Oak Fellows

2023 Oak Fellow

He was based in Tehran during the bloody November 2019 protests in Iran, in which security forces were estimated to have murdered over 1,500 protesters.

During the Internet shutdown, not only was he able to give a voice to the people of Iran, but he did so at the risk of his own life.

His work includes articles on Iran’s violence against protestors, persecution of ethnic, religious, and LGBTQ minorities, response to COVID-19, and other health crises, like medicine shortages and the lack of medical care for minority groups. Isfahani, who identifies as queer and non-binary (using he or they), has focused most recently on LGBTQ+ issues in Iran. In the past and under different pen names, he has created materials for young LGBTQ adults on health, gender, and sexual orientation, and was involved in suicide prevention work for the LGBTQ community. Despite all the obstacles he has faced, he continues to be one of the main voices highlighting human rights issues in Iran.

During the recent and ongoing Iranian protests, Isfahani has played a crucial role not only reporting the protests, but also identifying Iranians killed in the demonstrations. He helped verify the identity of 75 slain Iranians for the BBC, a work that has been referenced by international human rights organizations. He still documents the continued repression and brutal execution of protesters. This scrupulous work is but one example of Isfahani’s intense commitment to journalism and human rights. As he has said: “To record human suffering, you need to wallow in a sea of pain and absorb the raw unfiltered emotions like a sponge, you have to weave pain into your soul and then carve your heart out and hold it before the eyes of the world.” This is exactly what Khosro does every day and has been doing for over a decade, and Colby College will provide him with the need of respite from the trauma he has lived and continues to live as a journalist in exile, away from his family, and always fearing for his life.

2022 Oak Fellow

The 2022 Oak Human Rights Fellows are Michelle Cook and Ana Lucía Ixchíu Hernández. Both will join the Colby community for the Fall 2022 semester to raise awareness on issues of indigenous rights, and share the ways colonialism and the formation of modern nation-state borders have created mass human rights violations for indigenous peoples and made cultural survival increasingly difficult. Both activists will spend the semester reflecting on their work and sharing their perspectives on the human rights abuses that indigenous communities have endured for centuries.

Michelle Cook is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and was born of the Honághááhnii (One Who Walks Around You) clan. She just earned (in June 2022) the title of Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) from the University of Arizona, with a dissertation on intersections of indigenous rights, divestment, and gender in the United States. She is also the founder of Divest Invest Protect and the Indigenous Women’s Divestment Delegations (IWDD.) IWDD is an intersectional, Indigenous-led international human rights campaign pressuring banks, insurance, and credit rating agencies to divest from harmful extraction companies and invest in the cultural survival and self-determination of the world’s Indigenous peoples. By educating banks, companies, and businesses on how their investments impact the human rights of Indigenous women, IWDD centers Indigenous women as critical actors in shaping global economic justice.

Recently, she and her team made “The Beads that Bound Manhattan and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Wampum Belt” to address continued attempts to disestablish Native reservations and erase the political and historical existence of the Mashpee Wampanoag. Per Cook, “The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (‘UN Declaration’) wampum belt is a means of teaching Indigenous human rights using and centering Indigenous peoples’ technology and pedagogical legal practices with wampum as both the medium and the message of accountability, healing, and change. The wampum belt is part of an ongoing attempt to redefine both the collective past and future of the United States of America and its relationship with Indigenous peoples and Nations, shedding light on the hidden history of wampum, how the US engages with Indigenous people.” This work demands relationships built on reciprocity, self-determination, and human rights, which weaves seamlessly into the mission and practices of Oak.

2022 Oak Fellow

The 2022 Oak Human Rights Fellows are Michelle Cook and Ana Lucía Ixchíu Hernández. Both will join the Colby community for the Fall 2022 semester to raise awareness on issues of indigenous rights, and share the ways colonialism and the formation of modern nation-state borders have created mass human rights violations for indigenous peoples and made cultural survival increasingly difficult. Both activists will spend the semester reflecting on their work and sharing their perspectives on the human rights abuses that indigenous communities have endured for centuries.

Lucía Ixchíu is an Indigenous K’iche woman from Totonicapán Guatemala. She is a journalist, artist, and activist with a focus on the rights of Indigenous peoples. She was called to action after witnessing the army of Guatemala, the country where Ixchíu was born, massacre her people for demonstrating against the rise in privatized electricity, controlled by a foreign transnational corporation. The racist media coverage of what happened made her realize that it was time for her people to tell their own story. For this reason, Ixchíu decided to become a journalist to “denounce, write and theorize the various realities” that they had to live as indigenous peoples.

In addition to using journalism as a powerful means to combat the injustice and violence inflicted upon her people, Ixchíu is also in charge of organizing Solidarity Festivals as a powerful alternative to fighting so indigenous peoples can simultaneously resist and heal with joy. This multidimensional and radical approach will be invaluable to share with the Colby community, both on campus and beyond. In 2019, Ixchíu earned the Gisela Paz y Paz award for her work as a young, Indigenous woman. 

Ixchíu and Cook are no strangers to the personal risk that human rights activism poses on practitioners, particularly when they identify with the groups they intend to help. Due to the insurmountably taxing nature of their work and livelihoods, they must make the work sustainable. Both Cook and Ixchíu look to their respective indigenous practices to heal, seek answers, and pursue justice. While their contributions to the Colby and extended community will be invaluable, we must also be diligent in maintaining reciprocity, as a previously underscored necessity in these relationships. For instance, we must commit to bettering our relationship with Maine’s Indigenous people, the Wabanaki, by truly listening to their hopes and needs. As a final benefit for the Colby community, we hope that the Indigenous pedagogies Cook and Ixchíu share this fall will challenge our Western and Eurocentric paradigms of learning, communicating, storytelling, and overall living.

Since her time as a Fellow with the Oak Institute, Ixchíu became the indigenous coordinator of the continental movement against climate change and racial justice for BILM (Black and Indigenous Liberation Movement). 

Learn More: 

• Interview “Indigenous Leaders Are Being Forced Into Exile,” March 2023

• Interview “Periodistas guatemaltecos en el exilio relatan sus desafíos y expectativas sobre el futuro del periodismo en su país,” March 2024

• Video Interview “Solidaridad y presión internacional necesarios para hacer respetar el voto de los guatemaltecos” 

• Climate March in New York the Permamente forum
• Additional Climate March Information
• Follow Lucía Ixchíu’s Work on Instagram 

2021 Oak Fellow

A human rights activist takes a well-earned break from decades of anti-torture work​

The Oak Fellow for the 2021 theme of Incarceration and Human Rights was Russian human rights lawyer Olga Sadovskaya. Olga is vice chair of the Committee Against Torture, the largest and most notable anti-torture organization in Russia. She, along with three other activists, began this initiative in 2000, and the Committee has been working on issues surrounding torture for over 18 years. Now, the Committee Against Torture is the largest and most notable anti-torture organization in Russia.

During the early stages of the committee, Sadovskaya’s role as an investigator included collecting evidence of torture in colonies, prisons, police, and psychiatric institutions. Over time, she transitioned to analysis and international defense with the European Court and UN bodies. Sadovskaya also trains lawyers on how to work with the European Court of Human Rights.

For the last 13 years, Olga Sadovskaya has served as the Deputy Head of the organization. During this time, she and her colleagues have built a dedicated team. Together, they’ve won many international awards, including the PACE Prize of the Council of Europe and Martin Ennals Award Frontline Defenders Human Rights Award. Sadovskaya, individually, has received the Andrey Sakharov Freedom Award and was included in the shortlist for Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.

After years of experience with torture cases, Sadovskaya and her team have written and published a methodology for public investigation, which is now widely used by human rights organizations in Russia and the former Soviet Union. Olga has personally represented more than 300 victims of torture before the European Court of Justice, two of which have been included in the list of 20 most important cases that changed Russia.

The Committee Against Torture devised accountability measures for torture that were previously missing in Russia. Torture as an issue is scarcely talked about and often, victims decline to speak out due to fear, shame, and lack of hope for justice, and problems are still very prevalent. Investigations into torture also lack quality. This problem is amplified in the Chechen Republic, where Sadovskaya’s organization is the only one that continues to work on cases of tortures and abductions.

