Thanks for posting the video on 'the rule of law'. I've prepared a glossary and activity for those of you who might be interested in doing some extra work.
ted.com
October 2014
Kimberley Motley
Let me tell you a story about a little girl
named Naghma. Naghma lived in a refugee camp with her parents and her eight
brothers and sisters. Every morning, her
father would wake up in the hopes he'd be picked for construction work, and
on a good month he would earn 50 dollars. The winter was very harsh, and
unfortunately, Naghma's brother died and her mother became very ill. In
desperation, her father went to a neighbor to borrow 2,500 dollars. After
several months of waiting, the neighbor became very impatient, and he demanded that he be paid back.
Unfortunately, Naghma's father didn't have the money, and so the two men agreed
to a jirga. So, simply put, a jirga is a form of mediation that's used
in Afghanistan's informal justice system. It's usually presided over by
religious leaders and village elders, and jirgas
are often used in rural countries like Afghanistan, where there's deep-seated resentment against the formal system. At the jirga, the men sat together and they
decided that the best way to satisfy the debt would be if Naghma married the
neighbor's 21-year-old son. She was six.
Now, stories like Naghma's unfortunately
are all too common, and from the comforts of our home, we may look at these
stories as another crushing blow to
women's rights. And if you watched Afghanistan on the news, you may have this
view that it's a failed state.
However, Afghanistan does have a
legal system, and while jirgas are
built on long-standing tribal
customs, even in jirgas, laws are
supposed to be followed, and it goes
without saying that giving a child to satisfy a debt is not only grossly immoral, it's illegal.
In 2008, I went to Afghanistan for a
justice funded program, and I went there originally on this nine-month program
to train Afghan lawyers. In that nine months, I went around the country and I
talked to hundreds of people that were
locked up, and I talked to many businesses that were also operating in
Afghanistan. And within these conversations, I started hearing the connections
between the businesses and the people, and how laws that were meant to protect
them were being underused, while gross and illegal punitive measures were
overused. And so this put me on a quest
for justness, and what justness means to me is using laws for their
intended purpose, which is to protect. The role of laws is to protect. So as a
result, I decided to open up a private practice, and I became the first
foreigner to litigate in Afghan courts. Throughout this time, I also studied
many laws, I talked to many people, I read up on many cases, and I found that
the lack of justness is not just a problem in Afghanistan, but it's a global
problem. And while I originally shied
away from representing human rights
cases because I was really concerned about how it would affect me both
professionally and personally, I decided that the need for justness was so
great that I couldn't continue to ignore it. And so I started representing
people like Naghma pro bono also.
Now, since I've been in Afghanistan and
since I've been an attorney for over
10 years, I've represented from CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to ambassadors to
little girls like Naghma, and with much success. And the reason for my success
is very simple: I work the system from the inside out and use the laws in the
ways that they're intended to be used.
I find that achieving justness in places
like Afghanistan is difficult, and there's three reasons. The first reason is
that, simply put, people are very uneducated as to what their legal rights
were, and I find that this is a global problem. The second issue is that even
with laws on the books, it's often superseded
or ignored by tribal customs, like in the first jirga that sold Naghma off.
And the third problem with achieving justness is that even with good, existing
laws on the books, there aren't people or lawyers that are willing to fight for those laws. And that's what I do: I
use existing laws, often unused laws, and I work those to the benefits of my
clients. We all need to create a global culture of human rights and be
investors in a global human rights economy, and by working in this mindset, we can significantly improve justice globally.
Now let's get back to Naghma. Several
people heard about this story, and so they contacted me because they wanted to
pay the $2,500 debt. And it's not just that simple; you can't just throw money
at this problem and think that it's going to disappear. That's not how it works
in Afghanistan. So I told them I'd get involved, but in order to get involved,
what needed to happen is a second jirga
needed to be called, a jirga of
appeals. And so in order for that to happen, we needed to get the village elders together, we needed
to get the tribal leaders together, the religious leaders. Naghma's father
needed to agree, the neighbor needed to agree, and also his son needed to
agree. And I thought, if I'm going to get involved in this thing, then they
also need to agree that I preside over it.
So, after hours of talking and tracking
them down, and about 30 cups of tea, they finally agreed that we could sit down
for a second jirga, and we did. And
what was different about the second jirga
is this time, we put the law at the center of it, and it was very important for
me that they all understood that Naghma had a right to be protected. And at the
end of this jirga, it was ordered by
the judge that the first decision was
erased, and that the $2,500 debt was satisfied, and we all signed a written
order where all the men acknowledged
that what they did was illegal, and if they did it again, that they would go to
prison… Thanks… And most importantly, the engagement was terminated and Naghma
was free. Protecting Naghma and her right to be free protects us.
