Long Fought Human Rights Victories Show the Importance of Staying the Course
30 June 2010
A core premise of Atlantic’s approach to philanthropy, underlying our plan to spend the foundation’s assets by the end of this decade, is that addressing issues now can prevent them from becoming larger, more serious challenges later. But investing now doesn’t always mean that change will come about quickly.
It’s easy to weary, and tempting to move on, when fights are long and hard, and the promise of change seems too distant to imagine. But change does happen, thanks to the tenacity and vision of front-line advocates. Along with them, Atlantic has recently celebrated two long fought and hard won victories in Northern Ireland and South Africa that I’d like to tell you about, and then say a few words about what that tells us about two social change battles now going on in the U.S.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010 was a profound and historic moment for justice and peace in Northern Ireland – an area of focus for Atlantic since we began funding there in the early 1990s. After a 12-year investigation, the results of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, also known as the Saville Report, were released, finding the killing of 14 unarmed civilians by the Parachute Regiment in Derry's Bogside on January 30, 1972 unequivocally “unjustified.” The report confirmed that British soldiers had lied to conceal their acts, invalidating the findings of the Widgery Inquiry in 1972, which had exonerated the British soldiers and labeled the demonstrators as rioters.
The Bloody Sunday Inquiry, and Prime Minister David Cameron’s earnest apology, were late but crucial vindication for the families of the victims who have campaigned assiduously for 38 years to gain justice and clear the names of their loved ones. A number of Atlantic’s grantees, most notably British Irish Rights Watch, also played an important role in supporting the families and getting the inquiry established. Atlantic’s Northern Ireland Country Director and Director of our Reconciliation & Human Rights Programme, Martin O’Brien, noted that “it was quite remarkable to see the crowd of some 10,000 people assembled in Derry applauding a Tory British Prime Minister as he wholeheartedly apologised for events 38 years ago.”
Though the recognition of wrongdoing can in no way undo the tragedy and injustice of that terrible day in 1972, it gives significant hope for reconciliation and peace into the future.
Last month, South African Atlantic grantees also celebrated a victory after a long fought battle when the Constitutional Court declared the Communal Land Rights Act of 2004 as invalid and unconstitutional. The Court’s judgement comes after six years of activism and legal challenges in the lower courts.
The case was brought by four communities from the Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West provinces and supported by grantees the Legal Resources Centre and the Rural Women’s Action Research Project. The ruling was hugely significant because it affects the rights of almost 24 million people who live in so-called “communal areas” – the remnants of tribal kingdoms or chieftaincies where traditional or customary law still holds sway. The Communal Land Rights Act would have further entrenched traditional or customary law and handed control of communally owned land over to unelected traditional leaders who do not always reflect the interests of local communities.
The case argued that the Act violated the Constitution because it restored “apartheid-era tribal units” and would have given traditional leaders undemocratic and unprecedented powers and undermined women's rights and black ownership of land.
Though this long fought battle is an important victory for the millions of people who live in rural communities in South Africa, our grantees are remaining vigilant to ensure that new legislation does not repeat the same violations present in the Communal Land Rights Act. They’ve launched a campaign to inform people in rural communities of the outcome of the case and to ensure that they, particularly women, can enjoy their rights under the constitution.
When I think about these victories – how long it took to achieve them, and how much remains to be done – I gain some perspective on two campaigns in which Atlantic and our grantees have been heavily engaged in the United States.
As I’ve written in previous columns, the United States celebrated a monumental victory earlier this year with the passage of health care reform – a battle that has been fought for more than half a century. Yet when asked at a recent Atlantic event on health care what lessons we learned from the battle, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne underscored the need for tenacity and stick-to-itiveness in words from his young son’s little league baseball coach: whenever things get tough or things get in your way, “keep coming at them!”