While working against state-sanctioned torture, Sadovskaya has faced personal threats, including threats of murder, particularly for her work in Chechnya. The Committee’s office has been burned down several times and members’ cars have been destroyed. Olga is also periodically monitored and constantly at risk of being accused of baseless crimes.

Sadovskaya hoped to use the Oak Human Rights Fellowship as respite so that she can continue her work in Russia, as well as an opportunity to connect with Colby students and raise awareness on issues of torture and incarceration in Russia and around the world.

After the Fellowship, Olga and her family traveled to Geneva where they are currently living. There, Sadovskaya helped secure an internship for Oak student Charlotte Mast ‘22. Olga is still an active collaborator with the Oak Institute and plans to return to campus this winter to teach a JanPlan course on torture.

Learn More:

• Forum2000, “Olga Sadovskaya: Torture cases in Russia are not a secret anymore,” February 2021
• New York Times, “Trump Said ‘Torture Works.’ An Echo Is Feared Worldwide,” January 2017

2020 Fall Oak Fellow

The Oak Human Rights Fellow for the 2020 theme of Borders & Human Rights was Nasim Lomani, a human rights defender and migrants’ rights activist working both in the field and at the political level in Greece and the greater EU for more than ten years.

Lomani arrived in Greece nearly two decades ago as a sixteen-year-old from Afghanistan. Upon arrival, he was arrested and charged with illegal crossing of the Greek border, ultimately serving a two-year prison sentence. During the appeal process, he learned about the bureaucratic difficulties that all migrants face while on the move to Europe. He joined a number of solidarity groups, such as the Network for Social Support to Immigrants and Refugees and the Migrants’ Social Center in Athens, where he coordinated free language classes and the Athens Anti-racist Festival. He also engaged in solidarity work that included lawyers, human rights defenders, as well as refugees and migrants.

Lomani, together with other solidarians, founded and served as one of the key organizers of City Plaza – Refugees Accommodation Solidarity Space in Athens, where he organized daily life for migrants, managed media communication, coordinated international volunteers, and served as the public representative to researchers, students, and academics.

City Plaza, once one of the largest solidarity migrant accommodations in Athens, was an abandoned hotel in central Athens repurposed to offer migrants the right to live with dignity in the urban space with access to social, economic, and political rights. Lomani lived inside the now-closed City Plaza for the entirety of its existence. Over almost three and half years, it welcomed 3,000 people, lodging up to 400 migrants at a time.

Lomani faces increasing risk, as migration solidarity work and defending human rights in Greece, and Europe at large has been criminalized in recent years. Helping refugees and criticizing human rights violations by authorities is now a major offense by both national and European law. In Greece, this has led to large-scale evictions of refugees and asylum seekers from housing sites, and to increasing arrests and prosecutions of activists.

Learn More:

• Time, “Greek Anarchists Are Finding Space for Refugees in Abandoned Hotels,” November 2016
• BBC, “Crossing Continents: Greece’s Haven Hotel,” April 2018

2020 Spring Oak Fellow

Water activist Venuste Kubwimana founded “A Water Kiosk at School,” a startup which has transformed communities and engaged schools in rural Kenya and Rwanda by improving access to clean water.

Kubwimana was born and brought up in a poor, rural family of seven siblings in the Southern province of Rwanda. After losing much of his family during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, he was left to care for his younger siblings and often had to miss school to fetch water from clean, but distant water sources.

Kubwimana’s experience inspired him to partner with a friend to form the International Transformation Foundation (ITF) – a nonprofit organization that provides youth leadership and entrepreneurship programs to provide jobs and contribute to the development of Rwandan and Kenyan communities.

In 2013, Venuste turned his focus to improving water access in the region. He partnered his organization with Join the Pipe Foundation, launching “A Water Kiosk at School”, a project that involves installing specially designed Dutch tap stations near playgrounds, city centers, parks, schools and bus stations in Kenya in order for people to have access to clean drinking water. To date, the program’s 11 Water Kiosks across Kenya and Rwanda have given 117,858 people access to clean drinking water.

Learn More:

• CGTN Africa, “Rwandan entrepreneur returns home to quench villagers’ thirst,” October 2019
• The Son of Genocide, directed and produced by Milton Guillén ’15 (2020)

2019 Oak Fellow

Jamila Bargach is an activist and scholar who has dedicated her life to serving under-resourced communities in Southwest Morocco, creating sustainable initiatives through education and scientific innovation. She is the co-founder of Dar Si Hmad, which operates as the largest functioning fog collection project in the world.

Today, the organization brings fog-harvested, potable water to fifteen Morrocan villages in Aït Baâmrane, a Berber region where women used to spend hours transporting water to their households. Now, they can reallocate that time to do other things, such as to produce Argan oil, fostering independence for these Berber women. “We’ve just gotten funds to expand the projects and add in twelve more villages,” Bargach said.

Bargach, an anthropologist by training with a PhD from Rice University, has taught at the National School of Architecture, Rabat. She spent decades as a human rights activist helping organize residents in slums and informal communities in Morocco. In 2006, Bargach co-founded a shelter for women in Casablanca under the aegis of La Ligue Démocratique des Droits des Femmes, which she directed until 2009. Bargach has published several articles on adoption practices, unwed mothers, gender and development, as well as the book Orphans of Islam: Family, Abandonment, and Secret Adoption in Morocco (2002).

Her training as an anthropologist allows her to work seamlessly with entrenched Berber communities and gives her the tools to understand the social fabric and aid in alleviating root causes of poverty. A primary goal for her is to increase global awareness about water-rights and accessibility in a world increasingly anxious about its water-future.

Bargach was awarded the Vera Campbell Fellowship for Women Scholar-Practitioners from Developing Nations at the School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, which allowed her to lay the foundation for the fog-harvesting project with Dar Si Hmad in 2011. She has been a research fellow at the Ford Foundation, at the American Institute for Maghrebi Studies, and at the Transregional Institute, Princeton University. She is currently working on enhancing the very first environmental and ethnographic field school in Morocco, setting up an environmental education program for underserved school children from the fog collection villages.

Learn More:

• PBS News Hour, “How scientists are harvesting fog to secure the world’s water supply,” July 2019
• UN Climate Change, “Women led Fog Harvesting for a Resilient, Sustainable Ecosystem,” July 2017
• Ecosolutions, “Morocco’s fog catchers”
• The New Yorker, “Could Harvesting Fog Help Solve the World’s Water Crisis?” March 2016
• The Guardian, “‘Cloud fishing’ reels in precious water for villagers in rural Morocco,” December 2016

2018 Oak Fellow

Bassam Khabieh, a freelance Syrian photojournalist, has been named the 2018 Oak Human Rights Fellow.  His beautiful but searing work bridges Oak’s 2017 theme, “Film, Photography, and Human Rights,” and its 2018 theme, “War and Human Rights.”

“Having Bassam on campus gives Colby students unparalleled access to a photographer and activist who has literally risked life and limb to document the terrible ordeal of ordinary Syrians devastated by war. I am very grateful to my predecessor, Walter Hatch, who recognized the power and significance of Bassam’s work in documenting violations of human rights, and moved heaven and earth to bring him here,” said Valérie Dionne, director of the Oak Institute for Human Rights.

Khabieh’s work has documented war crimes and other ongoing human rights violations in the Syrian conflict – and the world has noticed. The photographs have been featured by organizations such as UNICEF, the World Health Organization, Reuters, and The Atlantic. In 2015 Khabieh was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal for “photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise.” His images were included in a group exhibition, Children of Syria, that toured various locations, including Capitol Hill, USAID, and the United States Institute of Peace. Khabieh’s work will also be featured in a book in the making by ART WORKS Projects founder, Leslie Thomas, and Open Society Foundations Documentary Photography Project founder, Amy Yenkin. As explained by a board member for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Khabieh’s photographs comprise “one of the largest bodies of work on the Syrian conflict, bring[ing] this unspeakable war out of the shadows.”

As if these achievements were not impressive enough, Khabieh is entirely self-taught. At the outbreak of the Syrian conflict, he was a student of information technology. He chose to use his cell phone to take pictures, eventually training himself how to use more sophisticated equipment. His work has been done amidst chemical attacks, airstrikes, car explosions, and cluster bombs; he has endured a number of injuries, even temporarily losing his eyesight. No matter what has happened, Khabieh has not given up his goal to “ensure that the horrific human rights abuses that have been perpetrated would not be without witness.”

