feminist blogs

No wonder immigrants fear immigration officials. Apparently a US immigration agent, after interviewing the 22 year old Colombian wife of an American citizen, began to contact the woman requesting sexual favors in return for her green card. The clearly intelligent woman recorded the request on her cell phone and then went to the New York Times.

The agent insisted that she had to trust him. “I wouldn’t ask you to do something for me if I can’t do something for you, right?” he said, and reasoned, “Nobody going to help you for nothing,” noting that she had no money.

Apparently the US government does not pay him to properly and legally HELP immigrants to gain citizenship for nothing?

Oh, wait, they do pay him $50,000 a year “to be part of a larger pattern”.

“Mr. Maxwell, the immigration agency’s former chief investigator, told Congress in 2006 that internal corruption was “rampant,” and that employees faced constant temptations to commit crime.”

[The agency] stopped posting an e-mail address and phone number for such complaints last year, said Jan Lane, chief of security and integrity, because it lacks the staff to cull the thousands of mostly irrelevant messages that resulted. Immigrants, she advised, should report wrongdoing to any law enforcement agency they trust.

Yes, because after an official US immigration officer threatens your citizenship, suggests you will be sent back to your country, you should report it to another US agency that you trust… trust??

A commentary on our attitude towards immigrants… read the full article for all of the sad details.

Sorry for one more Spitzer/Paterson article, but this gets at the heart of the comment I just left regarding Jill’s previous post on Spitzer. Where do we draw the line on what is considered private versus public information? And if it goes beyond the illegal (prostitution, soliciting sex, etc) who gets to judge?

Does Alfred?

Alfred Harris, a deacon at the Samuel’s Temple of God in Christ Baptist Church at Park Avenue and 125th Street, who said that the new governor, like the old governor, should step down. “There are enough righteous men for these positions, but we just haven’t found them yet.”

(note the use of the word MEN here.)

Does Shelley?

“You wonder, if you dug into a lot of governors’ or senators’ lives, what you’d really find,” said Shelley Sue Reig, “I don’t think it’s really fair to dig, but they have always been held to a higher standard, just like C.E.O.s of companies. They’re held to a higher standard, too.”

(Just curious, but exactly what kind of ‘higher standard’ do we hold CEO’s to? I have never heard of a CEO being asked to step down because s/he had an affair…)

I personally think if it isn’t illegal, and it does not impact your job, then the moral judgments should be left to those who are actually impacted.

“I say repeatedly to New Yorkers and Americans, listen to your grannies. Your grannies know what is up.”

Kudos to these women!

How the decision that is “widely seen as one of the most momentous and contentious of the war” was made is now coming to light. In May of 2003 Paul Bremer III (or ‘Jerry’ as he’s known around the office) decided (pretty much all by himself) to formally dissolve Iraq’s army.

Somehow he thought it was a good idea to put “250K-300K personnel” out of work in a country “racked by high unemployment” – because obviously taking away someone’s living wage is the way to get them to support you…

Mr. Powell, who views the decision as a “major blunder” asked, “Condi, what happened?”

“And her reaction was: ‘I was surprised too, but it is a decision that has been made and the president is standing behind Jerry’s decision. Jerry is the guy on the ground.’ And there was no further debate about it.”

Maybe there should have been some more debate.

In yesterday’s New York Times magazine there was a fantastic article by Noah Feldman titled ‘Why Shariah?’ in which he examines the history and current rise in popular support for the Islamic legal tradition, Shariah. As a future lawyer I have become increasingly interested in learning more about Shariah. I will openly admit I know very little, but that seems to be the problem cited by both Feldman as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Feldman’s piece does a good job of synthesizing it for the public.

I first became interested in learning about Shariah courts while attending a law reform conference that included lawyers from Zanzibar (an island off the coast of Tanganyika – when the two former colonies were united they were re-named the Republic of Tanzania). While the mainland is heavily Christian, Zanzibar is over 90% Muslim. While discussing gender law with two lawyers from Zanzibar I learned that the island has Shariah courts that rule over family law issues, including divorce. According to these lawyers, Shariah courts gave women more power because a woman could initiate divorce without her husband’s consent.
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As Jill is officially on her well earned vacation I thought I would introduce myself as this week’s guest blogger. I most recently guest-blogged back in December while living in Tanzania and interning for a legal NGO there. I left Africa at the end of December and am currently living in Buenos Aires, working on a research project that examines women’s health and reproductive rights in Argentina. I am very excited to be back and am looking forward to some interesting discussions this week!

