2003 HUMAN RIGHTS FELLOWS

David Adler will be receiving a Master's Degree in Public Health. He received an M.D. at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and currently works as an Emergency Physician. David will be conducting his summer fellowship with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. He will be evaluating the Emergency Response Unit system that establishes a basic health system and a referral hospital during times of humanitarian crisis. In particular, David will be looking at the Emergency Response Unit that has been utilized among refugees from the Great Lakes crisis in Tanzania and will be addressing, among many issues, that system's efficiency in reducing morbidity and mortality among refugees and its successful integration into sustainable public services. Read David's final report .

Jennifer Casolo is a PhD candidate in Geography. Jennifer has spent many years working in both Honduras and El Salvador before deciding that her commitment to grassroots development work could be bolstered by a return to school. This summer, Jennifer has chosen to return to Northeastern Honduras and will continue her fellowship in Guatemala by working with two organizations, The Foundation for Democracy in Guatemala and the Foundation Popol Nah Tun in Honduras. With both organizations, Jennifer will be promoting citizen participation and local development as a means of guaranteeing basic human rights. In particular, she will be involved in developing leadership training, participatory research, advocacy support and technical assistance.

Johanna Crane is pursuing a PhD in Medical Anthropology through the UC San Francisco/UC Berkeley Joint Program in Medical Anthropology. This summer, Johanna has a unique opportunity to work with a joint research team of members of both UC San Francisco and the Joint Clinical Research Center in Kampala, Uganda to empirically study the question of adherence to antiretroviral medications by monitoring patients who are purchasing generic HIV medications through Kampala's Joint Clinical Research Center. Johanna will join the research team to develop a qualitative study of the Ugandan patients' experiences regarding antiretroviral therapy. It is Johanna's hope that the research findings will challenge assumptions about the lack of adherence to antiretroviral medications in African countries such as Uganda and thus result in greater access to these medications. Read Johanna's final report .

Noura Saleh Erakat is a first year law student at Boalt Hall School of Law. Noura will spend her summer in Israel working with Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Adalah was founded in 1996 by a Jewish-Israeli and a Palestinian-Israeli dedicated to ensuring equality to all of Israel's citizens. Members of the Adalah legal staff have appeared before the Israeli Supreme Court to petition for cultural, educational, religious, land/housing, social, economic and political rights as well as for the rights of prisoners and for Palestinian women. Noura will help draft legal memoranda for Adalah's petitions and appeals to the Israeli courts. As a Palestinian who has lived in the Occupied Territories, Noura is eager to live in Israel and to work with Israelis in order to achieve a lasting peace that is based on the promotion of human rights.

Sister Phyllis Marilyn Hughes is a PhD candidate in Public Health. After spending many years in hospital administration, Sister Phyllis has decided to return to school and to turn her focus upon the policies and practices of international humanitarian organizations. She will spend her summer with Mercy Corps International where she will examine the institutional response of relief and development agencies, such as Mercy Corps, to the political and ethical criticism that has surrounded the delivery of emergency aid in situations of armed conflict. Some of this criticism stems from conflict that has arisen between the traditional humanitarian principles of impartiality/neutrality and human rights principles; the starkest example of this conflict is a situation where a relief agency, in order to maintain neutrality and access to victims, perceives it must remain quiet even in the presence of severe human rights abuses. Sister Phyllis will document how this conflict is being addressed by researching internal decision-making processes and changes in policy and programming activities.

Jean Pierre Karegeye is currently a PhD candidate in French after having received his Master's Degree in Social Ethics from the Graduate Theological Union. Jean Pierre is a citizen of Rwanda and will be returning this summer in order to work with the Human Rights National Commission/Rwanda. He will continue to deepen his understanding of the Rwandan genocide by considering the use of religious language in the Rwandan genocide. He is interested in examining how religious language was used to encourage participation in the genocide and how religious convictions can also be used to foster a culture of human rights. He hopes that his research can contribute to the development of various ways to achieve social reconstruction.

Sang Lee is a graduate student in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. Prior to enrolling in graduate school, Sang spent three years as a Peace Corps member working in the Dominican Republic. This summer, she has chosen to return to the Dominican Republic to work with Movimiento Socio Cultural de los Trabajadores Haitianos (the Socio-Cultural Movement of Haitian Workers - MOSCTHA). With MOSCTHA, she will investigate the struggles for livelihood by Haitian immigrants and Dominico-Haitians (Dominican-born Haitians) who largely work on the sugar plantations. Dominco-Haitians experience extreme forms of institutional discrimination and are routinely denied citizenship or residency.

Sarah Marxer is pursuing a Master's Degree in Public Policy. Sarah spent many years as a youth advocate in community-based settings in San Francisco and in Boston. She has been a staunch advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth. Sarah will work this summer with Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy in Oakland. Sarah will help build Food First's Economic and Social Human Rights Program and help to develop a coalition of grassroots organizations of people harmed by neoliberal trade policies. The coalition will be forming this spring to participate in Congressional hearings and to develop an agenda for the U.S. working poor at the Fifth World Trade Organization Ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico in September 2003. The overall goal of Sarah's summer fellowship will be to advocate for the recognition of economic human rights in the U.S. and to make connections between domestic struggles for economic justice and international efforts. Read Sarah's final report .

Kristin M. Reed is a PhD candidate in the Environmental Science, Policy and Management program. Kristin will work this summer with Angola Instituto de Pesquisa Economica e Social (Angolan Economic and Social Research Institute, A-IP) in Luanda, Angola. Kristen plans to visit oil-producing areas near Soyo and Ambriz in Northern Angola to investigate the protection of human rights within oil producing/processing regions. Kristen's research will include an analysis of primary and secondary sources of information on residents of oil-producing regions including their collective and individual rights to personal security and physical integrity, survival and health, development, access to justice, freedom from violence, forced migration and forced labor in addition to their rights of access and control over land and natural resources.

Radha Webley is an undergraduate student, majoring in Peace and Conflict Studies. Radha will work this summer with Internews Rwanda in Kigali, Rwanda. Internews Rwanda is the local branch of an international independent media organization that has been producing documentaries on current international, national and local post-genocidal efforts and organizing showings of these documentaries across the country. By doing so, Internews Rwanda has opened up a dialogue with local communities to include them in the process of post-genocidal justice in Rwanda. While with Internews Rwanda, Radha will focus her fieldwork primarily on the administration of justice through local gacaca, and will evaluate gacaca's effect on Rwandan communities and gacaca's overall contribution to reconciliation at a local level. Read Radha's final report .