This week, I got deeper into the weeds of the ILF’s work by making progress on many different projects. Primarily, I was tasked with proofreading and fact-checking an 80-page ILF report regarding the organization's operations, legal cases, and outcomes in Myanmar. This report on the criminalization of gender allowed me to interact with numerous case studies of the hundreds of women and girls that the ILF has helped since and after the military coup in Myanmar in early 2021. By learning from the client stories of hundreds of women through their personal testimony, legal battles, and overt criminalization on misogynistic grounds, my worldview is beginning to be fundamentally shifted. Just as has occurred in classes I’ve taken at Columbia, where I’ve explored the barriers imposed upon transnationalism and promises of unequivocal human rights, the lived experiences of these women prove the flaws, or perhaps the misguided optimism, of such universal doctrines. This work is only inspiring me more so to pursue a career in international policymaking, which ensures that gender equity, amongst many other human rights, is enshrined in the practices of legal systems all across the world --- and not just in the most privileged parts of it.
I also got to craft the online campaigns for the ILF’s recent report on Tunisia and the application of holistic legal aid to defend criminalized children. For this project, I am crafting two separate targeted social media campaigns derived from impacted Tunisian communities, which aim to A) spread the word about the ILF’s services to Tunisian audiences and B) advocate for further funding of ILF work in Tunisia and across the world by targeting American donors. In crafting this report, my central concern was the same one that permeates in my brain and is at the core of my involvement with the ILF: How can I successfully and transparently portray the lived realities of ILF-served communities, without it being my own? How can I use my skills as an advocate to highlight and uplift such truths, transforming them into successful campaigns for change? This is a task that I am facing by rooting my efforts in the content and the people themselves. Starting and ending at the source is helping me successfully formulate these campaigns, and it is a practice that I will continue to pursue throughout my time at ILF.
Finally, I spent this week in the office getting much closer to my ILF family -- the community that makes all of this possible. Here is a picture of me and Samuel, another Laidlaw scholar who started this week, and with whom I am so excited to be sharing this amazing opportunity!
Also, and as a fun aside, Leah brought in Timothy, her friend's dog, to the office this week for us to hang out with. As a former dog walker and avid canine lover, this totally made my week!!
I’m looking forward to next week, when I will be attending the UNDP's 2026 Annual Meeting for Rule of Law and Human Rights -- so excited to learn, meet more community members who share my passions, and tell you all about it next week.