One of the projects I have been working on is helping to develop a conference examining the new African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Similar to the European Court and American Court, the African court was established in January of 2004 in order to hear human rights cases across the African Continent.

Established in part to reinforce the existing system comprised of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, it was also instituted because of serious flaws in the existing system. These flaws included institutional weaknesses, lack of resources ($), and inefficiency (long delays in cases because of communication and always favoring amicable settlement at the expense of efficiency). Currently the court has not started hearing cases.

The African Court is unique because it protects not only civil and political rights, like other human rights courts, it also protects, social, economic, cultural and peoples’ rights, broadening the scope of rights. It is also unique because it is the only human rights court where judges are not allowed to sit in cases that deal with the country of which they are a citizen. It is also unique because it allows the court to look beyond the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights and its own protocol, it also can refer to any human rights instrument ratified by the State at issue. This includes international instruments such as the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination and The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. This could potentially provide additional avenues for women and other minorities.

While there is much potential good coming out of the new court, there are several serious issues that may hinder it.
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I have been reading a really interesting publication produced by The Crowley Program in International Human Rights (part of Fordham Law School). Titled ‘Exporting Despair – The Human Rights Implications of U.S. Restrictions on Foreign Health Care Funding in Kenya’, the project examines both the impact of the Mexico City Policy (popularly known as the Global Gag Rule) on Kenya’s healthcare system, as well as the legal ramifications of it for both the Kenyan government as well as the U.S. For anyone interested in the legal issues of the Global Gag Rule, I highly recommend obtaining a copy.

The report starts out by examining international laws and treaties in order to assess whether or not Kenya’s government can be held responsible for violating international human rights, as well as assessing what legal role donor nations, particularly the United States, has in requiring countries to violate their own human rights laws in order to receive funding. Using the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Platform and the Cairo Program, they conclude that there are three main areas that can be violated: the right to health, freedom of speech, and gender discrimination.
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First, I have to apologize for not blogging yesterday, or at least what was my yesterday. I then have to issue a warning about agreeing to blog while living in a developing country. My suggestion, do not commit yourself to anything requiring access to technology on a regular basis. And finally I am going to complain about internet access. Before coming to Africa I thought my parent’s dial-up was bad. Luckily it prepared me for what I would find here. Not only is the internet slow, it goes out whenever it rains, along with the electricity. As we have just entered the ‘short’ rainy season, it is out all the time. Tuesday it was out all afternoon, so I left the conference I was at and went to a cafe and paid $5 to use the very slow internet for an hour in order to post. Yesterday the internet was out again all day. Because the conference ran late, I could not find anywhere open that had internet, hence the lack of a post. Today I arrived back at work to find that the storm had taken down one of the cables and therefore we should not expect internet for the rest of the week. I am now in the business center of a hotel in order to post. Sorry for the frustration and thanks for putting up with my tardiness.

One of the things I really enjoy doing while living in another country is taking an art class, particularly in a local craft. Here in Tanzania, batik is one of the most popular art forms. All along the town streets young men hawk piles of batiks to tourists, offering deals of “just 10,000 tsh”. Many of these batiks are simple, black outlines of animals in the Serengeti, backed by sunsets of yellow and orange. A huge industry, these inexpensive batiks are produced en-masse. At the same time, there is a market for high-end batiks that are incredibly detailed and can be as large as ten feet long.

I decided that I wanted to learn how to batik while I was living here. I was introduced to a local artist, Mollel, who agreed to give me lessons. On the first day I met him at his house and was introduced to his wife and three of their children. They were all warm and welcoming, and very excited to meet an American. Over the past two months I have gone to their house and learned how to make simple batiks, but I have also learned so much more.

For my third lesson I showed up at the house around noon. Because of confusion created by the language barrier, Mollel had not understood I would be coming. Instead of telling me to leave, he invited me in to join him and his family for their afternoon. I spent the next three hours talking to them about local culture, life in Tanzania and how the US differed. His wife taught me how to wear the local kanga around my waist and gave me one as a gift. She showed me how she braids her daughter’s hair in tiny rows, while her daughter taught the youngest son how to iron his clothes with an old fashioned iron that is heated with coals. After this day my art lessons became history and cultural lessons as well.
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