Now, with my job, there's above-average
amount of risks that are involved. I've been temporarily detained. I've been
accused of running a brothel,
accused of being a spy. I've had a grenade thrown at my office. It didn't go off, though. But I find
that with my job, that the rewards far
outweigh the risks, and as many risks as I take, my clients take far
greater risks, because they have a lot more to lose if their cases go unheard, or worse, if they're penalized for having
me as their lawyer. With every case that I take, I realize that as much as I'm
standing behind my clients, that they're also standing behind me, and that's
what keeps me going.
Law as a
point of leverage is crucial in protecting all of us. Journalists are very
vital in making sure that that information is given to the public. Too often,
we receive information from journalists but we forget how that information was
given. This picture is a picture of the British press corps in Afghanistan. It
was taken a couple of years ago by my friend David Gill. According to the
Committee to Protect Journalists, since 2010, there have been thousands of
journalists who have been threatened, injured, killed, detained. Too often, when
we get this information, we forget who it affects or how that information is
given to us. What many journalists do, both foreign and domestic, is very
remarkable, especially in places like Afghanistan, and it's important that we
never forget that, because what they're protecting is not only our right to
receive that information but also the freedom of the press, which is vital to a
democratic society.
Matt Rosenberg is a journalist in
Afghanistan. He works for The New York Times, and unfortunately, a few months
ago he wrote an article that displeased people in the government. As a result,
he was temporarily detained and he was illegally exiled out of the country. I
represent Matt, and after dealing with the government, I was able to get legal acknowledgment that in
fact he was illegally exiled, and that freedom of the press does exist in
Afghanistan, and there's consequences if that's not followed. And I'm happy to
say that as of a few days ago, the Afghan government formally invited him back
into the country and they reversed their exile order of him.
If you censor one journalist, then it
intimidates others, and soon nations are silenced. It's important that we
protect our journalists and freedom of the press, because that makes
governments more accountable to us
and more transparent. Protecting journalists and our right to receive
information protects us.
Our world is changing. We live in a
different world now, and what were once individual problems are really now
global problems for all of us. Two weeks ago, Afghanistan had its first
democratic transfer of power and elected president Ashraf Ghani, which is huge,
and I'm very optimistic about him, and I'm hopeful that he'll give Afghanistan
the changes that it needs, especially within the legal sector. We live in a
different world. We live in a world where my eight-year-old daughter only knows
a black president. There's a great possibility that our next president will be
a woman, and as she gets older, she may question, can a white guy be president?
Our world is changing, and we need to
change with it, and what were once individual problems are problems for all of
us. According to UNICEF, there are currently over 280 million boys and girls
who are married under the age of 15. Two hundred and eighty million. Child
marriages prolong the vicious cycle of poverty, poor health, lack of education.
At the age of 12, Sahar was married. She
was forced into this marriage and sold by her brother. When she went to her
in-laws' house, they forced her into prostitution. Because she refused, she was
tortured. She was severely beaten with metal
rods. They burned her body. They tied her up in a basement and starved her.
They used pliers to take out her
fingernails. At one point, she managed to escape from this torture chamber to a
neighbor's house, and when she went there, instead of protecting her, they
dragged her back to her husband's house, and she was tortured even worse.
When I met first Sahar, thankfully, Women for Afghan Women gave her a safe haven to go to. As a lawyer, I
try to be very strong for all my clients, because that's very important to me,
but seeing her, how broken and very weak as she was, was very difficult. It
took weeks for us to really get to what happened to her when she was in that
house, but finally she started opening up to me, and when she opened up, what I
heard was she didn't know what her rights were, but she did know she had a
certain level of protection by her government that failed her, and so we were
able to talk about what her legal options were.
And so we decided to take this case to the
Supreme Court. Now, this is extremely significant, because this is the first
time that a victim of domestic violence in Afghanistan was being represented by
a lawyer, a law that's been on the books for years and years, but until Sahar,
had never been used. In addition to this, we also decided to sue for civil
damages, again using a law that's never been used, but we used it for her case.