For examples of Khabieh’s work, see:

• The Atlantic
• New York Times
• Follow Bassam on Twitter!
• Colby Magazine, “Q&A: Audio interview with Khabieh about the people and his photographs,” Fall 2018
• Colby Magazine, “No Going Back,” photography by Bassam Khabieh, Fall 2018
• Reuters | The Wider Image

2017 Oak Fellow

Jinyan Zeng, a Chinese filmmaker, blogger, activist, and scholar, served as the 2017 Oak Human Rights Fellow at Colby. This was the first time in its nearly 20-year history that the Oak Institute for Human Rights selected someone from the People’s Republic of China.

The Oak Institute used Zeng’s time on campus as an opportunity to highlight the powerful role of documentary film in advancing the cause of human rights.

Her class produced short videos to tell human rights stories in small groups. “They surprised me by putting so much effort into investigating local communities, raising critical questions toward authorities (including Colby College leadership,) and presenting their research projects with their own cinematic languages,” she said.

Zeng has spent more than a decade and a half fighting for people with HIV-AIDS, women facing discrimination, factory workers suffering exploitation, a natural environment threatened by pollution, and political dissidents experiencing repression. This work sometimes upsets the Chinese party-state, which at different times has detained and surveilled her.

In 2006 Zeng made her first documentary, Prisoners in Freedom City, about living under house arrest in Beijing. Her most recent film, We the Workers, had its world premier at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in January 2017. During the production of that film, the Chinese party-state detained several of the featured labor activists, placed a few of them under house arrest, and forced still others to make “confessions” on state television. Zeng is cofounder of the Chinese Independent Documentary Lab in Hong Kong and the leading curator of an independent Chinese film series.

In 2017 Zeng earned a Ph.D. from the University of Hong Kong, where she studied film, gender, and cyber-activism. Her dissertation focused on the work of Ai Xiaoming, a feminist professor of literature and a documentary filmmaker in China.

Learn More:

• “Visualizing the Post-2000s Tibet Inland Class Generation: Female Authorship and Renegotiation of Ethnicity,” June 2024
• “Queering Community: Affect of Visuality in the Sinosphere,” February 2024
• ‘”From Women’s Space to Gendering the Public Sphere: Ai Xiaoming’s Practice of Everyday Life and Activism,” 2024
• “Weibo Feminism: Expression, Activism, and Social Media in China,” May 2024
• Excerpt from “The Alienated Gaze and the Activist Eye: Gender, Class, and Politics in Lotus (2012) and Outcry and Whisper (2020)”
• Colby Magazine, “Oak Human Rights Fellow Jinyan Zeng interviews artist, activist Ai Weiwei,” January 2018
• “Political Opposition as Way of Life: I have no enemies, I have love,” 2017
• Made in China, “Imagining the Digitalisation of Politics: A Conversation with Wang Lixiong,” Translated by Christian Sorace, November 2018

2016 Oak Fellow

Khalid Albaih, a political cartoonist from Sudan, came to Colby College in the fall as the 2016 Oak Fellow at the Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights. Albaih uses his daring, often biting cartoons to champion freedom of expression and democracy in the Arab world, while criticizing Western Islamophobia and U.S. practices including torture and drone attacks. 

Alibali discovered early on that cartoons combined his love and curiosity for art and politics. “For me politics was the reason why I didn’t have a home,” said Albaih, who had to leave Sudan with his diplomat father and activist mother in 1989.

Oak’s selection will showcase the powerful role of the arts in promoting human rights.

“We received applications from amazing artists around the world, but Khalid stood out because his work has inspired so many citizens inside and outside the Arab world to demand better behavior from their governments and from one another,” said Associate Professor of Government and Director of the Oak Institute Walter Hatch.

Albaih draws simple but evocative images that are primarily displayed online. Many of those images have gone viral, earning him international recognition. Huffington Post mentions him first in its list of the world’s leading Arab cartoonists.

During the Arab Spring uprising in 2011, Albaih’s images were turned into stencils and reproduced on city walls in Cairo and Sana’a. He acquired thousands of followers on his Facebook site (“Khartoon!”—a play on his artistic medium and his former home in the capital of Sudan). His work also has appeared in exhibitions in Vienna, London, Montreal, Detroit, Bahrain, and The Hague and has been featured in media outlets including the New York Times and Al-Jazeera.

The son of a diplomat and a social justice activist, Albaih was born in Romania and grew up in Sudan and Qatar, where he now lives. He received a B.A. in interior design engineering from the Ajman University of Science and Technology and worked as a graphic designer and multimedia specialist before becoming head of installations and design for public art in Qatar Museums Authority.

Albaih, who helped create the Khartoum Contemporary Art Centre, is now unsafe in his homeland, where his satirical cartoons have upset members of the authoritarian regime and precipitated threats on his life.

Learn More:

• Collection of Articles

• Video “Khalid Albaih: art at heart, fighting injustice”

• Colby Magazine, “Anything but Invisible,” Winter 2017
• New York Times, “Cartoonist’s Pen Leaves Mark Across Arab World,” June 2013

2015 Oak Fellow

The Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights at Colby College was pleased to announce the selection of Jodi Koberinski of Canada as our 2015 Oak Fellow. Koberinski’s pioneering work reimagining agriculture and advocating for more equitable food systems, not only in Canada but also around the world, puts her at the forefront in the field of food sovereignty, the 2015 theme for the Oak fellowship.

Koberinski is launching the Beyond Pesticides Network to transform Canada’s food systems. Professionally, this represents a bold move. Not so long ago Koberinski was an entrepreneur operating a café and a small-scale food processing project. Then she spent six years as the executive director of the Organic Council of Ontario, working to create change from within the corporate-industrial food complex. Now she is a frontline activist who supports farm families, rural communities, and those living in poverty in their fight for food sovereignty.

Although Koberinski hails from a country that has earned a global reputation as a champion of human rights, she says she feels increasingly vulnerable in Canada. For one thing, this outspoken critic of industrial food production says powerful agribusiness interests that benefit from the status quo are ever more vigilant in their efforts to discredit her. For another, she believes Ottawa has grown hostile to activists like herself.

In recent years Voices-Voix, a network of Canadian civil society organizations, has documented what it calls “the shrinking democratic space for dialogue on public policy and for dissent” in Canada. In a 2013 report it claimed that environmental groups, in particular, are being “systematically silenced” by the government. A researcher at Queen’s University in Ontario believes that Canada is gripped by a “green scare,” and that federal agencies routinely spy on such organizations—a claim denied by law enforcement.

Koberinski, who calls herself a “town crier,” comes to Colby College as the political environment grows increasingly fractious back home. She will arrive in late August and spend the fall semester here, leading a human rights seminar on food systems, consulting with members of the campus and Maine communities, and building the Beyond Pesticides Network.

At the time, Koberinski was working without pay, relying on crowdsourcing to finance her grassroots campaign. She is known as an unflagging source of innovation, an activist who tirelessly helps others and furthers the cause of food sovereignty. She is a global leader on this issue and is recognized for her vital work transforming—not just reforming—agriculture to provide sustainable, safe, and secure food systems around the world.

After returning to her home country, Koberinski successfully launched Beyond Pesticides Canada, inspired and informed by Washington, D.C.,-based NGO Beyond Pesticides, which pushes for an organic, pesticide-free world.
Recently in New Brunswick, she participated in the Praxis Project Permaculture Art Festival, which combined theory and practice in ecological education. “I saw my opportunity at Colby as an activist to provide the kind of ecological education that most of us don’t get even at university,” she explained. Colby also gave her other opportunities, like presenting at the Common Ground Fair, “one of the most famous fairs in the world for organics,” and exploring Maine’s food system. “Maine has farmers that are doing things nobody else in America is doing on the social scale,” she said.

2014 Oak Fellow

The Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights at Colby College is pleased to announce the selection of Clare Byarugaba of Uganda as our 2014 Oak Fellow. Byarugaba is the co-coordinator of the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law, which was founded in 2009 to fight efforts in Uganda to criminalize homosexuality as well activism on behalf of the LGBTI community. Although they lost their short-term struggle in February, when a draconian “anti-homosexuality” bill was signed into law, Byarugaba and the coalition continue to work under extremely difficult conditions to defend the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex Ugandans.