And surely tenacity is needed. Not only to improve upon the compromises made to enact the bill, but to fight an aggressive backlash in which some state legislatures and attorneys general are pressing for repeal or – in the revival of a term used by opponents of civil rights laws – “nullification” of the new law. Moreover, there are considerable challenges of making the law work for its intended beneficiaries. That’s why after the bill’s passage, Atlantic pulled together a team of staff from our Ageing, Children & Youth, Reconciliation & Human Rights and Advocacy departments to coordinate investments in grantees working on issues of implementation, particularly for older adults and children, and to provide targeted support for defense of the new law.
A victory that still lies ahead – a path to citizenship for 12 million undocumented workers and families in the U.S. – has in recent weeks seemed more distant, as the State of Arizona and, just this week, a town in Nebraska, passed draconian and discriminatory anti-immigrant laws, and comprehensive reform seems mired in partisan struggles in Washington. But these setbacks have only sharpened the issues at stake, and a few days ago we approved an additional $2.5 million grant to Reform Immigration for America, the campaign that is leading the battle for reform.
The fight for social justice is not easily won, and never really over. But as these recent victories demonstrate, hard work and tenacity, and keeping an eye on the end goal, no matter what obstacles lie in the path, can change the course of history and make profound change for millions of people throughout the world.
Gara LaMarche
Holding RI4A Accountable
I hope that in handing Reform Immigration for America another $2.5 million that Atlantic Philanthropies holds the organization accountable for it's many missteps over it's inception. Unfortunately, it has become clear that RI4A isn't accountable the immigrants its supposed to be helping, so it's up to foundations like Atlantic Philanthropies to hold RI4A accountable.
RI4A's first mistake has been it's lack of transparency and honesty with the hundreds of thousands that it has organized. RI4A continually pushed the timeline for immigration back without offering any explanation. I understand how difficult it has been legislatively, but it's important that RI4A is honest about that with the folks it organizes, too. If not, it just breeds cynicism and despair within RI4A's base.
RI4A has also made a series of strategic missteps that have resulted in embarrassing public flaps. First, was the decision to exclude LGBT groups from the coalition in hopes of attracting the support of the religious right. That did not assist in anyway as we still have no Republican movement on immigration reform.
RI4A also made a huge mistake in failing to prepare for the possibility that immigration reform would not move this year. It left the migrant youth movement with no choice but to publicly call out RI4A and organize against it in hopes of a chance that at the very least the DREAM Act would pass this year. This also resulted in embarassing public flaps that were seized upon by prominent nativists.
Now, RI4A is pushing CIRASAP which has absolutely no chance of passing in this Congress, and RI4A has also ceased funding states which have some of the most crucial votes for the DREAM Act.
Again, I hope Atlantic Philanthropies holds RI4A accountable for these missteps, or at least forces RI4A to have a mechanism for accountability, because at this point there has been no accountability whatsoever, and if we fail to get any sort of immigration reform this year, RI4A will bear a substantial portion of the blame for that.
Staying the Course for Education
These two victories are particularly powerful for me as an advocate of universal education.
We are often too quick to look at the grim statistics: 72 million children are without access to primary school. In sub-Saharan Africa, only 24% of girls enroll in secondary school. Another 71 million adolescents are not enrolled in secondary school and millions of children do not receive the quality education they deserve.
Amidst these statistics, we forget to celebrate our progress. A decade ago, prior to the renewed commitment to the Millennium Development goal of universal primary education, 115 million children were not enrolled in primary school. Only because of the global progress on primary enrollment is there an increased need to focus on post-primary education pathways -- especially for young women and girls. And only because more children are enrolling in school, are we able to move beyond the false access/quality dichotomy.
When advocating for the right to an education, it seems tackling one challenge only leads to another challenge and more questions. But without perseverance, we would not have come this far.
It is my hope that one day the right to an education will join these two victories from Northern Ireland and South Africa, where long-term investment in will lead to a brighter future full of opportunity for all of the world's children.
Showing and Telling Matters
It is important to celebrate such significant victories, both for the sake of those involved, and so others watching the work that foundations and their grantees do know what they are accomplishing. It's especially important to do that in cases where -- as you note -- change only comes about when people are tenacious and willing to stay with it. After all, change doesn't occur by accident, but rather when people make it happen.
Thank you!