So there we were at the Supreme Court arguing in front of 12 Afghan justices,
me as an American female lawyer, and Sahar, a young woman who when I met her
couldn't speak above a whisper. She stood up, she found her voice, and my girl
told them that she wanted justice, and she got it. At the end of it all, the
court unanimously agreed that her in-laws should be arrested for what they did
to her, her fucking brother should also be arrested for selling her —
(Applause) — and they agreed that she did have a right to civil compensation.
What Sahar has shown us is that we can attack existing bad practices by using
the laws in the ways that they're intended to be used, and by protecting Sahar,
we are protecting ourselves.
After having worked in Afghanistan for over
six years now, a lot of my family and friends think that what I do looks like
this. But in all actuality, what I do looks like this. Now, we can all do
something. I'm not saying we should all buy a plane ticket and go to
Afghanistan, but we can all be contributors to a global human rights economy.
We can create a culture of transparency and accountability to the laws, and make governments more accountable
to us, as we are to them.
A few months ago, a South African lawyer
visited me in my office and he said, "I wanted to meet you. I wanted to
see what a crazy person looked like." The laws are ours, and no matter
what your ethnicity, nationality, gender, race, they belong to us, and fighting
for justice is not an act of insanity. Businesses also need to get with the
program. A corporate investment in human rights is a capital gain on your
businesses, and whether you're a business, an NGO, or a private citizen, rule
of law benefits all of us. And by working together with a concerted mindset, through the people, public and private sector,
we can create a global human rights economy and all become global investors in
human rights. And by doing this, we can achieve justness together. Thank you.
Glossary and Notes
her father would wake up ... = her
father used to wake up
he demanded that he be paid back ... = he
asked that sb paid him back
deep-seated (resentment) =
firmly established at a deep or profound level, deep-rooted, fundamental,
basic, settled, entrenched
crushing (blow) = smashing, shattering,
crunching, violent
a blow = a knock, bang, hit, sock
a failed (state) = unsuccessful, collapsing, blown up
long-standing (customs) = well
established, enduring, long-lived, persistent
it goes without saying = it is
obvious
grossly (immoral) = totally, completely,
entirely
to be locked up = to be imprisoned, held captive
a quest = a search, pursuit, pursuance
justness = fairness, justice, equity
to shy away (from sth) = to be averse to, be opposed, be reluctant to,
disinclined to
(to work) pro bono = to do work voluntarily and
without payment or at a reduced fee
attorney = lawyer, legal representative
to be superseded = to be replaced, supplanted, displaced, overthrown,
overridden
to be willing = to be ready, prepared, disposed, inclined
mindset =
mentality, established set of attitudes held by a person
elders = old people, seniors
to erase = to delete, rub out, wipe out, scrape off, cancel
to acknowledge = to admit, accept, grant, allow, concede, appreciate,
recognize
to run (a brothel) = to manage, be in charge of, head, direct, control
brothel = house of prostitution
(it didn't) go off = explode, fire
rewards = prizes, recompense, winnings,
awards, benefits, payment
to outweigh = to be greater than, exceed, be superior, be heavier
than, prevail over
to go unheard = to be unattended, not taken care of, not done
leverage = control, advantage, influence
to be accountable to sb = to be responsible to, reporting to, subject
to
accountability = responsibility, liability,
answerability
metal rod = metal stick, pole, cane
pliers = tool for holding small objects =
pinzas
(a safe) haven = refuge, shelter, harbour
concerted (mindset) = coordinated, done with
joined effort or determination
Now,
paraphrase (= express the
meaning using different words) the
following sentences from the first paragraph of Ms Motley’s talk
Naghma
Let me tell you a
story about a little girl named Naghma.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………............................................…………………….
Naghma lived in a
refugee camp with her parents and her eight brothers and sisters.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Every morning, her father would wake up in the hopes
he'd be picked for construction work, and on a good month he would earn 50
dollars.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The winter was
very harsh, and unfortunately, Naghma's brother died and her mother became very
ill.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
In desperation,
her father went to a neighbor to borrow 2,500 dollars.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
After several
months of waiting, the neighbor became very impatient, and he demanded that he
be paid back.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Unfortunately,
Naghma's father didn't have the money, and so the two men agreed to a jirga.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
So, simply put, a jirga is a form of mediation that's used
in Afghanistan's informal justice system.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
It's usually
presided over by religious leaders and village elders, and jirgas are often used in rural countries like Afghanistan, where there's
deep-seated resentment against the formal system.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
At the jirga, the men sat together and they
decided that the best way to satisfy the debt would be if Naghma married the
neighbor's 21-year-old son. She was six.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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