Despite being just 27 years old, Byarugaba is exceptionally accomplished. She helped organize Uganda’s first gay pride event, joined the Refugee Law Project at Makerere University, lobbied tirelessly against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, and now pushes fearlessly for its repeal. In 2011, she received a Human Rights Defenders award from the U.S. State Department.

Before assuming her prominent role with the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law, Byarugaba worked with Ice Breakers Uganda as a finance officer and women’s coordinator, focusing on LGBT rights and health care. She also conducted research for the National Democratic Institute in Kampala. These experiences, coupled with her own journey of self-discovery, inspired her work in the field of human rights. Living with Uganda’s virulent homophobia and gender inequality, she faces a double challenge as a woman and lesbian activist.

Due to her controversial work, Byarugaba has received countless threats and has been forced to move several times. This feeling of dread only increased when a popular tabloid recently published her photograph and identified her as a “gay recruiter.” In 2011, openly gay Ugandan human rights activist and former Oak candidate David Kato was murdered shortly after appearing on the cover of a similar tabloid listing prominent gay Ugandans under the words, “Hang Them.” Byarugaba is undaunted in the face of extreme risk and adversity: “Despite the precariousness this work positions me in, what I do is not in vain.” She believes that grassroots activists “have the best shot at ending the violation of human rights of LGBTI persons in Uganda and we shall be held responsible for the freedoms of those that come after us.”

When she returned to Uganda, she found it was getting harder and harder to work as an LGBT rights activist while still in an LGBT organization, she said. Byarugaba is now the equality and non-discrimination coordinator of Chapter Four Uganda. “The fact that Chapter Four is a mainstream organization allows me a bit of security.”

Additional security was offered through the fellowship: With part of her fellowship stipend, she was able to purchase a car. “This car accords me a level of security, like you have no idea, this car saved me so many times,” said Byarugaba, for whom taking public transport isn’t safe. “So having this vehicle and being able to move from work, from home, from my social life, and be safe and feel safe is so meaningful.” At Chapter Four, she was also able to fulfill a dream that she started and cultivated at Colby—introducing PFLAG in Uganda and bringing together families and allies of the LGBTQ community.

Learn More:

• Colby Magazine, “Hiding in Plain View: Clare Byarugaba, Ugandan LGBT activist and 2014 Oak Fellow, won’t be silenced,” Fall 2014

2013 Oak Fellows

In the fall of 2013, the Oak Institute welcomed 2013 Oak Fellows Maung Maung “Tony” Than and Mya Nandar Aung of Myanmar to campus.

Maung Maung Than and Mya Nandar Aung have worked with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees to protect the rights of stateless people in western Myanmar, and are working with various organizations to encourage Buddhist-Muslim reconciliation.

The state of Rakhine in western Myanmar has a history of tension between Buddhists and Muslims, many of whom are not officially recognized as citizens of Myanmar. One marginalized group, the Rohingya, faces a wide variety of human rights abuses, including extortion, forced eviction, destruction of property, forced labor, and restrictions on their freedom of movement.

The fellows understand both sides of the conflict in Rakhine, as one fellow identifies as Muslim, while the other was born to a Muslim father and a Buddhist mother. Despite their different upbringings, both Maung Maung Than and Myanandar Aung work to protect the rights of local peoples and improve their living conditions through monitoring and reporting abuses and educating community members about universal human rights.

When the riots broke between Arakanese Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in 2012, Aung and Than were imprisoned for six months without evidence. The following year, Aung and Than came to Colby. While at Colby, Aung’s father, a Muslim community leader and a physician, was imprisoned in Myanmar. She was working tirelessly from Maine to secure his release and got help from students, who wrote letters to their representatives in Congress and contacted their oces. “One of their oces actually called me, and they were telling me that they received the letter and they will do whatever they can do within their capacity,” she said. “We felt very supported.

2012 Oak Fellow

In the fall of 2012, the Oak Institute welcomed Zandile Nhlengetwa of South Africa to campus as the 2012 Oak fellow. Ms. Nhlengetwa is the principal of Ulusda School in KwaZulu-Natal, a place of learning for young people, as well as a community center that organizes adults around issues such as gender inequity, sexual abuse, and violence. In a community marked not only by poverty but patriarchy and violence, Ms. Nhlengetwa works tirelessly to persuade families to allow their daughters to attend classes, and to encourage their sons to study rather than join local gangs or militia. As a dedicated human rights activist and a survivor of the political violence that affected her home province of KwaZulu-Natal, Zandile Nhlengetwa is known in her community for her ability to bring calm and stability to potentially volatile situations. Facing significant personal risk, Ms. Nhlengetwa has received numerous threats, and local police have reported, not always sympathetically, these come from individuals who believe she has “interfered with people’s customs and culture.” As recently as March of this year, Ulusda School’s security guard was shot in what is suspected to have been an attempt on Ms. Nhlengetwa’s life.

Before she began her work at Ulusda School, Ms. Nhlengetwa founded and directed an organization, the Harambe Women’s Forum, made up of widows, like herself, whose husbands have died during bloody conflict in KwaZula-Natal. After the loss of family members to violent incidents, Nhlengetwa has reached out to young people to help them break the cycle of violence through education. The group has promoted reconciliation between families and neighbors, and reached out especially to young men and older boys at risk of joining the cycle of violence.

In addition to her work on behalf of young people in South Africa, she was part of the team that spent time in Freetown sharing South African experiences to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone. After participating in South Africa’s TRC (1995-97), she agreed to share her experiences in Sierra Leone, working with children who were asked to testify about their service as soldiers in that country’s long civil war.

Although a primary school teacher, having to teach college students during the fellowship made her anxious, she said. It was also partly because, “I never taught white children.”

To overcome her anxiety, Nhlengetwa came up with a creative solution: dancing. “It has been [an] important part of our upbringing; every South African would do it. Music—it has some sort of therapy when you’re anxious, it de-stresses you,” she explained. “Doing that, it would calm me down and [make me] gain my confidence. And when they joined in, it connected us. So it was a way of connecting with the students, with my class.” Since the rst day, students have paid her a high level of respect and showed a great hunger to learn from her experiences. “Standing in front of these young people at Colby brought a paradigm shift for me because I was coming from a country where they called me ‘maid’ when they see an ethnic woman,” she said. But at Colby, she said, they looked at her and saw a human being.

2011 Oak Fellow

The Oak Institute welcomed Fatima Burnad as our 2011 Fellow. Ms. Burnad is the founder and president of the Society for Rural Education and Development (SRED) and has been working among the Dalit (untouchable) community in that country for the past 35 years. In India, she has become a national leader in the social movement seeking greater economic opportunity and political influence for these largely landless and poor people and has been especially active in organizing Dalit women. SRED, under her leadership, documents human rights abuses: from police brutality to the assassination of Dalit women leaders; from social and economic exclusion to abject poverty. In addition, the organization trains Dalit women on their legal rights and how to document these abuses and campaign on their own behalf. This work puts Ms. Burnad at great personal risk as she is frequently working in direct opposition to police and other authorities. Indeed, she has been detained, arrested and threatened on several occasions. Outside India, Ms. Burnad has become an international leader in the effort to end institutionalized discrimination against the world’s most socially marginalized citizens.

Ms. Burnad, who has studied in India, at the University of Chicago and at the University of Sussex, received an honorary Doctorate from the Academy of Ecumenical Indian Theology and the Rastriya Gaurav Award (National Honorary Award) from the International Friendship Fellowship in New Delhi. She also was honored as an “International Woman of the Year” (1997-8) by the International Biographical Center in the UK. Among her many affiliations, she is serving on the board of directors of the International Movement against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), a Tokyo-based NGO that consults with the UN.

We are delighted that Ms. Burnad will join the Colby community for the fall of 2011 as the Oak fellow. During her fellowship, she will teach a one-credit, non-graded course, Human Rights and Poverty (IN111). The course will examine the economic impoverishment and socio-political marginalization of entire groups of people, with a specific focus on the Dalit in India.

