Tag Archives: Summer Abroad

Chayes Fellow Mira Chernick on working with Dejusticia in Colombia

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Mira Chernick at the Dejusticia offices and Iguaque National Park in Villa de Leyva.

Mira Chernick at the Dejusticia offices and Iguaque National Park in Villa de Leyva. Photos courtesy of Mira Chernick.

“I’m really enjoying the internship! All my assignments have been substantive. I started by translating a paper written by my supervisor about land restitution from Spanish into English, which helped me develop my Spanish skills and also expanded my background knowledge of the issue I’m working on. I then moved on to researching the different institutions and actors involved in developing and implementing policies for land restitution and other services for people displaced by the armed conflict. I’m spending the rest of my time here using that research to create a policy paper describing the current situation on land restitution, the problems with current policies for victims, and proposals for improving those policies and their implementation.

Because Dejusticia has many researchers working on a wide range of human rights issues both domestically and internationally, I’ve had the opportunity to learn about much more than land restitution. I’ve had conversations (in Spanish!) with my colleagues about the challenges of designing affirmative action policies in countries like Colombia where systems of racial classification and self-identification are more complex than in the United States, alternatives to incarceration for non-violent drug crimes, and global climate change as a human rights issue. I also had the good luck to be here during both the presidential run-off elections, which determined the future of the ongoing peace negotiations between the government and the FARC, and the World Cup, in which Colombia played (beautifully!) for the first time in 16 years. Through these experiences, I have learned a great deal about Colombian public policy, politics, and culture, while doing work that is substantive and meaningful.”

Mira is one of 22 HLS students working this summer in 14 countries under the auspices of the Chayes International Public Service Fellowship. Please visit our Chayes Fellowship page to learn more!

Updates from the 2014 Chayes Fellows

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The 2014 Chayes International Public Service Fellows are beginning to arrive and settle in to their summer placements.

Rebecca Donaldson arrived in Washington, DC, and started her work at Namati, which includes researching national legal aid frameworks to develop a toolkit for communities advocating for quality legal aid at scale. Rebecca is also working with Abigail Moy, ’09, a former Chayes Fellow who is now Namati’s program director of global operations.

Over in the Phillippines, Saptarishi Bandopadhyay, who is working for the Institute of Environmental Science for Social Change, reports: “…on the day after I got here I was packed off to the southern island of Mindanao and the rural villages of Bendum and Selahi, where I spent most of the week doing field visits with farmers who are enduring landslides, climatic changes, crop failure, debt, and loss of land and livelihood. The weekend was spent at a conference on land and water governance drawing physical and social scientists, community organizers, and theologians from across Europe and SE Asia, and where I assisted with documentation and, at the end, presented a synthesis of all the talks given under one stream of conversations (on sustainability). This is now the end of my second week, and have moved on to reviewing the progress of  post-disaster housing projects; leave for field-visits tomorrow…”

Stay tuned for more reports from the 2014 Chayes Fellows.

Meet the 2014 Chayes Fellows

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Twenty-two Harvard Law School students have been awarded the 2014 Chayes International Public Service Fellowship this summer. They are working abroad in Cambodia, Colombia, France, India, Israel, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Switzerland, and Uganda, as well as in Washington, DC. Please click here to read brief biographies and descriptions of their summer placements.

Summer International Travel Pre-Departure Information Sessions

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Required for ALL students who are receiving HLS funding for summer international travel, and strongly recommended for any students traveling abroad this summer.

Choose one session:

Tuesday, April 8 or Wednesday, April 9

12:00-1:30 p.m.

WCC Milstein East B

HLS requires ALL students who are receiving HLS funding for summer international travel to attend one of these information sessions. They will provide information about health, safety, and other travel considerations, as well as facilitate interaction among students who are going to, and have traveled to, particular regions.

Drinks and dessert will be provided; feel free to bring your lunch.

To RSVP, or for more information to determine which session will focus on particular regions, e-mail Alicia Clemente. Please indicate which session you will attend.

Chayes Fellow Brian Kelly ’15 on working with Open Society Afghanistan

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I really enjoyed my summer working with Open Society Afghanistan in Kabul. I spent the first half of my summer researching the role of Afghan civil society organizations in the peace and reconciliation process, which involved interviewing dozens of human rights organizations and activists in Afghanistan, and drafting a report that evaluated their progress and offered recommendations for the way forward. During the second half of my summer, I helped the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission – the government’s independent watchdog entity – draft the country’s first legislation offering compensation and assistance to civilian victims of the conflict. In addition to these projects, I also helped with the monitoring and evaluation of Open Society’s grantees, which took me to a number of interesting locations, including Herat where I visited Afghanistan’s only law school clinical program.

Everyone in my office was incredibly welcoming, and while I hadn’t given much thought beforehand to the fact that I’d be the only ex-pat working in the office, it was something that I truly came to appreciate. Both in and out of the office, I took every chance I could to practice Dari with Afghans, which was a great way to learn more about the country’s politics, history, and culture. Working in Afghanistan wasn’t without its challenges, but it was an incredibly rewarding experience, and I am grateful to the Chayes fellowship program for its support.