From the margins of memory: seeking truth for women

UN Women, 23 March

For women, who have long been invisible during and after conflict, truth-seeking is an opportunity to have their experiences recognised and their roles understood, as survivors and agents of change.

In the past three decades approximately 30 truth commissions have been established, along with many national and international fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry. These have been used to draw a clear picture of past events, and identify how best to move forward on issues of accountability and redress. While there has been significant progress in recent years, many of these historically failed to include or respond to women’s experiences of conflict.

For individuals and societies affected by human rights violations, the right to truth can be life-changing. It gives them the right to know the fate of missing loved ones, have crimes acknowledged by the State, and know the identity of those responsible – and it can provide a gateway to healing,…

Partnering to Close Data and Evidence Gaps for Women

UN Women, 12 March 2012

There has been growing recognition that good development models are based on evidence and mutual accountability. Yet for years the lack of gender-related statistics has been used as a reason to not take bolder action on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

A dynamic new partnership, the Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (EDGE) Initiative, is responding to this gap. Jointly managed by UN Women and the UN Statistics Division, in collaboration with Member States, the World Bank, the OECD and others, it will work to meet the rising demand by countries across the world for greater support in accessing and using gender statistics – mainly by helping to build national capacity and strengthen national systems on data collection in critical areas. It will also promote the work already being done to develop standards and definitions for those who gather statistics, and those who use them.

“We need high quality evidence to make the case, and design…

Legal Study: Reconciling Truth and Gender - Lessons for Sri Lanka

Law & Society Trust Review, 2011

This legal study explores the scope of the discrimination facing Sri Lanka’s largest group of war-affected survivors – Tamil women in the North and East of the country – and the need for gender-sensitive truth commissioning following the country’s three-decades of conflict. It assesses key legal and practical obstacles to achieving this according to the international legal framework on non-discrimination, and briefly proposes ways to place Tamil women more centrally, and therefore legally, within the transitional narrative.

The paper occupied the full December 2011 volume of Sri Lanka’s Law and Society Trust Review, a monthly legal journal edited by renowned human rights lawyer, Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena (please see Editor’s Note, below), but was featured in various potted forms, such as for popular Sri Lankan media site, Groundviews, and on Open Democracy. The former was cited, as a sound analysis, in the response of the Tamil National Alliance…

Duality Check

South China Morning Post, 15 December 2011

Pakistani artist Rashid Rana continues to court controversy while hurdling cultural boundaries

Rashid Rana does not exactly mind being labeled a Pakistani artist, but he does wonder whether the tag does justice to the larger themes in his works. “A critic friend of mine has written that my art speaks a global language, but with an accent,” he grins.

Seen and not heard: Women in Sri Lanka's reconciliation commission

Open Democracy & 50.50 Inclusive Democracy , also carried by the International Centre for Transitional Justice website, and Salem News, 24 Nov 2011

If and when Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) releases its report later this month, as scheduled, it will do so amid wide scepticism on many critical fronts – except, it seems, for one. The credibility, independence and the ethnic balance of the post-war commission have been well-challenged internationally, since it was established by the President last year to ostensibly help reconcile the nation. But for the war’s tens of thousands of female survivors there has been little space and little said, by either the commission or its critics. The LLRC’s weaknesses in this area deserve greater attention. They also add significantly to the impression of an instrument trailing far behind modern truth and reconciliation efforts elsewhere.
Falling short of international standards
Many governments in…

Update: Gender analysis of Sri Lanka's LLRC published by local and international media, and cited in political report

Groundviews and various, Nov 2011. A renowned Sri Lankan site for independent journalism has published an abridged version of my legal study on the exclusion of Tamil women from the country’s flawed Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) in ‘Long Reads’. The section publishes long-form journalism found in publications such as Foreign Policy and the New York Times . This article was later cited and quoted by the Tamil National Alliance, in its critique of the LLRC report , and featured elsewhere, including the media site of the LLRC itself, and War Crimes Prosecution Watch. The shorter Op-Ed, written for Open Democracy , was carried by various international news sites and blogs, including the site of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ).

The power and promise of national exercises like the LLRC lies in the way that they can access the voices of those who have not traditionally been heard, and use them to build a more inclusive collective memory….

Bridging the East-West design divide - in London

South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 16 November 2011

China’s Diaspora designers face stiff competition in the UK, but offer hope for development despite trouble shaking off the Made-in-China tag

In a trendy industrial space bordering a West London canal, an eclectic series of objects sit on podiums, amid coffee drinkers and creative-types at work.

Among them are a ceramic Chihuahua in a neckerchief, labeled as a home accessory; a delicate, extraterrestrial-looking table poised as if for lift-off; a panel of architectural designs for a Buddhist temple in the heart of London; and a stool in mint-green metal entitled, fantastically, the ‘Silent Farter’.

These are just a few recent offerings from London’s Chinese Diaspora designers, and they signal a growing creative confidence amid a challenging landscape.

“The Made-in-China tag has brought some difficulty to Chinese designers trying to work in the UK or around Europe,“ says designer Elva White, who curated the exhibition,…

AHRC Urgent Appeals: Theory and Practice

*This text can be found on the AHRC Urgent Appeals homepage. It was written for civil society, across Asia.

The AHRC’s Urgent Appeals system was created to give a voice to those affected by human rights violations, and by doing so, to create a network of support and avenues for action. If X’s freedom of expression is denied, if Y is tortured by someone in power, or if Z finds his or her labour rights abused, Urgent Appeals swiftly and effectively broadcast and deal with the incident. The resulting solidarity can lead to action, resolution and change. And as more people understand their rights and follow suit, as human rights consciousness grows, change happens faster. The Internet has become one of the human rights community’s most powerful tools.

A need for dialogue on human rights

Many people across Asia are frustrated by the widespread lack of respect for human rights in their countries. Some may be unhappy about the limitations on the freedom of expression or restrictions…

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