When she returned to India, she resumed her work with SRED, where Katy Lindquist ’14 went to intern in January 2012. “The Dalit movements in India, they talk about public cast discrimination,” Burnad said, “whereas we are saying caste discrimination cannot be eradicated immediately, but slowly. Because it is a four- to five-thousand-year-old caste system where the Hindu hierarchical system perpetrates it. So it’s not a caste alone.” That’s why SRED is working with women to reclaim lands and work on them collectively. Currently, Dalit women have 15 collective farms, which the organization provides with seeds, plowing, and irrigation. “We have established a solar water pump in one collective farm using solar energy—this is also a response to climate change,” she said.

Besides operating at the local level, SRED is also active nationally and regionally. Currently, they’re working on a significant problem that the indigenous people from the forest are facing—an ongoing Indian Supreme Court case that might leave millions of indigenous people landless. “Without land, there’s no life for us,” she said. “So once we have the land, then we have to work towards political power also. It’s land rights and political rights.”

Learn More:

• Learn more about IMADR (International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism) and Fatima’s work with them by clicking on the link.
• Listen to Fatima talk about her work with SRED by clicking on the link.
• Read the Colby article on Fatima and her work

2010 Oak Fellow

Ms. Mukoko is the National Director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), an NGO that monitors human rights abuses throughout the country. ZPP’s reports provide the international community with accurate assessments of human rights abuses, including violence against women and politically-biased distribution of food; it was particularly crucial during the violent 2008 election period.

Ms. Mukoko began her professional career as a broadcaster for the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, but transitioned into the field of human rights first with the Zimbabwe Civic Education Trust and later with the ZPP. She was one of the founding members of Radio Voice of the People, an independent station airing on a shortwave in Zimbabwe. Ms. Mukoko has been recognized internationally as a human rights defender. In March of this year she received the 2010 International Women of Courage Award from the US Department of State. Among her other honors are the 2009 Laureate of the City of Weimar Human Rights prize and the 2009 NANGO peace award.

A long-time leader in the human rights and activist communities in Zimbabwe, Ms. Mukoko was abducted from her home on December 3, 2008 by state security agents for her work monitoring the brutality of the Mugabe government. During her 21-day abduction, she was tortured, beaten, and forced to confess to a crime she did not commit. She remained detained until a court granted her bail on March 2, 2009.

Though Mukoko faced unimaginable circumstances not long before her time at Colby, the Fellowship offered her a safe space to recover and seek respite. “I sought a seed of healing while I was Colby. I think when I came there I was bruised. I had a lot of pain. I had a lot of anger.” It was also then that she began her book The Abduction and Trial of Jestina Mukoko, published in 2016. “When the book was eventually published, I think it just brought back memories of Colby.”

Ms. Mukoko began her professional career as a broadcaster for the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, but transitioned into the field of human rights first with the Zimbabwe Civic Education Trust and later with the ZPP. She was one of the founding members of Radio Voice of the People, an independent station airing on a shortwave in Zimbabwe. Ms. Mukoko has been recognized internationally as a human rights defender. In March of this year she received the 2010 International Women of Courage Award from the US Department of State. Among her other honors are the 2009 Laureate of the City of Weimar Human Rights prize and the 2009 NANGO peace award.

We thoroughly enjoyed having Jestina at Colby as the 2010 Oak Fellow. During her fellowship, she taught a one-credit, non-graded course, Incarceration and Human Rights: The Challenges Facing Human Rights Defenders (IN111). The course examined the political climate in Zimbabwe that has led to enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests of those who openly express their opinions on the Zimbabwean political situation. The course also analyzed the rights of those incarcerated in Zimbabwe.

Additional Information and Resources:

Jestina speaks with Geoff Nyarota, Managing Editor of the Zimbabwe Times, about her abduction, torture and detainment at the hands of Mugabe’s secret police in 2008.
Read a Colby Magazine article on Jestina.
Read a Colby Magazine article on “Celebrating Zimbabwe in Maine”

2009 Oak Fellow

The Oak Institute for Human Rights at Colby enthusiastically welcomed Hadas Ziv of Israel as our 2009 Oak Fellow. Ms. Ziv is the Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel). Born in Israel to parents of Jewish and Christian faith, Ms. Ziv has worked with PHR-Israel for 14 years. She began work at the organization in 1995 as an Intervention Coordinator where she received appeals from Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) whose right to health had been violated by Israeli practices. From 1998 to 2004, she served as Director of Projects at PHR-Israel, when the organization led advocacy campaigns for – among others issues – the right to health for residents in unrecognized Bedouin villages; the prevention of deportation of migrant families of chronically ill children; the prevention of deportation of refugees, children, and other migrants from Tel Aviv; prevention of torture; access to health care for Palestinians under the Israeli closure system in the OPT; and the right to health for Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem who were threatened with deportation. She was promoted to Executive Director of PHR-Israel in 2004. As such, she is responsible for guiding the mission of PHR-Israel and managing a full-time staff of 17 and over 1,500 members.

Even as Executive Director, Ms. Ziv remained on the front line of human rights work, leading her team in their campaigns including, but not limited to: helping Palestinians under siege in Gaza to gain access to health care; the promotion of health rights of Palestinian women married to Israelis, but denied civil status; the promotion of the rights of migrants living with HIV/AIDS in Israel without health insurance; and perhaps most successful, a campaign to pressure the Israeli Health Ministry to support health care provision for the influx of refugees and migrants from African conflict zones seeking asylum in Israel. Hadas, her husband Sani, and their three children joined the Colby Community for the fall of 2009 as the Oak Fellow.

Upon her return to Israel, she re-entered the field to work as a public outreach and ethics committee director rather than maintaining her role as executive director. According to Ziv, “I started to work much more on public outreach education and medical ethics,” she said. The new position entails working with students in medical fields to make human rights part of their professional practice, which is resonant with her experience with students at Colby.

In Israel, the lingering discussion is about who is entitled to receive healthcare from the government, she said. The organization helps treat those who have trouble accessing healthcare, and provides aid for Palestinians who need to travel to Israeli territory for treatment, and finds volunteer doctors to treat asylum seekers who have no resources. “It’s always like a jigsaw,” Ziv said. “You have to take charity from here and there.”

In hard times, she looks back on her Colby experience. “It is a memory that I keep with me when I want to get perspective,” she said. “I say, ‘Let’s breathe and think about Maine,’ because really it’s a marvelous place.

PHR-Israel’s Work

• Learn about PHR-Israel’s Mobile Clinic in Palestine
• Watch a video on PHR-Israel’s Open Clinic in Israel

Healthcare Conditions in Israel and the Occupied Territories

• Learn about the obstruction of access to health which patients in the Gaza Strip face
• Learn about the accusations of complicity in torture against an Israeli doctor

Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and Medical Ethics

• Learn how the Isreali military broke medical ethics in the Gaza Strip
• Read an article in The Haaretz on the killing of 16 medical workers during the Gaza operation

2008 Oak Fellow

In the fall of 2008, the Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights at Colby College welcomed Fellow Afsan Chowdhury of Bangladesh. As a journalist, Chowdhury has worked on various issues including sex education, sexual abuse, AIDS/STD awareness, children’s rights, refugee rights, minority identity, media rights, and most recently, environmental rights. From 1986 to 1994, Afsan was a staff member of UNICEF, where he worked on program communication and information activities. During his time at UNICEF, he contributed greatly to policy documents on AIDS and the media in India and Nepal. He was also named an Ashoka Fellow for his innovative work on sexual education among the Bangladeshi youth. Recently, Chowdhury has carried out independent assignments on developmental media and management issues for multiple international organizations, including UNDP and OXFAM. He has also worked as the Regional Director for PanosSouth Asia, and the Director of Advocacy and Human Rights for the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), one of the world’s largest NGOs. Afsan has written multiple books on health and environmental issues, refugees, and minority rights and identity. Additionally, Chowdhury has extensive experience in the print and broadcast media. He has been on the editorial staff of or acted as a contributor to leading Bangladeshi newspapers and journals for more than 20 years, and has contributed frequently to the BBC World Service and the BBC South Asian Service. He has also produced multiple video documentaries on social, political, and developmental issues in Bangladesh. His latest work to receive critical acclaim is a documentary film about climate change, “Who Cares if Bangladesh Drowns?”