I grew up in Northern Ireland and the stories about Bloody Sunday filled my childhood. This agreement was late, yes, by many years. But its meant a lot to me and to my family. Symbolism really matters sometimes.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere
Thank you for this update, Gara. It is indeed heartening to see evidence that affirms the words of Martin Luther King, Jr, spoken in 1967 during his "Where Do We Go From Here?" speech: "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."
Atlantic's ongoing efforts, and these recent successes, are truly a testament to this belief. And yet, there is so much more work still to be done.
The moral lessons learned from both Northern Ireland and South Africa are distressingly applicable to Israel's continued colonization, oppression, dehumanization, displacement, disenfranchisement, dispossession, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and willful murder of Palestinians, both within the undeclared borders of Israel and in the illegally occupied territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.
Over the past 62 years, since Israel's unilateral - not UN-approved, as commonly thought - declaration of ethnocentric statehood and accompanying aggressive expansion, the indigenous Palestinian population has been subject to constant, and increasingly lethal, assaults on human rights, civil liberties, and self-determination. Continued Israeli actions, from collective punishment to brutal blockade to institutionalized discrimination to garrison settlement to extrajudicial killings to devastating military attacks on a helpless and imprisoned civilian population, all demonstrate Israel’s historic and unabated contempt for international law and basic moral decency.
All the more relevant to the recent legal victories of the Saville Report and determined unconstitutionality of the Communal Land Rights Act, is the fact that, for six decades now, Israeli officials and soldiers have been nearly immune to criticism – let alone prosecution or conviction – for their illegal, immoral, and murderous actions. The findings and subsequent results of internal investigations – if there even were any to begin with - into the Israeli massacres of Qibya (1953), Kufr Qasem (1956), the USS Liberty (1967), the ‘Land Day’ shootings (1976), Operation Litani (1978), Qana (1996), the events of October 2000, Jenin (2002), the invasion of Lebanon (2006), and the 22-day assault of Gaza (2008-9) during which the Israeli military killed over 1,400 Palestinians are proof that the IDF and the Israeli government refuse to take responsibility for their own war crimes and crimes against humanity and continue to murder Palestinians and Lebanese civilians with impunity. Soldiers are neither charged for killing unarmed civilians and war criminals are elected as heads of state.
Unfortunately, the United States government is wholly complicit in shielding Israel from any real scrutiny, investigation, or punishment. In the past 40 years, the US has vetoed over 45 United Nations Security Council resolutions that were considered “critical” of Israel in some way. Among the numerous resolutions vetoed by the US were drafts endorsing the self-determination, and in some cases the “inalienable rights,” of Palestinians. The Goldstone Report has been similarly dismissed by both the United States and Israel, despite its objective and irrefutable conclusions.
This trend continues to this day, as the international community calls for an open investigation into the recent murder of nine peace activists during an IDF raid on a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip while the ships were in international waters. Both Israel and the United States refuse to endorse such an investigation, instead relegating responsibility for such an inquiry to Israel itself. There is no doubt the result will be a sort of "Widgery Inquiry Redux," with Israel exonerating its own soldiers and officials as acting "justifiably" and labeling the dozens of dead and wounded activists as rioters and terrorists, as it has already tried to do – with fawning and uncritical acceptance from both the United States government and media.
Now that some semblance of justice has reached the victims of both Bloody Sunday and South African Apartheid – noteworthy and inspirational, albeit decades late – how long will it take for justice to – inevitably - come to the Palestinians?
Hopefully, dynamic and vital organizations like Atlantic Philanthropies will continue to act assiduously on behalf of the moral universe and will succeed in shortening its long arc.
Media coverage of human rights // immigration
Nice to hear about these stories. I'm in the U.S. and even though I saw something about the agreement in Ireland, it was little more than a sidenote in most of the media I watch and read. I had no idea it was so significant - these victories are really moving to hear about. Thank you!
I'm a little less optimistic about immigration reform though. I'd welcome your thoughts over how that issue is going to play out over the next few months and how we win passage of something there; it looks like it could be pretty ugly politically.
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