Random thoughts about the courses.
Since I'm taking human rights courses as part of my postgraduate program in educational sciences, I figured I’d start posting some of my reflections here every now and then.
Just things I notice, things I find interesting, and some meta-views about the course itself and other human rights advocates.
I was an advocate for children's rights myself for a good while, completely without any sort of formal training. To say the least, many of the theoretical and legal frameworks I’m learning about right now feel incredibly lengthy and, honestly, pretty tone deaf.
When a human rights advocate is also a survivor, their understanding comes from a place of embodied knowing. What philosophers call epistemic privilege. Beyond just knowing the facts; they know exactly what those facts feel like. Someone who hasn't lived it can absolutely still be a deeply committed advocate, but they have to rely on intellectual conviction and mere attempts to understand a reality they've never experienced.
For a survivor, advocacy is often an act of reclamation. An act of re-writing their own story.. It’s a way of defending their own humanity while becoming the fullest version of themselves too. For everyone else, it’s an act of solidarity, a mission that extends from their values and resources and sometimes an act of misplaced guilt. A survivor advocate, by contrast, is both extending from themselves and actively becoming themselves through that process. They are both healing and deconstructing much of their own experiences.
Related to this, I see a lot of detachment. Not just in the theories; it’s built right into how the regular assignments' questions themselves are formulated. They reflect the exact same lack of lived understanding. They ask starting from postulates that assume underprivileged populations always have the luxury of reflecting on change and progress..They don't. They're surviving.
Similar to questions, I saw it among advocates clearly in a discussion we were having about the Kyrgyz people. So many of them explained the Kyrgyz people's reluctance to leave the mountains as if it were just a matter of culture or psychological attachment.. comfort many called it. They fundamentally missed the structural and material realities underneath.
Just to note again, the Kyrgyz case is just one example of the point I'm trying to make. If the lower pastures are taken over for state or private agriculture, staying in the mountains isn't a simple preference. What looks to advocates like a cultural choice from a comfortable distance, and what our assignment questions treat as just an intellectual puzzle, is actually economic coercion. They had no other option.
And that requires an entirely different set of solutions.
---
If I have to pick one person who truly reflects how deep is advocate personal transformation and distinction goes, it would be Melka. The Ethiopian government passed a law in 2004 banning early marriage, yet tens of thousands of girls are still forced into secret ceremonies every year. The top down, legal approach of outside "experts" fails because it doesn't touch the ground.
Melka is the solution because her way of dealing with the problem comes from a completely different place. She doesn't approach these girls with abstract words of human rights, doesn't look at them in terms of progress.. she approaches them with the authority of someone who survived the exact same violence, ran from the same beatings, and fought her way out.
And so can they. No one can advocate for their rights better than they can.
[media=https://youtu.be/u4vjFjDY2RU]
Just things I notice, things I find interesting, and some meta-views about the course itself and other human rights advocates.
I was an advocate for children's rights myself for a good while, completely without any sort of formal training. To say the least, many of the theoretical and legal frameworks I’m learning about right now feel incredibly lengthy and, honestly, pretty tone deaf.
When a human rights advocate is also a survivor, their understanding comes from a place of embodied knowing. What philosophers call epistemic privilege. Beyond just knowing the facts; they know exactly what those facts feel like. Someone who hasn't lived it can absolutely still be a deeply committed advocate, but they have to rely on intellectual conviction and mere attempts to understand a reality they've never experienced.
For a survivor, advocacy is often an act of reclamation. An act of re-writing their own story.. It’s a way of defending their own humanity while becoming the fullest version of themselves too. For everyone else, it’s an act of solidarity, a mission that extends from their values and resources and sometimes an act of misplaced guilt. A survivor advocate, by contrast, is both extending from themselves and actively becoming themselves through that process. They are both healing and deconstructing much of their own experiences.
Related to this, I see a lot of detachment. Not just in the theories; it’s built right into how the regular assignments' questions themselves are formulated. They reflect the exact same lack of lived understanding. They ask starting from postulates that assume underprivileged populations always have the luxury of reflecting on change and progress..They don't. They're surviving.
Similar to questions, I saw it among advocates clearly in a discussion we were having about the Kyrgyz people. So many of them explained the Kyrgyz people's reluctance to leave the mountains as if it were just a matter of culture or psychological attachment.. comfort many called it. They fundamentally missed the structural and material realities underneath.
Just to note again, the Kyrgyz case is just one example of the point I'm trying to make. If the lower pastures are taken over for state or private agriculture, staying in the mountains isn't a simple preference. What looks to advocates like a cultural choice from a comfortable distance, and what our assignment questions treat as just an intellectual puzzle, is actually economic coercion. They had no other option.
And that requires an entirely different set of solutions.
---
If I have to pick one person who truly reflects how deep is advocate personal transformation and distinction goes, it would be Melka. The Ethiopian government passed a law in 2004 banning early marriage, yet tens of thousands of girls are still forced into secret ceremonies every year. The top down, legal approach of outside "experts" fails because it doesn't touch the ground.
Melka is the solution because her way of dealing with the problem comes from a completely different place. She doesn't approach these girls with abstract words of human rights, doesn't look at them in terms of progress.. she approaches them with the authority of someone who survived the exact same violence, ran from the same beatings, and fought her way out.
And so can they. No one can advocate for their rights better than they can.
[media=https://youtu.be/u4vjFjDY2RU]