Work at Colby

• Check out Afsan’s blog
•  
• Publications

Publications about Afsan:

• Read the articles “More Child Friendly Legal System Demanded” in The Daily Star and “Bangladesh Jails Children” in BBC News about Afsan’s work on children’s rights
• Read the article “Time for Action” about Afsan’s development work

Media

Climate Change:

• Watch Afsan’s documentary “Who Cares if Bangladesh Drowns?”: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, which was premiered internationally at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in November 2007
• Watch an interview with Afsan about his documentary “Who Cares if Bangladesh Drowns?”
• Hear Chowdhury’s opinion on worldwide climate problems
• Watch Afsan speak about the economic tolls of floods in South Asia
• Watch the “Hunger in the Wake of Climate Change in Bangladesh” clip

Myanmar/Burma:

• Learn about the turmoil in Burma
• Watch an interview with Afsan about his opinion on the announcement of elections and a referendum by the Burmese Junta

Climate Change in the News

• Read “In Search of a Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration and Displacement,” a recent report by the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, CARE International, and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at the Earth Institute of Columbia University
• Read an article in The New York Times about the “In Search of a Shelter” report
• Read “The Front Line of Climate Change” article about Afsan in Colby Magazine, Fall 2008

2007 Oak Fellow

In the fall of 2007 the Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights at Colby College welcomed 2007 Oak Fellow Nancy Sanchez of Colombia.

Nancy has been involved for nearly two decades in human rights work in Putumayo, one of the most conflictive areas of Colombia torn between several fronts of the guerilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and paramilitary forces.

She works tirelessly to document and denounce political violence, and for the development of an autonomous community. She also collaborates with local civic and peace initiatives and organizations, and supports the networks of women, indigenous people and Afro-Colombians.

Nancy’s work has been recognized by Amnesty International; she is also a recipient of the Letellier-Moffitt Human Rights Award from the Institute for Policy Studies in recognition of the critical role her work has played not only in Colombia but in U.S. policy debates.

“The students, they gave me the opportunity to be heard, to be understood, and in a way rearmed my struggle and give me a new energy,” Sánchez said.

During her Colby fellowship, she wanted her students to understand that Plan Colombia, a U.S.-funded plan to combat drug tracking as well as internal conflict, “was an excuse to intervene in the internal armed conflict in Colombia.” From her Oak teaching, she still remembers reading the comment “you rock!” in a student evaluation and holding a big celebration, Fiesta Colombiana, complete with Colombian musicians from Boston and Colombian food that Sánchez and her students prepared. Sharing a picture of her Colby hoodie via Skype, she said, “They gave me a beautiful gift that I keep by my side.”

The decades-long internal conflict was still ongoing when she returned to Colombia. “Between 2008 and 2012, I got many challenges in my work of human rights,” she said. “I managed this situation but it was so hard to come back to Colombia.”

She was part of the Minga Association, a human rights collective. In 2012 she worked at the Andean Parliament—the region’s “European Union.” The same year, she attended the Women Peacemakers Program at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice in San Diego, Calif., where her life story was collected in a publication. Now she’s working as the coordinator of the Alliance of Women Weavers of Life of Putumayo—a coalition of women’s organizations across 13 municipalities of Putumayo, Colombia. In 2011 she said they had over 40 women’s organizations, but now it’s more than 80, with almost 1,200 women leaders. “I think now it’s the biggest network of women’s organization in Colombia, recognized by the government.” After the 2016 peace agreement, the situation improved, but some challenges are still remaining, Sánchez said. In 2019 at least 120 leaders have been killed in different parts of the country while defending their land against multinational mining and oil companies. “In three years more than three hundred leaders have been killed,” she said. “Now we have two indigenous women threatened by armed actors because they defend their territories against some multinational oil company.”

In 2019 she helped submit Putumayo’s rst report to the truth commission, documenting 25 cases of sexual violence in just one of the villages that was taken by the paramilitary before the agreement. “We have more villages with hundreds of cases of sexual violence. We have now documented that for the truth commission and the special justice for the peace,” she said. Now the women are speaking up about what has happened to them—forced disappearances, massacres, systematic sexual violence. “We are really happy for peace,” she said, “but the post conflict is really complex.”

2006 Oak Fellow

In the fall of 2006, the Oak Institute welcomed Joan Omaming Carling of the Cordillera People’s Alliance.

Ms. Carling has been an activist and grassroots organizer in the Cordillera region of the Philippines for twenty years and is one of the foremost activists working on indigenous peoples rights and campaigning against dam and mining projects that are destructive to their communities.

Ms. Carling arrived in Maine in mid-August and was in residence during the fall semester. “At that time I was facing a serious threat to my life,” she said. “My colleagues had been killed, and I was completely stressed, getting burnt out because it’s not easy dealing with that kind of situation.” The fellowship came when she really needed a break. During the alliance’s campaign against mining, she said, none were built, which made the activists unpopular in some circles. “It [the fellowship] really helped me gain my balance a bit, but also strengthened further my commitment to human rights, also because the students were really warm, very interested in the issue.”

While at Colby, she taught one course that covered the human rights of the Filipino indigneous peoples in comparative perspective, examining communities’ struggles confronting environmental damage from large scale mining and dam operations. She returned to her work in the Philippines in mid-December.

At Colby, she found the students’ interest in human rights very inspiring. “I also started my activism as a youth, so it always gives me that hope that the young people will always nd their ways and means to contribute to shape their future,” she said, “and I felt that strongly also when I was at Colby.” Together with students, Carling visited indigenous people’s lands in Maine. Some Colby students later went to the Philippines for internships.

When she returned home, the situation had improved, enabling her to continue her work. In 2008 she moved to Thailand to work for the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact, where she twice served as the secretary general. She has also been involved with the United Nations as an expert on indigenous people’s issues. In May 2014, the Foro Internacional de Mujeres Indígenas (International Indigenous Women’s Forum) awarded Joan its annual Leadership Award. She was also recently featured in this article in Cultural Survivor magazine. In 2017 she became the co-convenor of the Indigenous Peoples Major Group for Sustainable Development. In 2018 she was included in a list of alleged armed rebels and labelled as a terrorist by the Philippine government; she was cleared in January 2019. The very same year, she won the Champions of the Earth award from the United Nations, the organization’s highest environmental honor.

Recently, Carling was in Copenhagen, Denmark, for a conference on climate change and the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “The biggest crisis that we’re facing is climate change. And the biggest ambition that we have is sustainable development. But they are looking at both issues, not from the lens of human rights, and that is the danger because it’s again business as usual,” she said.

Carling argues that combating climate change and achieving the SDGs cannot happen without the protection of indigenous peoples lands. “In Brazil,” for example, “their president is giving away the Amazon for mining, for ranchers, for logging, and even for business, eco-tourism. That’s a complete regression.”

In India, she said, conservation organizations started a legal battle, going as far as the Supreme Court, to overturn the Forest Rights Act, which allowed indigenous people, the adivasi, to claim their land in protected forests. She said that those organizations believed that indigeneous people would destroy the forest. “I’m so mad at them, so mad,” she said about those organizations, because the Indian Supreme Court might decide on the eviction of two million people. “Two million, that’s what they call the biggest eviction in the name of conservation,” she said.

2004 Oak Fellow

The 2004 Oak Human Rights Fellow was Chanthol Oung, the founder and executive director of the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center. She and her organization worked to help victims of domestic violence, sex trafficking, and rape, through intervention and protection services, legal assistance, monitoring, community education, and raising awareness through the media.

The CWCC has enabled thousands of women and children to leave situations of violence or exploitation through providing shelter, health care, counseling, vocational training, and reintegration with their families. In 2001, her work was recognized through receipt of both the Japanese Human Rights Award and the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership.

Chanthol is now living with her family in the United States. She is still a founder and Management adviser of CWCC and she also works as the manager of the Marriage Enrichment and Fatherhood project of the Cambodian Association of America and multiple groups in the Cambodian community here in the United States.

It was also through the fellowship that she was able to take a step back and evaluate her next steps. She conducted a study of human tracking laws in several countries, including the U.S., Cambodia, and the Philippines. She also from the Waterville police, who visited her class and talked about how they help domestic violence victims. “It was so impressive,” she said; at the time Cambodia didn’t have similar kinds of institutional support.

