PIHRL on Facebook!2003 Summer Interns
In year 2003, The Program in International Human Rights Law dispatched nine (9) interns to different parts of the world after two days of pre-departure and training sessions held at the Indiana University School of Law at Indianapolis. The internship is for ten (10) weeks, and interns will be working at the various level of governmental, non-governmental, and inter-governmental human rights and legal organizations. Under the Law School scholarships and working toward academic credit, their areas of study includes - death penalty litigation, rights of the children, asylum and refugee law, sexual and racial discrimination, and human rights in specific region such as China and Trinidad and Tobago.
 From left: Varsha Dhumale ('03), Julia Maness ('03), Adil Daudi ('03), Justin Glon ('03), Lisa Koop ('03), Aver Oliver ('03), Jennifer Pyclik ('03), Simon Si ('03), Ayoyemi Lawal ('03) |
List of 2003 Interns and Placement Locations:
- Aver Oliver-Nicholas- Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs (Trinidad & Tobago, Port of Spain)
- Simon Si - The Laogai Research Foundation (Washington, D.C., U.S.A)
- Ayoyemil Lawal - Center for Capital Punishment Studies (University of Westminster, London, England)
-
Ayoyemil
Lawal - Public Interest Litigation
Center (Missouri, U.S.A.)
- Justin C. Glon - Centre for the Study of AIDS (University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa)
- Justin C. Glon - Terrence Higgins Trust (London, England)
- Jennifer M. Pyclik- Legal Resource Centre (Accra, Ghana)
- Adil Daudi - Northern Ireland Council on Ethnic Minorities (Belfast, Northern Ireland)
-
Lisa
Koop - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
(Washington, D.C., U.S.A) - Lisa Koop - Association for Human Rights (Lima, Peru)
- Julia Illman Maness - Centre de Derechos Humanos (Chiapas, Mexico)
- Varsha Dhumale - Society of the Friends of Sassoon Hospital (Poona, India) Human Rights and Criminal Procedure (Bombay, India)
Ms. Aver Oliver-Nicholas worked with The Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs, Human Rights Unit. This is a government organization and does not have any branch offices in the country. Ms. Aver worked on two main projects, reporting and educating. He also, had the opportunity to attend and participated in the First National Consultation for the formulation of the National Gender Policy and Action Plan and the workshop on the Inter-American system of Human Rights and the Promotion and Defense of the Rights of the Child.
Mr. Simon (Pengcheng) Si worked at The Laogai Research Foundation, an organization dedicated to expose the truth of China's human rights violations. Mr. Si, was concentrated on some China's human rights cases such as the four gentlemen (Yang Zili, Jin Haike, Xu Wei, and Zhang Honghai) who formed the New Youth Society to research the society, the ordinary citizens who published dissenting views on the Internet, e.g. Huang Di, Guo Qinhai, Jiang Shihua, Qi Yancheng, Chi Shouzhu, and Li Hongmin, and Miss Liu Di.
Ms. Ayoyemil Lawal, worked with the Center for Capital Punishment Studies (CCPS) at University of Westminster, where she was assigned various duties, such as research on victim's families, procedural system of death penalty cases in the United States, and thedeath penalty in Africa.
Ms. Ayoyemil Lawal did her second internship at The Public Interest Litigation Clinic (PILC). During her internship Ms. Lawal was assigned three projects. She researched into the duties of a prosecutor in a death penalty case where the defendant is deemed to be innocent. The other projects Ms. Lawal was assigned to were case tracking, client interviewing, and creating a family tree for some of our clients in order to create a social history. She was also assigned to digest transcripts of the case of the United States v. Daniel Lee.
Mr. Justin C. Glon worked as a legal intern at The Center for the Study of AIDS at the University of Pretoria. His chief activity at the Center was to work with the Center for Human Rights, part of the legal faculty at the University of Pretoria, doing legal research and research proposals centered on access to HIV/AIDS and access to healthcare. Mr. Glon also researched the social, political, cultural, racial, gender, and sexual orientation relationships to the Medical Schemes Act of 1998. Specifically in this regard, I researched the social movements and activism surrounding the act and the benefits required under it.
Mr. Justin Glon did his second internship at The Terrance Higgins Trust (THT). In this organization, Mr. Glon did research on all the possible barriers preventing those with HIV/AIDS from getting the care they need in their home countries, namely African countries. The research primarily entailed finding everything that could possibly prevent a person from getting the care they need in their home country, therefore making it necessary for them to remain in England to survive. This involved research far beyond availability of health care but also encompassed transportation, shelter, education, incomes, jobs, political instability, revolution, stigma, ethnic unrest, import and copyright restrictions, availability of generic drugs, and war. The research also entailed a showing of how great access and care was in England by contrast. All of this research was used to supplement cases brought to the immigration division of the THT and was used in cases for leave to remain.
Ms. Jennifer M. Pyclik did her internship at The Legal Resources Centre (LRC), non-governmental organization. During her internship she worked on four workshops to educate various community members about the bill, which would institute a national health insurance scheme, and to get feedback to be used in the brief. Ms. Pyclik, also was involved in a research looking at how the European Union, the U.S., and South Africa handles gender discrimination claims in the employment context, examined how the issue should be dealt with under the international human rights conventions that Ghana had signed. These included the ICESCR, CEDA W, and the African Charter. Ms. Pyclick was assigned to work on the initial workshops that would be conducted in some communities. It included speeches on what human rights are, how to spot violations in the community, how to mobilize community members, and how to take legal action to solve the problems they identify. This included lawsuits and parliamentary advocacy.
Mr. Adil Daudi worked on the Council for Ethnic Minorities (NICEM), the largest ethnic minority representative organization in Northern Ireland and acts as the voice for people from Muslim, Hindu, Asian, African, Filipino and Irish Traveler communities. Mr. Daudi did his internship combined Refugee, Immigration and Asylum service area. His primary responsibilities were to assist NICEM's Refugee, Immigration and Asylum service in providing guidance to new and former clients. Mr Daudi prepared a presentation for a conference held by the Union for People Delivering Public Services (UNISON). The presentation was designed to give migrant workers living and working in Northern Ireland a better understanding of the rights available to them against unfair employment practices.
Ms. Lisa Koop did her internship at The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees - Regional Office Washington (ROW). Ms. Koop cover a forum on internally displaced people in Colombia that took place at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Her notes of this were converted into the official write up of the event that ROW sent to UNHCR headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. She worked on a project researching about the expedited removal process that can involve refugees and asylum-seekers shipped back to the countries they are fleeing without ever seeing a judge or having their claims adjudicated, Ms. Koop served as the de facto focal point on issues of anti-terrorism.
Ms. Lisa Koop did her second internship at the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (APRODEH) or Association for Human Rights. She was placed in the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights division (DESC). Ms. Koop contributed to a DESC project that involved examining the cultural rights of indigenous people who live in a region of the amazon jungle where natural gas has been discovered and is being aggressively mined. Additionally, she spent a large part of my time at APRODEH translating articles from English into Spanish.
