pg. 26) who continues in her fight to reunite with her brother, Ekpar, who has been detained at a Uyghur internment camp by the Chinese state since 2016

For this issue, our writers interviewed five of these wonderful World Fellows from this year’s cohort. Special thanks to Rayhan Asat (interviewed by Ben Sterling), Laura Alonso (interviewed by Adam McPhail), Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram (interviewed by Jack Leydiker), Abdi Ismail (interviewed by Hugo Wang), and Ömür Kula Çapan (interviewed by Axel de Vernou).

We are so very grateful for the writers of this issue and for the World Fellows and generous willingness to share with our publication. We hope our readers will enjoy these articles and we look forward to sharing our next quarterly issue later in the semester!

Warmly, Martina and Victory

P.S. A special thanks to Phoebe, our outgoing EIC, who contributed to the production of this issue!

Maurice R. Greenberg Class of

Abdi Ismail

James Irungu Mwangi

Elinda Labropoulou

Livia Sobota

Korto Reeves Laura Alonso

Ömür Kula Çapan

Greenberg World Fellows of

Muthanna

Al-Jindi

Orr

Brown

Srikumar Misra

Udo

Sylwia

Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram

Interviewed by Jack Leydiker

Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram is an attorney-at-law and social activist, working with NGOs on developing a democratic civil society and protecting the rule of law in the Polish justice system. She is Co-Founder of the Justice Defense Com mittee and the Free Courts Foundation, both of which monitor and archive political pressure on judges and lawyers, giving them legal aid. She regularly participates in legislative processes in Poland’s Parliament as an expert in parlia mentary Constitutional Governance and Reform of the Justice System groups. She also presents on the state of the Polish justice system to the European Commission. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

For those unfamiliar with the situation in Poland, could you provide a brief summary of what the Polish government is doing?

Since 2015 when Law and Justice, [the ruling par ty], won the election, a lot of things have changed in Poland with respect to the independence of the judiciary and also with human rights. And as you probably know, and as readers will know, since it’s hard not to notice, we are having a very intense and difficult relationship with the EU. Only today, the Vice President of the Court of Justice said that Poland will get a 1 million Euro per day penalty for not executing the judgment of the Court of Justice regarding the Disciplinary Chamber.

What is the Disciplinary Chamber, and what has Law and Justice done to take control of the judiciary?

As regards the independence of the judiciary, Law and Justice did so-called “reforms,” and took over the control, of course, of the Constitutional Tribunal, which is the obvious one, because then you can just do everything you want to do to your own country. And then the Supreme Court and regional courts have created a disciplinary system against Polish judges to create a chilling effect against their rights. This is difficult for the European Union because they’ve created a new Disciplinary Cham ber only to punish judges who they believe should be punished, and those are usually the ones that

criticize [the government]. They’ve created from scratch, from the very beginning, two new cham bers. One of them is responsible to say at the very end, whether the election went right or wrong. The second is the Disciplinary Chamber created only for the judges and lawyers that aren’t cooperating with [the government].

They’ve made changes, of course, in the whole system, of choosing new judges and promoting old ones. And now, with the takeover of the Constitu tional Tribunal, they are basically undermining the whole presence of the EU because they said that, in July, any kind of interim measure passed by the EU is ineffective since it’s not according to the Polish Constitution.

People have thrown around the word “Polexit” to describe a potential Polish withdrawal from the EU. Do you think that is feasible and if so, what would that mean for the future of both Poland and the EU?

Fortunately, the Polish people are really pro-Eu ropean Union. The last polls, I think, say 90% of Polish people, maybe 80% or 70%, but really a huge majority of Polish people want to be a part

The formal one, which is, of course, very difficult, given that they have to do a referendum and people have to vote. But there is a different kind of exit and a different story for the European Union. This is a story about creating two different kinds of EU. The first kind belongs to well-developed countries like Germany and France and so on, and the other kind belongs to the countries like Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria, which will get less money and are left somewhere behind. This might actually happen in the future because, of course, Polexit itself is diffi cult, right? We saw how difficult the Brexit example was, but yet I don’t exclude the Polish government from trying this referendum at any point. They say now that they don’t want to do that, but I can’t rule out anything that the Polish government might try. But as far as the law is concerned, Poland is already there, because the judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal undermines the basic rule of EU law, so we are already no longer a part of the common legal system. We are very fortunate to be a part of the European Union, and I don’t want to even think about what would have happened if we weren’t a part of the European Union.

I know there’s a lot of debate on what tools EU law-

“This is a story about creating two different kinds of EU.”

of the European Union. That’s what they say. They feel like they are European citizens, although I don’t know whether they really understand what that means in respect to common values and com mon rules. They want to be a part of the European Union because, of course, you can travel without any borders, you can go on student exchange trips, you can work in all those countries with few formal ities, with families in other countries. But still, they feel a part of the European Union, which is a good sign, because in the case of any kind of referendum like what we saw in the UK, which nobody ever ex pected, then they may not vote [to withdraw from the EU]. But as far as Polexit is concerned, I would say that there are two different kinds of Polexits.

makers and politicians have at their disposal to coerce Law and Justice to implement the rulings of the Court of Justice. I’m curious what your opinion is on rule of law conditionality mechanisms, making EU funds contingent on passing the Court of Justice judgments?

We don’t really know how that will work. [Those mechanisms were] created because of Poland and Hungary, and you’re right, it’s a conditional mech anism because it’s saying either you have the inde pendence of the judiciary in your country or you’re not getting more money. But it was never used in the past, it was just created recently. So we don’t really know whether to use it, because it’s always a political decision. Although, I believe that’s the

only way. Either use this mechanism or give penal ties for Law and Justice. We have a large amount of money to help countries after COVID, and the threat from the EU is that Poland will not receive its COVID funds until it fixes the situation with the ju diciary. This is a very political decision. I thought it would happen, although last week, Angela Merkel said again, “let’s open a dialogue, this is very hard for Poland, and the Polish people should not suffer consequences for their government.” This is about politics, that’s why the Court of Justice imposed this penalty. And if the Polish government does not pay, they can withdraw money from Poland’s COVID relief fund.

How does the Polish public view the moves that the EU is making to coerce Law and Justice into passing these judgments? Does that reduce the popularity of the EU in Poland?

Well, it’s really hard to say. I would say that some politically active people, to be honest, are very impatient with the European Union, because they think that the EU should have done something a long time ago. They think that it is already too late to react, the system is broken, it’s destroyed, judges are suspended and disciplinary proceedings are pending, and the EU has done basically nothing. This is what they think, that the EU should have done more. And as Law and Justice is concerned, it really depends on the message sent because they’ve been saying to the public that the EU wants to take our money back and there are bad people in the European Commission. I don’t observe that Polish people are getting annoyed with these messages. I feel that they think enough is enough, and the European Union should do something. And even people that are not, you know, voting for opposi tion parties, are tired of conflict with the EU. They don’t understand why on earth there is a threat of withholding money for the Disciplinary Chamber. For example, farmers don’t really care about the Disciplinary Chamber. The government is appeal ing to those people, saying that “oh, the EU cannot tell us what to do, domestic law is higher than EU law, and if we allow the EU to tell us what to do, they will start interfering with our education system and our traditional Polish values.”

That brings us to an interesting point in terms of traditional values. You mentioned in your lecture a while ago that the government is using the idea of traditional values and the heavy Catholic influence in Poland to galvanize support and say “these people are trying to destroy what it means to be Polish.” Is that campaign working, are the Polish people receptive to that?

Unfortunately, yes, it is working. I didn’t expect that to actually work, but it is working. Polish people don’t really think about the Polish tradi tional family, they just want to feel safe, you know. And the “traditional” family in Poland is made up of a man, a woman, and kids, so of course, threats to your family are always effective. So, even if you don’t understand what’s going on, you don’t want your family to be threatened. So it’s very effective and they’ve done that with refugees from the very

beginning and then with the LGBTQ, and they are used as scapegoats in absolutely every political election. The president, the members of parliament, they all use the LGBT card. Although, now, it’s moving again to refugees because there was a crisis at the border. So in the next election, I would say that they’ll use both cards, the refugee card and the LGBT card, because the LGBT society is seen as threatening to the idea of traditional Polish families and traditional Polish education. And unfortunate ly, the Catholic Church supports this kind of hate ful rhetoric. They are really against the LGBT society and some very important people in the Polish Cath olic Church said publicly that the rainbow flag is worse than the red Communist flag. So, when you hear this message coming from somebody working high up the church, it resonates, because people go to church every Sunday.

“Polish people ... just want to feel safe, you know. And the ‘traditional’ family in Poland is made up of a man, a woman, and kids, so of course, threats to your family are always effective.”

Is the way that Law and Justice is eroding the independence of the judiciary and galvanizing support by trumpeting these values and fabricating threats of LGBTQ people and refugees going to embolden other countries to do the same?

Well, definitely with the independence of the judi ciary, this is why it is so important. That’s why the European Union has to react in a very tough way, because when democracy is not very strong, the executive power will naturally come to exert con trol over the judicial system. So this is like a grim, red light to them, sent by the Court of Justice. Of course, this is also about the EU as a whole. Every court and judge in Poland are European courts and judges. So if you have a case concerning Polish citizens and citizens of other countries, then if the Polish system is not meeting the criteria of inde pendence, that raises many challenges. People may choose not to implement the judgments because the criteria of independence of the judiciary was not met.

Also, in terms of values, when I was in Den mark for a speech to the European Parliament, I spoke to a Danish professor who told me that after the near-total ban of abortion, politicans in Denmark began saying, “oh, maybe this is actually a good idea to follow?” Of course, they are rightwing politicians, but they’ve never had the courage to say that in the past, and now they do because they see this happening in Poland. So clearly, what happens in one country will cause ripple effects in other countries. And for some governments, this would be a very effective way to maintain power for a long time.

Do you think that the illiberal conservatism that Law and Justice is using to market itself is finding traction in the public in other countries? Are the public in other countries receptive to that discussion? I suppose it depends on the country you’re discussing.

It really depends on the country, yes. For example, in Germany, people are very aware of the situation. It’s usually Germany, France, Denmark, and the Netherlands, who are interested in the situation in Poland, and we have been exchanging messages for a long time. There are several countries interested in what’s going on, and usually they are interested be cause they’re geographically very close to Poland.

Going back to the Polish public, you mentioned that, if you’re a farmer, if you’re not involved in politics, many of these issues can seem very abstract and not directly related to you. I know that you have experi ence in galvanizing people to protest on the streets for democracy and for human rights, so how do you make sure that people who maybe don’t believe that this affects them directly are still aware that this is happen ing, are still aware that it’s a problem?

That is actually how I started. So, in 2017, when the crisis just began, [Law and Justice] introduced the National Judiciary Council and the Disciplinary Chamber. It really surprised me that thousands of people, massive crowds, went on the streets and fought for the independence of the judiciary. We didn’t think that would happen, we didn’t think that was possible because the independence of the judiciary is a very abstract idea. But people did protest, and just then, we decided that, as lawyers, we should do something to go to the streets, talk to the people, to have them with us all the time be cause it is very common during protests for people to be arrested and simply disappear. So we wanted to protect them. We thought that if we talk to the people as lawyers, that may not be very interesting, so we asked some very famous celebrities in Poland to help us. We created a series of very short movies, three-minute movies, explaining why this situation is important. And they always start the same way: assuming that the viewer isn’t interested in politics, and isn’t interested in the independence of the judiciary. We put the viewer in the shoes of, for example, a victim of domestic violence, and the perpetrator is somehow connected to the ruling party. We demonstrate how there can be no justice in that scenario. Or, imagine a situation in which politicians control public services and are misusing them. If a court that is pressured by that politician takes your case, then do you think they’re going to rule in your favor? So, we’ve done like 200, 300 short movies and it became very, very popular. You know, I really didn’t expect that, I was just a regu lar lawyer, but soon it was on every media channel in Poland.

Jack Leydiker is a first-year in Ezra Stiles College and can be reached at jack.leydiker@yale.edu.

Ömür Kula Çapan

Interviewed by Axel de Vernou

Ömür Kula Çapan is a creative strategist searching for the intersection between consulting, financial work, and educational initiatives. She built the first digital bank in Turkey and is a frequent guest lecturer at many universities and academic programs. She leads the digital transformation of Turkey’s most influential companies while advo cating for social reform in a variety of industries. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Why do you think that the transition to online spaces is so important nowadays for companies across the world?

Most companies that come from traditional busi ness models are having a very difficult time reaching their potential users and consumers—even their existing ones. It is no longer a one-way forced dialogue where companies can deliver any message that they want via prime time television or advertis ing. So when their brand is not performing well and they need to change course, they have to be able to put that change as part of a conversation rather than imposing awareness campaigns. People only care if there is a conversation. Digital technologies are providing companies with a new medium where these conversations are easier. Brands from previous eras are especially desperate to exist in these online spaces to reach not only new but also their existing consumers.

Data is the most important asset that these com panies are ever going to get from their users. And in order to get that data, they need to create a type of digital journey that you are invited to follow so that you leave a digital footprint. These companies will then be able to better understand you to test their vision. To make that transition, they need a digital platform to distribute a message, test a message, and get more feedback to identify what they are supposed to be doing.

In your consulting, do you concentrate most on improv ing management and the structure of the company or is it more financially focused?

Our company is based on a consulting service that’s slightly different from usual consultancy services. We are more like a creative consultancy service than financial. We dive in from the C-suite, working very

closely with the high-level stakeholders in the com pany, and usually the reason why they come to us is because there’s something that is not working with their company anymore. Most of the time, it has to do with some of their products, services, or brands. They could be losing some market share, for exam ple, or maybe there’s a new disruptor in the market. It’s from there that we start reverse engineering the problem starting from the end: the consumer of the product, service, or brand in question. If there is something wrong, then it means they are not meeting the expectations of a certain audience. We can help build an organizational structure or create a corporate entrepreneurial set-up that is integral to what they’re doing. But you can’t change everything from scratch overnight. A lot of things that we need to do are based on the condition of the company and what they’re capable of. So what we do is not only consulting but also execution. We design products and services to make sure that they’re up and running, so it’s like holding hands. It’s not only ideas; it’s ideas and executional frame works that deliver tangible brands, products, and training programs.

During this new era of accelerating digitalization, has it been easier or harder for you to guide companies and introduce them to wider audiences?

It’s actually made it easier in some senses and difficult in others. It is super easy because now you don’t need to convince these companies of what is going to happen and how our services will work. It’s also difficult because the Internet is super crowded. Companies are facing millions of ag ile-tech competitors and almost everyone is late to

the game. These companies are like youngsters with a lot of stamina, whereas we want to go backwards and make them change the basics before looking to the future.

How about your financial background; how does it play into your career?

My background is in advertising and in banking— two totally different ends of the game. What I did in terms of finance is help set up the first digital bank in Turkey. It was a very disruptive thing for the market several years ago and it is still super suc cessful. It is my way of entering several other indus tries so I can say to them: “if you are not winning your game, here is how you can find a completely new niche, or new way of doing business, to get back into the market and still win the game.” This is what we did with our little digital bank back then. The ultimate goal should be to create a profitable business that is not necessarily always growing, but constantly making money with healthy margins. I think this is another thing that people get confused about in today’s world. Every company is playing the growth game but their profitabilities and margins are shrinking—growth is actually making things more difficult for them. Instead of getting fat in the growth game, they need to be more agile to have big margins that keep their customer base happier and become more lucrative. My banking experience allows me to explain that to clients. Scaling is important, but multiplying incremental margins is not sustainable because you are mul tiplying costs as well. In my opinion, you need margins more than you need growth so that you can choose and control your scaling.

What were the repercussions of creating the first digital bank in Turkey? It seems like that would fundamental ly transform a part of the economy.

The bank is called Enpara. The way that the bank ing game was designed back then was based on a very imbalanced relationship between consumers and banks. Banks were seen as super powerful— they were seen as either capable of screwing you or making you win financially. They were perceived as entities that did not really care about their custom ers because they held the power to decide whether

you get a credit or not. One can say that this is still pretty much true. However, consumers were not very aware of their power and banks had not yet understood the value of a happy customer. “Customer experience” was a fancy buzzword back then but banks were not prioritizing it in a sustain

it was a huge convenience for them. We created Enpara on the basis of a big loyalty scheme, which was also new for the market. This meant that if you were a happy Enpara customer and you would refer me as a new customer to Enpara, for example, you’d win, I’d win, and everybody profits.

“ Without creative, intuitive thinking attached to them, numbers make little sense.”

able fashion, they were just talking the talk but not walking the walk. Banks were in desperate need to change their narrative and their organizational structure but there was no real disruptive trigger. It’s like when everyone is unhappy with the rules of the game and no one wants to be the first to leave the game.

When Enpara came into the scene, we changed the whole narrative as to what consumers should really expect from their banks. If your Starbucks barista can remember your name and your order if you go every other week, your bank should be able to do that, too. You had to be a real person that matters to the bank that serves you, not a number waiting in a queue. We made sure that this was very much possible. We made Enpara all about our customers. We reduced all fees and all commis sions, breaking a lot of taboos in the market. New customer segments were comfortable with banking with us.

We suddenly created these new and fancy customer targets for other banks. Housewives, for example, were a great target market for everybody but until we came into the scene, no one was really aware of them. We were not charging any fees or commissions so these housewives, instead of having their money in a box at home, were investing their money with us because they were already digitally savvy and Enpara was digital-only. So they never had to leave their houses to start banking with us,

I get the impression that finance is becoming more quantitative nowadays and that students try to pair it with other fields like computer science and data analysis. Still, your work is based on brand creation and soft skills. Where do you see the world of finance going right now and what is the philosophy behind your approach?

First of all, yes, I definitely come from the soft skill side of things and I am a total believer of data but I don’t believe that you have to be a data scientist. If you have the right people that can crunch numbers for you and you have the intuitive capabilities of drawing insights from that data as well as the right creative skills, you will be adding something new to the market. Otherwise, what’s the point of copying what’s already been done? You’ll only migrate some people to your platform.

My take on it is that people can be the best data scientists out there but there is more value to the design approach or the creative approach, such as bringing behavioral insights into the game where you tap into what people really want, or intuitive thinking that goes beyond the answers the data pro vides. Without creative, intuitive thinking attached to them, numbers make little sense. They are only complementary to the existing system and create incremental change.

As somebody who is exploring finance with a weak quantitative background, that’s great to hear!

I have to share this example. When I started work ing in the bank, I was ultimately super worried and stressed to death because I couldn’t differentiate between two financial products… and I ended up designing the bank. My colleagues had this num ber-focused data driven approach that kept telling them “no, no, no, that’s not how we do things here” and I kept asking: “why not?” It was not only because I was naive and uneducated in the banking world; I was truly curious and did not understand. They were trying to create this complicated call cen ter tree of decision-making and I said, “Guys, peo ple work with call centers because they just want to talk to real people. Forget about the automated answering tree, why don’t we have real people who immediately connect with clients.” They were cre ating this monster for people to hate them because they were only looking at the numbers. Numbers were telling them that the complicated decision tree trying to predict why someone had called the call center was so efficient. They had forgotten that people were not satisfied with this type of system. So I forced them to re-design the call center in its most primitive sense. With the Enpara call center, you are connected to an agent. That’s it.

How about we move on to your educational work with children, refugees, and other vulnerable groups? Can you tell us more about your work in this domain?

I am someone who truly believes that if you are not serving the society you live in, you are not neces sarily fulfilling your true potential. Life is a give and take game. If all you are doing is taking, you won’t have a clear conscience to start with. Half of my time is dedicated to civil society and I work a lot with NGOs. This is no pro bono work with my company; this is separate. I try very carefully not to mingle them because people misunderstand and think that I am trying to get more money for my company. Not at all.

I obsessively believe in the power of education with children. K-12 is my main focus. I think that the educational system in the world sucks. It hasn’t changed in the past 100 years. There are millions of things to redesign, and if you can change a few

things, a lot of other things will change too.

I try to be influential on the boards of educa tional NGOs that are in turn influential for new policies. I come up with new curriculum ideas or educational methodologies. I work on an NGO’s board for private schools—the biggest and most prestigious network in Turkey. I try to make sure that the education system offered there matches their potential quality with new ideas and technol ogy. But not everybody gets the chance to go into private schools. The Educational Reform Initiative is an NGO set up to influence the government to make a better educational system year after year. Unfortunately, the tension between the Turkish government and the people has made it super diffi cult for the initiative to criticize the government— that bond is broken. So now we need a new focus for our NGO or a new model, which requires a re design as well. Everything is a design problem and in order to solve that you need to find an untapped need or an undeniable insight that your audience would relate to. So you can say that I’m trying to mobilize my skills to influence a redesign in educa tional systems in the K-12 educational system.

Can you give an example of what you mean when you say that the educational system “sucks”?

The widely applied educational system in the world today is based on the idea of a factory or assembly lines where the students are the products. They travel between stations as if a different part can be added to them at every step of the way. Interactions or intersections are disregarded. Of course, there are many progressive ideas being considered, some of them already very old, but they are not widely applied. The Montessouri system is an example. It says that you don’t need to group kids based on ages because we all learn from each other and there is an important dynamic between people of dif ferent ages. These kinds of approaches need to be more welcomed in the educational system, but they are not. They are still very niche. Even the siloed approach of “math is a different subject than literature and science” is super prob lematic. We are teaching children that there is only one way. K-12 education is more about keeping the kids in a safe garden when parents are at work than about teaching them anything. When COVID

hit, we all saw very clearly that schools were not capable of most things. We can go as advanced as we want with our electric cars and carbon capture technologies, but if we are not equipping our kids with what they would really need in today’s world, we are not progressing as a society.

Your online profiles on sites such as LinkedIn include issues like health care and the environment which we didn’t talk about today. Are there other things that you are passionate about on the side of your consulting, finance, and educational work?

I am someone who believes that business is person al. I am not someone who changes my narrative or the things I care about when I walk into a meeting room with a client. I do not change color based on the environment like a chameleon. If I care about poor people, human rights, and animal rights, I am not going to change that when I meet with some clients. I am someone who is not scared to make sure that my persona is the same everywhere. I am a true activist who is interested and invested in everything that is going on in my country. Some of the things that I say there potentially conflict with my clients, but I don’t care. Going forward, busi ness is going to get more and more personal and if you are not your true self, no one will trust you go ing forward. You can very easily hide yourself in the digital world and I am someone working against that tide. I am not hiding myself—my Instagram account is totally open. I will not apologize for who I am just to make a project work.

Is there anything else you would want to add about your work since it touches on so many fields? Are there any misconceptions you want to be clarified for our readers?

People understand different things about consult ing. When I throw in words like ‘branding’ and ‘consulting,’ they get confused because the world is siloed. My kind of work tries to bring every thing together. Let’s say your advertising agency is Droga5, your consulting agency is McKinsey, and your design company is Pentagram. At the end of the day, what the client wants is a mobile banking product that requires everybody’s input to excel at an intersectional point. If each company is blind

to what the other company is doing, or waiting for their turn to take a stab at the matter, then when one decides on an idea, the other one will come to break it by going in a different direction— this is super inefficient for clients.

Readers might initially think: so what does she really do? What is her company? An advertising agency? Design agency? Consulting? Which one? We are none, but an intersection. There are not a lot of companies in the world doing that right now. Every project requires a different skill set and you need to be agile, flexible, and ever-changing to adapt. How will the big consultancies tackle that when they have 300 partners thinking about strategy on their payroll? Even if they hire the best designers, how will they keep them busy and integrated? How will they change their culture to create that intersection? Since they cannot do that, they try to buy the very creative companies out there. Their existing cultures suffocate these design cultures. Designers quit and creativity dies.

So it’s about finding the intersection between the expertise that different small companies offer?

Small companies are more flexible in creating that intersection because the solutions that they offer are not dictated by the salaries that they need to pay at the end of each month, especially companies like ours, where no one is on the payroll and everyone is freelancing. This way we can bring in any talent to any project and price accordingly. It is also about being non-territorial. Small companies are not greedily trying to get all of the big contracts, they are usually ready to collaborate with other compa nies and share the cake. Big companies need to take all of the cake because only then can they make ends meet.

In one consultancy company that I worked at, the minimum budget to hire a client was 1 million pounds. That is insane and not needed. Clients should be able to bring in expertise from different areas and place them around a single table to make them work and share that cake. This is only possible when the companies are small, agile and have talent flexibility. This is what we are offering.

Axel de Vernou is a first-year in Saybrook College and can be reached at axel.devernou@yale.edu.

Laura Alonso

Interviewed by Adam McPhail

Laura Alonso is an anti-corruption advocate from Argentina. With a storied resume, Alonso served as the executive director of Poder Ciudadano (Citizen Power), an Argentinian NGO dedicated to fighting corruption. From 2009 to 2015, she represented the city of Buenos Aires in the lower house of the Argentine National Congress. While she fought for a variety of issues, she became known as a tireless anti-corruption champion. In 2015, she was appoint ed as the head of Argentina’s Anticorruption Bureau. Three years later, Alonso became the co-chair of the G-20 Anti Corruption Working Group. She has been a British Chevening Scholar, an Eisenhower Fellow, a Draper Hills Fellow at Stanford University, a Regan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. Now, for the fall of 2021, Alonso is a Yale Greenberg World Fellow. Recently, Alonso graciously sat down for an interview with the Globalist.

This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity (sadly excluding her love for American apples).

After you finished college you began to work for Poder Ciudadano, the Argentinian chapter of Transparency International. What drew you to enter corruption work just out of college, and why did you join that organization specifically?

Everything was a bit by chance. I have always been very inclined toward politics as a Argentinian young person who was able to see the transition

from dictatorship to democracy. I was very into history and what was going on in the country. So, I decided very young, when I was 10 or 11, that I was going to study political science. I went to England to study, and then I came back. Corruption in the 90s in Latin America was a huge issue, and Argenti na was undergoing a major crisis in 2001 and 2002. I was unemployed trying to find a job. There were no jobs. The only opportunity that popped up was

in this NGO. They accepted me as a volunteer first, and then I was affiliated to a specific program. So, I was very happy to work on all the transparency related issues with institutions, Congress, electro transparency, and transparency in political funding in order to strengthen democracy. I did that for some years, and anti-corruption was part of the rule of law programs.

At Poder Ciudadano, you worked your way through the ranks and, eventually, became executive director of the organization. Later, you joined politics and became an elected representative in Argentinian Congress. Was there something in your time with Poder Ciudadano that made you interested in politics, and how did your time with Poder Ciudadano inform your political interests?

I think that there are two important things to point out. I have always been interested in politics since I was a kid. Some people liked sports or fashion, but I was interested in politics because in my family we

stayed in the NGO sector for eight years. It was a super important educational and professional expe rience for me because I learned a lot. I was able to travel and meet people everywhere, which 10 years afterward I reconnected with when I was a mem ber of the government at the executive level. So, it was always in my mind, but there was no clear intention for me at any point to become a member of Congress and sometimes things happen. And in this case, I was offered a position in one of the lists. It was a new party. I liked some of the ideas. For others, I was unsure, but I think at that time I had different way of thinking. I said, “Okay, I’m a person of action and I want to participate more.” So I crossed over from society to politics.

In 2014, you introduced the Ley de Transparencia, Gobierno Abierto y Acceso a La Información Pública (Transparency, Open Government and Access to Public Information Law) that, among other things, gave the Argentinian public greater access to information. In the past, you have mentioned the importance of a

“It’s impossible to solve corruption problems in one year, in one decade or in a century.“

spoke about political issues. Imagine, the dictator ship was finished after a war against the British in the Falkland Islands and then democracy arose. It was weird to find other 10-year-olds interested in discussing political things. Then I went to universi ty, and I was also attracted to participate in the stu dent movement. I had friends that became young political leaders not only in the student movement, but also in political parties. So I have always been interested and related to politics. The time at the NGO came after I spent one year in England and then there was this crisis in Argentina and I had to restart again, a second phase in my career.

That’s when this opportunity opened, and I

multi-sector alliance when fighting against corruption. Could you tell me more about the complicated rela tionship between the government, NGOs, journalists, international organizations, and the general public concerning anti corruption?

You have to navigate a very complex environment because in highly corrupt countries you find cor rupt people in all the sectors. In the judiciary, in Congress, in the government, in the political par ties, in the church, in business NGOs, trade unions, even soccer associations. Whatever you touch, of course there are problems. So, I’ve always thought that to promote reforms and enforce some of these

reforms, you have to work with people coming from other sectors. You can always find allies, even if your agenda is complex and politically and eco nomically sensitive. It’s important to open dialogue and to pick your allies from different sectors and engage them in your strategy and in your tactics to promote the reforms and to make good things happen. That said, the problem sometimes with corruption or anti-corruption is that people usually think that one journalist or one judge or one presi dent is going to solve a problem that has been there forever.

It’s impossible to solve corruption problems in one year, in one decade or in a century. So what we are trying to do now, for example, with technology and digital transformation of governments is to make governments more efficient and transparent, to make it more difficult for corrupt opportunities to arise. When you have more transparency and you can control and trace corruption, it’s easier to crack the information because it’s there, public and open. So of course you need journalists, data scientists, political scientists, economists, even citizens.

So then this idea of what transparency can do to expose corruption, leads me to the bigger pic ture, which I’m interested in speaking about, and it has to do with democratic regimes and why it’s so important to protect democracies. In authoritarian or autocratic regimes, it’s very difficult for indepen dent voices to highlight or expose corrupt officials, corrupt businesspeople or corrupt situations. So that’s why I have always said that my goal has been to promote democracy. And now in this difficult time for democracy in the world, my goal is to pro tect democracy. To make a better democracy, with better administrations, better policies, better capac ities in the states like the government. To deliver to the people. What we have seen in many countries in Latin America and throughout the world, es pecially after COVID, is that with inefficiencies and corruption, the best way to protect democracy is to have good public services that are delivered to the people. It is important to have more and more transparency. And probably we will have to include discussions about taxes, about different types of inequalities and how to attack those inequalities. From my point of view, we need to make a super huge investment on education and public health, which is going to help people believe that the fu ture in my country is possible.

What you just said reminded me of something you also noted in another interview with the French group La Fonda in which you noted that the poor are the first ones affected due to corruption. Would you say that corruption literally kills?

Yes.

While you are most known for being an anti-corrup tion advocate, you were also a member of the Argentine Congress. What was a piece of legislation you were most proud of that was not related to anti-corruption?

Well, when I was in Congress, I was a member of the opposition. So for opposition members, it’s very difficult to pass a law. I lost all the votes in Congress when we were trying to make institutional reforms or, for example, attempting to open the government or to bring more transparency to the government. But there were some cases in which the majority of the government and the opposition were able to cooperate. And I was very proud for having voted for same-sex marriage legislation. I’m very proud of having voted for a gender identity law in Argentina because I felt that these laws were affecting real lives. After we enacted same sex mar riage, a lot of people got married.

That was a very important vote for me because many of the legislators in my party group, and in other party groups, were not in favor of the same sex matter. This happened before, when Argentina discussed divorce in the 80s, and it happened two years ago when Argentina enacted the utilization of abortion. Usually there are huge conservative coalitions that react against this progressive agenda about individual rights. And I have always been very open to respect every person’s life individual ly. Within the Argentine constitution and all the human rights treaties that we have ratified through out the years, I think it’s very important that gov ernments and the Congress put those individual rights into operation. If not, they just lay in paper, and real people cannot enjoy the liberties and the freedoms that they are entitled to.

In 2015 you were appointed head of Argentina’s an ti-corruption bureau. During your time as its leader, you enacted a series of anti-corruption measures. One that caught my eye was the whistleblower act. In the

United States and in countries around the world, it still feels like whistleblowers aren’t given enough help as they deserve. Are there things that Argentina or more broadly the international community in general can do to protect whistleblowers?

When I entered Congress 12 years ago, it was very difficult to talk about whistleblowing in Argen tina. A lot of people were against whistleblowers because they thought that it is not morally right to trade information for protection and other benefits to the whistleblowers. I always found this a stupid argument because if you see what has happened in the last 50 years, whistleblowers are the only ones that allow the judiciary and investigators to follow how corrupt businesses operate and how organized crime is organized. I think that one of the key questions that not only Argentina, but the rest of the world has to ask is how do we better protect whistleblowers? In general, whistleblowers don’t have secure protection. It’s very difficult for them to reenter society. In many cases, they have to change their names. They have to change their way of living, where they live, their identity, they have to change everything. And that’s a huge sacrifice. Sometimes a criminal reduction, a penalty reduc tion, or even an economic award is not enough. You are always going to feel that you are the whis tleblower. And imagine if we ask these questions in countries like mine, where we are not so effective in protecting whistleblowers. Many times where there are changes of government and the judiciary is not really independent, they can be at serious risk.

We have had many whistleblowers in past years going to the courts to open their mouths and say, okay, in this case, the corrupt system functioned in this way. But every time there is a change in the color of the government, people may feel that they are at risk. So it’s important if we want to protect democracy to believe and enforce that the judiciary is independent. Independent, as well as honest, transparent, capable, and professional. They should not be friends of politicians or business people or get their positions because of family or personal connections.

Judiciary independence in Latin America is one of the key issues, not only for anti-corruption, but for anti-organized crime and even for investors. It’s important because we need investments and for

companies from all over the world, even from the United States, to come and invest and create jobs. Because, as you said before, poverty is pervasive in Latin America and corruption affects the poor. When you have weak political institutions, it’s perfect for these guys to take advantage of the poor people in many ways.

After your time in the Argentine government you later were chair of the G20 Anti-corruption working group. What’s the difference between fighting corruption on a domestic level and an international level?

There is a big gap between national and international. But, I have always been working in the anti-corruption policy and policy making. All my career in the public sector, even from Congress to the executive branch and then going to an interna tional forum, like the G20, the difference is wide, but it’s not so wide because the world has become globalized and there are a lot of standards. So take, for example, the FCPA in the United States, the For eign Corrupt Practices Act from 1977. At the end of the past century, it condensed into an international treaty, which is the OECD anti-bribery convention, and 44 countries ratified this convention. And we have all been working in enforcing this internation al treaty to make business free of corruption. So what you see at the international level is also how countries and great powers cooperate, but also how they do not cooperate when they don’t ratify these treaties. There are also disadvantages sometimes in international trade for investment for the countries

that are binded by foreign private practices act and those that don’t have any kind of regulation.

You previously mentioned that you believe these international institutions such as the UN, G20, OECD, and others have an ability and responsibility to fight against corruption. However, there are plenty of people in my generation on both ends of the political spectrum who are quite cynical about the effectiveness of inter national institutions in general. Could you respond to those people and discuss what happens when, say, the international institutions that are trying to fight against corruption are seen as corrupt?

One of the first things that young American stu dents or citizens like you have to understand is that you are, as a country, a superpower. When we meet American diplomats and they talk about American exceptionalism and say, “I’m American, and we are the American experiment of democracy, and we want to lead by example,” you have to be what you say you are. This is very important with regards to the international order.

I have to remind you and everybody that this past sixty, seventy years have been the most peace ful in the world ever, even with all the problems with terrorism and wars that we still have in many countries. When you see what happened after 1945 when the world was preparing for the third world war, the international liberal order helped the world address difficult issues between the great powers that were competing at the time.

I think that we have to collaborate with ideas in a way that reforms international institutions to de liver better for a world that lives in peace, respects the environment, and promotes development every where. It’s so important when you have these great powers sitting together around the table, discussing maybe a document that you personally think is not important, but it makes a difference that, for exam ple, the United States and China are at that table, that Russia and Europe sit in that table, but also emerging countries, like Argentina, Brazil, Nige ria. So it’s still important. These institutions will probably face reforms because this is not the same world as it was in 1945, but still the core idea of the international liberal order, even under attack from inside and from outside, has been empirical proof that diplomacy works.

Finally, what do you enjoy about being a Yale World Fellow? Also, what advice would you give to undergrad uates or young people in general?

Undergraduates, my recommendation is to take the most of this time at Yale to meet your peers, your cohorts, your professors, your classmates, your roommate, etc. The human connection is the most important part. That is going to be with you forever. Especially during COVID, we have been so estranged from one another this past year. It’s super important that you younger generation enjoy your time here and do it with freedom, with creativity, and with respect. Of course you should study, because you’re here to study and to learn things, but also to enjoy the human experience of being here. I think that’s the most important part. What I am enjoying as a World Fellow is not only going to classes, but also reconnecting with different people from all over the world and across generations.

Adam McPhail is a first-year in Trumbull College and can be reached at adam.mcphail@yale.edu.

Abdi Ismail

Interviewed by Hugo Wang

Abdi Ismail has worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross for over 12 years. He has been on the ground in Afghanistan, Colombia, Liberia, Iraq, and most recently Yemen. As a child, he fled from civil war in Somalia; now, he helps people who suffer from armed conflicts. Mr. Ismail brings a wealth of experience in humanitarian work to the World Fellows program at Yale.

I know you’ve worked in a number of places: Somalia, Afghanistan, and most recently Aden, Yemen. If you had one minute, how would you introduce your self and your work?

First of all, it’s a pleasure to be here. I’m glad you reached out, and I look forward to this conversa tion. A lot of people ask me what I do and why. One of the things I always go back to is exactly this: why I do what I do.

I work in the humanitarian field. I’ve been working across different regions, from Afghanistan to Colombia to Africa to the Middle East. The reason I do what I do is because I have found myself in exactly the same position as the people I’m trying to help now. I have lived through the experience of conflict. I have lived through the experience of being a refugee, living in a refugee camp, and sustaining myself on what humanitari an organizations provided.

I don’t say that I have a full understanding of what people are going through, but I can definite ly relate to many of the people that I work with. We, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), provide assistance and protection to many of them.

I understand you grew up in Somalia. There was a civil war when you were around age 10 and you had to flee to the Hartisheik refugee camp (in Eastern Ethiopia). Could you describe your personal experience there?

When you’re a kid, everything in life resembles a game, in a sense. I did not grasp the full extent of the challenges or the problems back then. However, that experience shaped me in many ways, and I still keep it in my mind today.

Back when I was a refugee in this camp with my siblings, most of the time we were running around

different sections of the vast camp - which hosted thousands of Somali refugees - or playing football. I also remember hardships like queueing up to get biscuit handouts from a blond lady who was wearing a Red Cross emblem on her chest. Living conditions in a refugee camp were not exactly good or easy. We were in a small tent, maybe 4 meters maximum, and the tent had 12 residents. I also remember difficult hygiene conditions - the lack of water and the sensation that food was never really enough.

I have these little memories, and thinking back, they represent some of the main motivators that eventually led me to become a humanitarian worker. Furthermore, my family life involved mov ing around often, and I was fortunate in that my step-father was a humanitarian worker. He was a doctor working in the city where I was born, and he eventually started working in various locations, not only in Somalia but also in Djibouti, the Democrat ic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Sudan, and many other countries.

So on the one hand, I had this lived experience of being a refugee. On the other hand, I also had a role model in my step-father who, as a doctor, was doing roughly what I would end up doing. Of course, I’m not a doctor myself, but the values, sacrifice, and generosity that he showed are some of my own guiding principles today.

Let’s move forward in time to your experience in school. In high school and university, did you have opportunities to explore your current field of work? What advice would you give to current students who are interested in humanitarian work?

When I was growing up, there were few opportuni ties to explore avenues for what I might do later on. However, what I had were the examples and the exposure from traveling with my step-father and our family. I vividly remember that when I was in high school, my family went to the city of Goma, in the eastern region of DRC, where my step-fa ther was working. It had been 2 or 3 years after the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, and many Rwandan refugees were living in the region. My step-father was providing medical assistance with a humanitar ian organization there. We spent three months of our summer break in eastern DRC, which allowed

me to see exactly what he was doing and how it impacted the people. Seeing my step-father’s work was a source of inspiration for me.

Soon after, I became interested in doing the same type of humanitarian work. I was fortunate enough to already speak Somali, Italian, and French - my love for languages and being exposed to different environments was cultivated through the experience of traveling with my family.

You speak quite a few languages, right? Do you speak any other ones beyond the 3 you mentioned?

I speak 5 languages fluently: Somali, Italian, French, English, and Spanish. I’m learning a 6th one right now, which is Arabic. I’m taking a short break from studying it, but I will pick it up again at the beginning of next year, Inshallah! Arabic is a fascinating language and, as many people say, it takes a lifetime to master it.

When you speak the native language of a country, how does that factor influence the humanitarian work you do there?

Language is one of the true game-changers in almost any job. Whether you’re in a humanitarian organization, the peace corps, or the military, if you have the opportunity to interact with individuals on a deeper level by communicating with them in their own language, that gives you an incredible level of insight into the culture and lives of these people.

For me in Somalia, it was a little different since I was born there. I spent the first 10 years of my life there, so I consider it my country. At the same time, it’s not my only identity. For me, returning to Somalia after 16 years and being a humanitarian worker there after having left the country as a refu gee was a very emotional experience.

In 2006, I went back as a humanitarian worker to the home where I used to live in Mogadishu (Somalia’s capital), when it was fully in the hands of the Islamist group called the “Islamic Courts Union” and its military wing, Al Shabab. That journey brought back so many memories. It had been 16 years since I had left as a child. I went back to Somalia as a humanitarian worker with the ICRC again, between 2013 and 2016. I think this experi ence rekindled my love for the country and galva

nized my identity as a Somali.

Identity is a fascinating topic for me. It is connected to the dilemma facing people who are caught between two different identities, be it na tionalities or cultures. Sometimes you feel you are neither one nor the other. In Italy you’re seen as an outsider, and in Somalia you’re also seen as an out sider. Going back to Somalia gave me an opportu nity to reclaim that part of my identity, to feel more comfortable with it, and to gain a deeper empathy with Somali culture — the struggle of the people as well as their resilience in the face of so many calam ities, natural and man-made.

I certainly identify with the dilemma you bring up. I’ve had similar experiences as a student from China who’s studying in the United States. Sometimes you feel as if you can’t fully identify with either culture. Speak ing of coming to Yale, what drew you to the World Fellows Program, and why did you decide to become a fellow?

I’m glad you’ve asked me this question. My journey toward being a World Fellow was quite fortuitous. The story goes back to December 2019, when I was finishing my mission in Iraq (I was stationed in Baghdad for 2 years, soon after completing my master’s degree at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government). Whenever you’re on a mission in these environments, what you do is try to immerse yourself in the culture, understand the people and their history, and learn their language. I read books about Iraq’s history, its struggles, its psyche, and its identity.

One of the books I came across was named The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq. It’s about the second US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and how that war did not catapult the country into democracy, as everyone had hoped. It actual ly resulted in the opposite: conflict, violence, and sectarian strife. Long story short, I found the book incredibly well-written and fascinating. It was a first-hand account from someone who had been in Iraq and had been an advisor to the commanding US generals there (General Ray Odierno and Gen eral David Petraeus) during the US invasion. The book’s author happens to be the director of Yale’s World Fellows program at the Jackson Institute. Her name is Emma Sky, and she wrote the book

that I read in December 2019. I wanted to know more about Emma, and Google soon led me to the Jackson Institute as well as the World Fellows program. I found the program exciting and decided to apply, not knowing that almost 2 years later I would be here!

I know you were in Iraq for 2 years and then in Yemen for 1 year. I’m interested in hearing about your work in Yemen. It’s one of the most difficult humanitarian situations in the entire world, as a result of the civil war between government forces and Houthi fighters (Ansarullah). There’s been a breakdown in basic necessities such as hygiene and drinking water. As head of the Red Cross mission, what were your main respon sibilities in Aden?

Yemen is a fascinating, beautiful, and charming country that unfortunately finds itself in the middle of an extremely difficult conflict. I started my mis sion in May 2020, at the height of the first wave of COVID-19. That was when everyone was starting to panic—the airports were closing, and international flights were being cancelled.

When I arrived in Aden, the ICRC’s main prior ity was combatting COVID-19. We started working to open a care center to treat people who had been affected by the virus. At the time, the mortality rate was high, and people didn’t have places where they could receive medical care. Hospitals were closed, and doctors and nurses were dying because they didn’t have proper personal protective equipment. That’s why we decided: doing nothing was not an option.

“Going back to Somalia gave to reclaim that part of my comfortable with it, and to with Somali culture — the as well as their resilience calamities, natural and man-made.”

Yemen is an environment that has seen the collapse of almost all its health facilities. Currently, there exists very little quality of care for the people. So we worked hard to advocate and negotiate with our headquarters in Geneva. We were soon able to set up a COVID-19 response care center that opened in September 2020. Today, it’s one of the few places in the south of Yemen helping COVID-19 patients with quality medical standards that are comparable to those of Western countries.

What was the capacity of the ICRC’s treatment facility?

It was a care center with 60 beds that treated mild and moderate cases of Covid. Overall, the center has treated over 3,000 people up to this point.

Geneva Convention. It’s a painstaking and dan gerous endeavour. At the same time, it’s vital work that the ICRC does, and I am very proud that our dialogue with all parties to the conflict contributes to the respect of IHL.

I understand there was a prisoner exchange that occurred while you were in Yemen. Could you tell me a little more about that?

Yes - the ICRC facilitated a prisoner exchange in Ye men. The parties to the conflict not only fight, but they also detain each other’s fighters. An important part of our work is to visit these detainees and make sure they’re treated humanely. They need to have access to food and water, and they should be able to see their families. The other priority is that the detainees cannot be beaten or abused. The Geneva Convention was put in place precisely to prevent these crimes from occurring.

To continue on your earlier question about my responsibilities, the work of the ICRC is multifacet ed. It’s not only to provide assistance to people who find themselves in an environment of conflict or violence, but also to monitor the conduct of hostil ities between the parties to ensure that, in the event of fighting, the warring parties abide by the rules set forth in the Geneva Convention. That means ci vilians must be spared, women must not be abused, children must not be recruited into the armed forc es, and so on. These are the basic rules upon which the international community has agreed, as set in International Humanitarian Law (IHL). The ICRC works to uphold these rules during a conflict.

The third aspect of our work is engaging in dialogue with the parties to the conflict, so that all parties understand and respect the principles of the

In the Yemen conflict, the two main parties (the internationally recognized government and their opponent, Ansarullah) agreed to exchange, as a gesture of goodwill, detainees from the two sides. The exchange was facilitated by the United Nations and was very complicated because neither side wanted to send the detainees they held first. They wanted things to happen simultaneously because they did not trust each other. Under these circumstances, because of its neutral, independent, and impartial mandate, the ICRC was brought in to facilitate the exchange. It was the logistical actor that brought more than 1,000 detainees to the agreed-upon locations.

In the longer term, there’s definitely a hope to facilitate peace treaties between the government and Ansarullah. What are some ways in which you think the two sides can come together and agree on peace? What can other actors such as the UN and the US do to help?

Perhaps the biggest challenge in the conflict of Yemen is the fact that this conflict is not bina ry. The war is really about several sections of the Yemeni society fighting over what kind of country they would like to have. Some groups want an Islamist state. Other groups want separation be tween northern and southern Yemen. Then there’s the internationally recognized government, which

gave me an opportunity my identity, to feel more to gain a deeper empathy the struggle of the people in the face of so many man-made.”

wants to re-establish control over the entire country. Depending who you talk to, the solutions for the problems of Yemen are very different. That’s one of the key challenges: the agendas, objectives, and in terests of each party are in complete misalignment.

To the second part of your question, this mis alignment makes things very difficult for the in ternational community and the UN. The UN has a special envoy to Yemen; the US has a special envoy; the EU has an envoy too. But no matter how many envoys you throw at the problem, the problem is so complicated to unpack that it is chal lenging for anyone to find a solution.

Something that people living outside Yemen don’t usually know is that the Yemeni people are extremely independent. They are very strong-mind ed; whether they are being supported by a partner, a regional player, or an international player, the actors in Yemen still have an incredible amount of agency. No one on the outside really has enough leverage to compel parties in Yemen to change their ways.

I know there is currently a group called the Southern Transitional Council (STC) in Yemen. I assume that is the separatist movement you mentioned?

Exactly. The STC adds to the complexity of the conflict because the conflict was previously Ansarul lah against the internationally recognized government (if we look at the broad strokes). Ansarullah captured the capital (Sana’a), and the internation ally recognized government fled to Aden. However, the government itself has rarely been in Aden and has mostly been in exile in Saudi Arabia. For that reason, the STC emerged to fill the vacuum. Their argument was: the government in exile is not doing anything, so we need to take care of ourselves and seek autonomy, if not outright independence.

Let’s make a chronological jump to 2014, when Ansarullah started the war in Yemen. Is there anything we can learn from 2014 to prevent similar conflicts from occurring in the future?

I think for Yemen, the easiest moment to solve the conflict was perhaps at the very beginning. The lon ger it went, the more complicated it became, and each party became more entrenched in its demands.

At its onset, the Yemen conflict happened in the framework of what was going on in the Middle East in general. Between 2011 and 2012, the Arab Spring took place with a multitude of popular demonstrations, anti-regime demonstrations, and anti-authoritarian demonstrations. There was a de sire for more freedom, openness, economic reform, and political participation. All of that was taking place in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere as well. I think the international commu nity and the regional players were caught off guard by the large number of demonstrations. The conflict in Yemen quickly shifted, however, from being a popular uprising and a mobilization of the youth to a conflict over power and the natural resources of the country.

Going back to your question, analysts say that many of the ongoing challenges in the Middle East have to do with the autocratic nature of the regimes there. How can the international community pre vent similar conflicts from taking shape and morphing into what they are today in Yemen? The answer is: the world must keep in mind that these conflicts have their roots in lack of democracy, lack of development, lack of legitimate governance, and lack of opportunities for the youth. These structural prob lems are not addressed by the countries (that suffer from them), and until recently the international community was not holding those countries ac countable or pushing them to implement reforms. Without addressing their structural and systemic challenges, many countries in the Middle East face the prospect of violence and revolt.

In other words, we need to solve at the root of the problem, where the youth are energized but also frustrated by the corruption and lack of freedom. Is that ulti mately the fuel for the violence?

I sense that is correct. The aspirations of the youth are not being met. If you’re in your twenties in most of the Middle Eastern countries (except for the gulf monarchies which are doing well econom ically), the outlook of your life is quite dim. You most likely don’t have a house and are living with your family; you would like to play a role in society, but you cannot because you don’t have the means; you would like to marry and have a family, but you cannot because everything costs money; you would like a job, but there’s high unemployment. There is no sense of participation for the youth. I think many people have lost hope. They find themselves waking up every morning and wondering: “What exactly is my plan? What is my future?”

This is the challenge that many Middle Eastern countries face today. In other words, how can we give people a sense of purpose and fulfillment for their aspirations so they can be productive members of society? How do you mobilize the people who have a stake in this social contract?

One final question: I know you’ve faced many dangerous situations — threats of kidnapping and negotiations with armed militia leaders, to name a few. In those moments of danger and uncertainty, what gives you faith?

There are several things. Fear is certainly there. After a few years of living in these types of environ ments, you understand that the lives of humanitar ian workers are constantly in danger. If you look at the last few years, you’ll see that many humanitar ian workers have been killed, including my col leagues at the ICRC. That is always in the back of my mind. But what I’ve realized over the years is: the courage you need to have in those tough moments is given by the fact that you’re there to help the people. You’re ultimately there to provide food to those who would otherwise have difficulty finding their next meal, or a pregnant mother who would likely die giving birth without access to proper medical care, or a detainee who would be killed or abused in prison without humanitarian oversight,

or a family that needs to find closure after a loved one has disappeared.

It seems abstract right now because we’re talking about it. But when you really have the opportunity to meet face to face and lock eyes with these people, that gives you an incredible amount of strength. It motivates you to do something posi tive for those individuals.

I also go back to my own experiences. I remem ber one of the best meals I’ve ever had was after my family and I fled our hometown in Somalia. We were on our way to a refugee camp, and all of us were hungry. At one point we stopped and managed to find some food. There were six or seven of us around a small plate of injera, which is an Ethiopian dish. I had maybe one or two bites to eat before the food was gone. Those two bites were the most delicious meal I’ve ever tasted in my life. Even today, some thirty years later, I still remember it. That’s how hungry I was. These memories, images, and lived experiences stay with you always. They drive you to do better by the people.

Hugo Wang is a first-year in Pauli Murray College and can be reached at hugo.wang@yale.edu.

Rayhan Asat

Interviewed by Ben Sterling

Rayhan Asat is an Uyghur human rights attorney. A graduate of Harvard Law School and former anti-corruption attorney at a major U.S. law firm, Rayhan specializes in international human rights law and compliance with best business practices. Her legal and policy work centers around enforcing international human rights norms, civil liberties, curtailing forced labor, and promoting corporate accountability. She advised the World Bank and OECD to design Human-Centered Business Integrity Principles. She works with civil society, diplomats, lawmakers, and businesses to address human rights concerns, especially the atrocities in Xinjiang including her own brother Ekpar Asat’s enforced disappearance.

To begin with, could you give me some background on yourself?

I am a member of the Yale World Fellows program. The program is designed to bring together 16 lead ers to create this cohort where we can learn from each other but also give back to the community and to train young leaders while at the same time

honing our own leadership skills. I’m giving some lectures at the different schools here at Yale and with different professors. I was a guest lecturer in Professor Beverly Gate’s class, for instance and also gave a human rights workshop seminar at the Shell Center at the law school. So it’s easy to reconnect with students, but also bring about this legal advo cacy to the Yale community.

I was hoping you could share a little bit of your story. For instance, about your brother and the events that have led up to that in the last two years.

I was just struck by a recent comment by the new Chinese ambassador to the United States. He said that he emphasized the importance of cultural exchange programs between the U.S. and China. I bring this up because my brother is a very prom inent Uyghur tech entrepreneur, somebody who believed in using the power of technology for good causes. He’s a philanthropist; he helped many kids with disabilities, elderly and so forth. So because of all the wonderful work he has done, either in his philanthropic commitment but also as a tech entre preneur he was nominated to this very prestigious exchange program while he was in China in 2016. But within weeks after returning from this program

the eyes of many Chinese people, including people who have connections with the Chinese govern ment. So a lot of people I turned to kindly refused to help me and ultimately in May 2020, I became this voice. I decided to bring his story to the Amer ican public as well as to international audiences, probably. So this really changed my life because from a former Wall Street lawyer now turned to a human rights lawyer, it’s all driven by this uncondi tional love I have for my brother. And I hope that anyone that has a sibling can understand the pain of not being able to embrace your brother for years.

I really want to drill into your decision process for becoming Ekpar’s voice. Where did you find the courage to begin this campaign, knowing that your actions can influence how he’s treated?

“I hope that anyone that has a sibling can understand the pain of not being able to embrace your brother for years.”

he disappeared into the shadows of the internment camps because his influence disappeared while the Chinese government was cracking down on the Uy ghurs and criminalizing the entire Uyghur people as a whole. And despite touting the importance of these cultural exchange programs between the U.S. and China, my brother came to the same program that many hundreds of Han people came through, including the Chinese community here. Some of them are part of these cultural exchange programs, and yet because of his Uyghur identity, my brother was persecuted and sent to the prison camps. But over the first few years I was very much afraid of engaging in advocacy and I have tried every means to secure his freedom. But getting involved in the Xinjiang issue has been deemed very sensitive in

It was the most difficult decision that I’ve ever made in my life. I’ve always thought about this moral dilemma because I thought about what would happen to my parents when I decided to speak out against the Chinese, against their arbi trary detention and forced disappearance of my brother. Would they retaliate against my parents? You’re choosing one life over the other. Ultimately, though, I thought unfortunately that my parents have lived their lives and I chose my brother. He’s too young for me to give up on, but [I was] also betting that because of the public pressure maybe the Chinese government wouldn’t go after my par ents. The other [thing] was I tried to put myself in his shoes, in a dark cell all by himself, and how [I imagined] how I would feel. Would I want him to

be as outspoken as he can, or would I want to feel like I’m forgotten by the world? And after I tried every other means and none of them worked, I realized that I must seek ownership of him. I must become his voice.

Since then, you’ve begun your campaign. Could you speak to some of the successes you’ve experienced, places where your advocacy has borne fruit?

The Uyghur crisis, given the sheer number of the people in the camps, has created this sense of feel ing so powerless. How do you explain the unex plainable? There are millions of people there. How do you conceive of that? And I think that I person alize this, I provide a very personal story between two siblings who love each other. They danced together and studied together. I think my story is an American story. I think that is what I was able to bring to the American public, unlike other Uyghur actors. Because I was able to paint this picture; this could happen to your next door neighbor. And this is why people across different backgrounds, Ameri can people, were holding up [my brother’s] picture and demanded the Chinese government to free Ekpar, using the “Free Ekpar” slogan. So although I haven’t had the big win, those small wins allow some light to come through. And the friendships that I’ve formed. Whenever I do media interviews, I receive heartfelt messages from the public. And sometimes these people are even Trump supporters, people that I would think of as anti-immigrant. They tell me, “what you’re doing for your brother is amazing and we’re praying for your family.” Those moments are very impactful. I was able to deliver that message to Secretary Blinken, that it’s not just me that I want my brother to be free, but also the American people want him and pray for him. To be prayed for was really important then and on top of that, being able to bring my brother’s story to institutions, the finest institutions in the world like Harvard and Yale by virtue of my affiliation. At Harvard, the community stood by me in soli darity and demanded the Chinese government to free Ekpar, and now the Yale community is joining my cause as well. And I noticed that whenever I deliver lectures, people are crying and the students are very emotional. Now it’s not a story that all this happened to Rayhan. This injustice is happening

to a member of our community. I think for me, it’s all my journey to build this broader coalition, to be able to create this relatedness that this could be you and it’s happening to me. I’m here asking you to join and support me. I’m happy to have the Yale community respond to my pain and the fight to free my brother.

Given the upcoming Biden-Xi summit, could you speak more broadly about what you think of the United States’ current policy towards the genocide, and what actions would you hope to see from the Biden adminis tration or the U.S. at large in the upcoming days?

I would love the summit to have a lot of issues dis cussed about areas where the U.S. and China can work together, like climate change or tackling the global pandemic response. But that doesn’t mean that the Uyghur issue should take a back seat; it has to be at the forefront of the discussion. And it’s incredibly important for people to understand that we cannot achieve a better climate without address ing issues concerning the forced labor and exploita tion of entire peoples. Because while the Chinese government is portraying this message that they value cultural exchange programs, they’re also de taining my brother; that’s not the kind of universal world that I can imagine the Chinese government desires to achieve.

I think the Biden administration will be able to use my case as an example to call out the Chinese government, that it hasn’t convinced the U.S. that it’s going to be a good partner when it detains my brother who came out to this program. Now for the U.S. to see that China is going to be a good partner on issues concerning climate change and the global pandemic, we also need to see some goodwill ges tures from the Chinese government that it is going to be a good-faith partner. These are the sort of actions that the Chinese government can do to be that partner, to do the right thing. It can show the Biden administration and also the American public that it values these exchange programs, that they believe in the power of education and that they de sire to empower people. All these things shouldn’t be hollow words. I don’t want to see that. And in addition, I think that both governments should be committed to addressing global issues without a confrontational approach. If they’re

going to explore ways on how the U.S. and China can work together, both countries need to be com mitted to human rights norms and principles. And obviously the Chinese government, to begin with, should close the camps. And those are the sorts of things that the Biden administration can easily pro pose because what we’re asking is not much. It is very basic stuff, almost too basic. We’re just asking for our people to be able to live with dignity.

sentences to normalize the concentration camps to a prison system. This is a strong indicator. And that’s why I feel like this article in no way suggests that the government is scaling back, but rather that perhaps there’s a new form of pemancy and normal cy that the Chinese government seeks to present, which is through the prison system. And that’s the notion that we must have, that it’s still concentra tion camps, still prisons. There’s a real danger in

“It is very basic stuff, almost too basic. We’re just asking for our people to be able to live with dignity.”

Recently AP reported about how the Chinese author ities have scaled back the most draconian elements of the repression in Xinjiang and this has become a frequently-talked-about subject on Twitter. What do you say to these reports? Do you believe they’re true? And if they’re true, what do you think comes next?

We need to be careful with what this report says, and I don’t think it, in any way, said that the Chi nese government is scaling back. I think it says that there’s now an appearance of normalcy–let’s put it that way. But the government is building more permanent camps. And the fact that some of the more visible surveillance cameras have been turned off doesn’t mean that there haven’t been more enhanced surveillance mechanisms already put in place. I don’t think the Chinese government would make these adjustments easily. Maybe it is in response to the international criticism, but we need to be mindful that perhaps there have been other measures already put in place. The Chinese govern ment built these permanent structures–permanent prisons–and is giving people incredibly lengthy

this deception of normalcy. This perception doesn’t mean there’s something happening behind the cur tain. The article mainly references Urumqi, the cap ital of Xinjiang, but it itself is a bit of a seductive city. But in order to understand the extent of what’s happening, you need to go beyond the capital city and see what’s happening in the dark corners.

Recently you’ve had a lot of high profile talks and visits. You’re able to give a talk at the Oslo Freedom Forum. You’ve had some successes speaking at Har vard and now here in the wake of these successes, how have you noticed people hearing you differently? How have people’s reactions changed since the beginning of your journey?

Before I shared my story, nobody knew anything. For some reason I think the public perception was that individuals like me and my brother are a sort of byproduct of when the Chinese opened their economy to the world. [People think that] real peo ple aren’t impacted, but simply some marginalized community. I think I will successfully reshape that

narrative, that this impacts everyone. My brother and I sought to be model citizens in the eyes of the Chinese government and I only narrowly escaped being thrown in a concentration camp. I think that was a very powerful message that in some ways my brother saved me. Because of his ordeal I didn’t go back. Had I gone back there, I would be there. I would be in the camps. Seeing somebody like me who is trying to achieve their own American story like everyone else, and confronting the reality that I could be in the camps in this day and age with all the education that I have… I think it just exposes the brutality and barbaric nature of these camps, the worrying direction that China is currently headed in its global policy. My experience serves as a sort of warning to the world. This is the kind of country we’re creating. And how do we respond to that? I think if people start to see that–and unfor tunately we need to remind ourselves that I am part of this community of elite institutions like here–you can have this very bright future and it can be taken away overnight just by the virtue of your race. And that is just too brutal.

The last question I want to ask you about is that for people who’ve been reading this, do you have any advice for them as members of the Yale community if they wish to educate themselves further? What should they be doing now?

It’s an extremely noble cause to fight for human freedom. I am here for a sister’s fight for her broth er. And I hope when the Yale community learns of this, especially knowing the history of Yale and universities elsewhere. Once we stood up against apartheid in South Africa, and Apartheid fell as a result. It’s time to do it again. What’s happening in China against the Uyghurs is driven by a very racist policy of the Chinese government, and as a com munity, our campus has been very concerned with issues about race and identity. It’s important that we actually extend the same values to people who are the victims of racist government policies around the world. And that’s the kind of change that I would love to see at Yale, so that they can join with me and stand in solidarity with me and then march forth. My brother is in solitary confinement. As I walk around this beautiful campus in this historical space, I’m constantly reminded of his solitary con

finement, and how he’s just shielded from the rest of the world. He’s not just in the camps. He’s alone. And that’s why every day when I breathe this beau tiful air or just meet another wonderful member of the Yale community, I’m constantly thinking of my brother, and just wishing that he too would have these relationships and friendships. I want every single person here to understand the privileges they have to form these wonderful friendships with each other, even during Covid. And my message to the Yale community is to really cherish each other and form long lasting friendships, because I couldn’t. Have wonderful relationships with your siblings and family. Go for long walks with them, because that is the thing that I’m very much yearning for these days.

Ben Sterling is a first-year in Silliman college and can be reached at ben.sterling@yale.edu.