She continued to work with human rights organizations in the U.S. In 2017 she received her Ph.D. in public policy and administration. “My degree previously was on law,” she said. “In Cambodia there’s a lack of good policy writing, [that] is why I take public policy. We need to have good policy that share the common good.” Last December she returned to Cambodia and began working for Arbitration Council Foundation, a national organization settling collective labor disputes. Although she is no longer working on human tracking, she said, “in terms of human tracking and in terms of awareness raising, prosecution, are much better than before but the issue is still critical. Many Cambodians are poor, they still look for [a] job in a neighboring country. They will be tracked, they will be exploited. It’s still one of the serious issues that needs to be tackled.”

At Colby, she also thought of other services that her organization could do, such as launching a scholarship program for girls. “I feel that education was so helpful to protect a girl from human tracking during that time. And this program has continued for some of the girls now. Even some of them graduated from university right now,” she said. She also had Colby interns at her organization.Currently, the CWCC is planning to expand its programs and services to other provinces and countries, like the Kompong Cham province, where female trafficking is occurring all the time. Additionally they would like to expand to Malaysia as well and attempt to end abuses of Cambodian migrant workers and trafficked victims there. CWCC has also conducted research on trafficking of women to Taiwan and is lobbying both governments to address these issues. CWCC is fundraising to provide a national training to the elected commune counselors on newly adopted domestic violence law to help to create national and local networks of commune counselors to enforce the domestic violence law and provide appropriate intervention and protection for the victims.

The CWCC has also received many awards in the last few years. These include the United Nation of Population Award for promotion of women’s health and dignity, Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, Germany Award on Human Right, and International Women of Courage Award from the US State Department.

How Can I Help?

Want to learn how you can support the work of Colby’s 2004 Oak Fellow Chanthol Oung in her struggle to gain attention and accountability for her cause?

• Get involved with the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center and help women help themselves.

Read about Chanthol’s work

• Read the article “Trafficking’s lasting limbo” about the long term effects of human trafficking.
• Read the Colby magazine article “Sanctuary”

2005 Oak Fellow

The 2005 Oak Human Rights Fellow was Dr. Frances Lovemore, the medical director of the Amani Trust, the primary organization in Zimbabwe providing services and support to victims of human rights abuses. Dr. Lovemore is a medical doctor who has been involved in the documentation and treatment of victims of torture and organized violence. She has been involved in research methods of empowering survivors to address issues of reparation and redress, both locally and internationally.

At the local level, the independent Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission was established in Zimbabwe in 2012, and a peace and reconciliation commission has also been formed. “So there is progress,” she said. “It’s just that there isn’t a complete resolution of the issues.”

Despite the progress, torture and abuse continues. After the 2018 Zimbabwean election, “The army turned on the people and shot seven people dead in the streets, seven civilians,” she said. “January this year there were some protests, and eighty-seven people were shot and injured and thirteen people were shot dead and other people were raped by soldiers.”
“We still have a lot of fresh cases, which is very sad.”

Read the Colby magazine article about Dr. Lovemore.

2003 Oak Fellow

The individual chosen to become the 2003 Oak Human Rights Fellow was Raji Sourani, Esq., a prominent Palestinian human rights attorney. Mr. Sourani is director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, an independent legal body based in Gaza City dedicated to protecting human rights, promoting the rule of law, and upholding democratic principles in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Although Mr. Sourani was unable to assume the Oak Human Rights Fellowship due to difficulties related to his departure from Gaza and acquisition of an U.S. visa, he remains very active, focusing on documenting the human rights violations perpetrated in the Gaza Strip. Mr. Sourani has received many other human rights distinctions, including that of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Fund, of which he is a Laureate. His organization has Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC, is an Affiliate of the Federation Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l’Homme and the International Commission of Jurists, and is a member of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network.

2002 Oak Fellow

The 2002 Oak Human Rights Fellow was Ushari Ahmad Mahmud Khalil, Ph.D. Dr. Ushari Mahmud has worked for the past 15 years to document and protest human rights abuses in his home country of Sudan. He is an important advocate for the rights of internally displaced populations and of children affected by armed conflict in Sudan.

Dr. Mahmud received his Ph.D. in Sociolinguistics from Georgetown University in 1979 and subsequently undertook university teaching, research, and writing on language rights, cultural hegemony, and the use of discourse to distort and conceal the realities of violence in Sudan.

Since 1996, Dr. Mahmud has worked with UNICEF in the field of child protection in both Government- and rebel-controlled areas and in the UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office in Nairobi. He also worked on second-tier ethnic conflicts and peace building in Sudan.

As a human rights defender, Dr. Mahmud’s work has focused on violence against children in situations of displacement, slavery, abduction, recruitment in the military, incarceration in juvenile camps, discrimination, and the possession of small arms and light weapons.

In 1987, Dr. Mahmud co-authored a human rights report in which he exposed a massacre of 1500 internally displaced persons from the African Dinka group by an Arab Muslim Group allied to the government. In addition, the same report exposed to the world the practice of slavery and the complicity of the Sudan Government in its perpetration as a war strategy against the southern Sudanese rebels.

In 1990, Dr. Mahmud received international recognition for his work with a Human Rights Watch Monitor Award.
Because of his work with such sensitive issues, Dr. Mahmud was held for two years in preventive detention and banned from travel for a subsequent seven years by the current government in Khartoum. He is regularly defamed in the Khartoum media and attacked by top government ministers and officials because of his advocacy against slavery and a perception that he is a “secret member” of the rebel movement.

Recently, the rebel movement’s humanitarian wing informed UNICEF/Operation Sudan, where Dr. Mahmud currently works as a child protection officer for child soldier demobilization, that any extension of his work in rebel-controlled areas would not be welcomed. The rebel movement cited Dr. Mahmud’s outspokenness regarding human rights issues.

Dr. Mahmud describes his human rights work on child protection as combining both shaming and principled engagement with the Government and with the rebels. “But this does not mean that I take a morally neutral position between perpetrators and victims.”

2001 Oak Fellow

The 2001 Oak Human Rights Fellow was Sevdije Ahmeti, a 56-year old Albanian Kosovar, who has risked her life helping women and children war victims in Kosovo.

Ms. Ahmeti co-founded the Center for the Protection of Women and Children in Prishtine in 1993. The Center, of which she is currently Executive Director, now operates nine branches. Highly regarded by human rights practitioners familiar with her work, she has worked tirelessly to document hundreds of human rights abuses in the Kosovo region of the former Yugoslavia. She has published extensively, and collaborated with regional and international organizations and networks to promote greater protection for human rights across ethnic lines.

While her courageous work has focused on protection and rehabilitation and documentation of ethnic Albanian women and children victims of rape, torture and enslavement, she does not advocate nor practice discrimination based on ethnic origin, and has found treatment for many other human rights victims as well. The crimes carefully documented by Ms. Ahmeti and her colleagues have been used as evidence by the International Criminal Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

Because of her outstanding record, Human Rights Watch chose Ms. Ahmeti as one of four Human Rights Monitors for 1999. The Oak Institute was honored to have Ms. Ahmeti join the Colby community to teach about her work and to share her on-the-ground perspective concerning human rights and civil war in the Balkans region.

Until passing away from an aortic aneurysm in 2006, Ahmeti was a board member of the Kosovo Women’s Network (KWN), which includes more than 143 women’s organizations and is directed by Rogova. “She was, to be honest, like my big sister,” she said.

To keep her memory and legacy alive, last year KWN started an annual Sevdije Ahmeti Prize for activists. They’re also in close contact with the municipality of Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, to name a street or a town square after Ahmeti. “We asked the president’s oce to give post mortem decoration to Sevdije Ahmeti for the work she did for Kosovan women and children,” said Rogova. Ahmeti’s book, Journal d’une Femme du Kosovo (The Diary of a Woman from Kosovo), will be published in Albanian. “She will be remembered always as a brave activist who never was scared of anyone.”

Learn More:

• Oral History Kosovo, Sevdije Ahmeti in Her Own Words, 2014

2000 Oak Fellow

Héctor Hernan Mondragón Báez joined our community as the 2000 Oak Fellow. Throughout his activist career, he has worked to secure the cultural, economic, and environmental wellbeing of Colombians. His extensive human rights work has involved indigenous peoples, rural peasant communities, and the urban poor.

Born to a pediatrician and a chemistry professor, Mondragón lived a privileged early life. He turned 12 before finally seeing the shantytown neighborhoods in his own hometown of Bogotá. Visiting the “precarious lodgings” with his church group, the young man made a choice: “In these houses, I decided this was my life.” (See Colby Magazine 2000)

Following in his parents footsteps, Mondragón continued his education and eventually became a trained economist. However, Wall Street was never his goal. He had other plans in mind…

In 2000, he described the situation in his homeland: “Colombia is the most dangerous place on earth­ for the peasants. Last year [1999] there were 420 massacres…Indians, peasants, workers, children. The rural sector is the worst.” Corporate desires for resources drive the violence – the hydroelectric developers, mineral and oil companies, as well as powerful landowners. Just between 1985 and 2000, “and speculators, the political class, party leaders, and corrupt government officials” had dispossessed roughly 1.5 million rural Colombians of their lands. Twelve million acres gone. Mondragón has not been afraid to call the brutality what it is: “I call this bureaucratic capitalism . . . class domination.” (See Colby Magazine 2000)

In the late 1980s, Mondragón worked alongside the Nukak, a newly contacted indigenous group. Together, they established, what was at the time, the largest area of protected reserve lands in Colombia.. Later, Mondragón worked with the Embera Katio Tribe and joined their resistance to a hydroelectric development project threatening ancestral lands. Mondragon has also been a strong advocate for the U’Wa people – whose territories are increasingly encroached upon by multinational oil development. (See Colby Magazine 2000)

Mondragón has served as an advisor to the Indian National Organization of Colombia and the Peasant National Council in Colombia. Both are independent organizations that work at the grassroots, defending the basic rights of poor and marginalized groups in Colombia. He has also infiltrated powerful international institutions, such as the International Labor Organization, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the World Bank. Advising these groups, he has advocated for the land rights of indigenous peoples and peasants. (See Sojourner 2001 & Colby Magazine 2000)

Because of his work, Mondragón is no stranger to danger. In 2000, he explained that the governmental “regime runs an efficient system of elimination.” Political leaders who challenge the government often wind up dead; between 1985 and 2000, five presidential opposition candidates were murdered. (See Colby Magazine 2000)

If these statistics were not frightening enough, Mondragón has experienced direct threats to his and his family’s safety. In 1977, he was held against his will by a general from the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas, enduring torture for over a week. The event was unsurprisingly scarring; in 2001, he explained, “If you see me tremble…it’s not because I’m nervous, it’s because I was tortured when I was 23.” (See Sojourner 2001 & Colby Magazine 2000)

By 1998, Mondragón sought temporary refuge in Spain when his own daughter and son were threatened. Upon his return to Colombia, he found his name on hit lists belonging to the “regime” – corrupt government officials and powerful landowning elites. He explained the stress: “I can’t live in one place – change lodgings day to day. I can’t drive myself. If they see me, I’d be murdered.” (See Sojourner 2001 & Colby Magazine 2000)

Nevertheless, his response has always been to “[keep] working” (see Colby Magazine 2000).

After his time at Colby, Mondragon returned to Colombia and continued to live “underground.” In a 2001 interview with the Sojourner, he explained, “My work is not secret, but I always have to speak as I am today, somewhat covertly. To create a routine is to commit suicide. I have to make my appointments on short notice and only with people who are trustworthy. I don’t sleep in the same bed two nights in a row. I used to teach Sunday school, but now I can’t attend church any more. For the past two years, the government and paramilitaries are daily trying to figure out how to kill me…”

Awingly, it has been almost two decades since his time at Colby, and Mondragón continues on. He has published articles and books through the 2000s (see worldcat profile). Like he said he would in 2000, he keeps working.

References & Further Reading

• Colby Magazine (vol. 89, no. 4) 2000: “A Most Dangerous Place”
• The Sojourner 2001: “On the Ground in Bogotá, Colombia” by Rose Marie Berge
• Worldcat Profile

Publications

• 2012 Sector agropecuario : crecimiento limitado, rezagado y transitorio  by Héctor Mondragón Báez
• 2010 El capital inútil by Héctor Mondragón Báez
• 2010 Los mercados campesinos : comercialización alternativa de alimentos en Bogotá by Héctor Mondragón Báez (Book)
• 2009 La encrucijada agraria by Hector Mondragon Baez
• 2009 Los ciclos económicos en el capitalismo : las crisis, ¿cuándo y por qué? by Héctor Mondragón Báez (Book)
• 2008 Entrevista con Luis Macas, ex presidente de la Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (Conaie), y ex ministro de Agricultura de Ecuador by Luis Macas
• 2008 La batalla en Bolivia es decisiva para los pueblos indígenas by Héctor Mondragón Báez
• 2007 Caña de azucar, palma aceitera, biocombustibles y relaciones de dominacion  by Héctor Mondragón Báez
• 2006 Estatuto de Desarrollo Rural : un terron de tierra by Hector Mondragon Baez
• 2006 MOVIMIENTOS SOCIALES. UNA ALTERNATIVA DEMOCRÁTICA AL CONFLICTO COLOMBIANO by Héctor Mondragón Báez (Book)
• 2005/2007 La estrategia del imperio : todo para el capital transnacional by Héctor Hernán Mondragón Báez (Book)
• 2003 Magdalena Medio : Derechos Humanos y Desarrollo Regional by Asociación Campesina del Valle del Río Cimitarra (Book)
• 2003 Quien quiere dominar los territorios colectivos de indigenas y afrocolombianos by Héctor Mondragón Báez
• 2002 Plan Colombia : gasolina al fuego by Héctor Mondragón Báez
• 1999 Inversiones con violencia o inversiones para la paz by Héctor Mondragón Báez
• 1997 Colonización y estrategias de desarrollo by D Fajardo (Book)
• 1997 Otra vez el socialismo by Héctor Mondragón Báez (Book)
• 1986 Propuesta del campesinado by Héctor Mondragón Báez
• 1984 Ciclo, crisis y reactivación económica en Colombia by Héctor Mondragón Báez (Book)
• 1982 Cartilla del trabajador del campo : dibujos de “Calarca” by Héctor Mondragón Báez (Book)

1999 Oak Fellow

The 1999 Oak Fellow was Didier Kamundu Batundi. He has fought for decades to protect human rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His work has ranged from ensuring medical care for torture victims and helping Tutsis escape mob violence, to drawing international attention to human rights abuses and demanding freedom for political prisoners. (See Colby Magazine 1999).

By 1994, Batundi had established APREDECI (Action Paysanne/Peasant for Reconstruction and Integral Community Development). Based in Goma (a region of North Kivu,) the NGO specifically protects and advocates for local rural communities.

Four years after founding APREDECI, Batundi was exiled. Finding asylum in France, he continued his human rights activism, creating another NGO called SOPROP (Solidarité pour la promotion sociale et la paix/Solidarity for Social Promotion and Peace.) From afar, he worked on behalf of those suffering from violence in North Kivu; he secured financial support for victims and fought for global attention. Didier’s efforts got the attention of the Reebok Foundation for Human Rights, earning him the 1998 “Reebok Human Rights Award.” 

Still, Batundi had his work cut out for him. The same year, neighboring countries – Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi – invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Campaigning for peace became all the more vital and challenging. Batundi’s dedication to his home country was recognized in 1999 by the United Nations and Da Capo Foundation, who awarded him the “Global Youth Peace and Tolerance Award.” 

Colby College also took notice, selecting Batundi as its second Oak Fellow.

Since his fellowship, Batundi’s work has continued. In 2002, he organized an anti-war campaign in the Dominican Republic of the Congo. He has lobbied and partnernered with international organizations (including Amnesty International, OMCT, HRW, and IRCT) to work towards peace in the region. He also works locally in France, providing solidarity to African political refugees. 

SOPROP lives on, continuing to rehabilitate victims of torture, pusue justice in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and provide education about human rights as well as democracy. According to lesbahundes.com, “Didier Kamundu is still fighting with determination for the rehabilitation of the victims of the violence, for the advent of peace and for the establishment of a true democracy in his country.” 

References & Further Reading

• Colby Magazine: Didier Kamundu Batundi Receives U.N. Youth Peace Award
• Human Rights Watch: More About APREDECI

Publications

• Mémoire des crimes impunis: la tragédie du Nord Kivu, République démocratique du Congo (Memory of unpunished crimes, tragedy of North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo)