Rights & Wrongs

The gig economy has exploded across the globe. Whether organizing food deliveries or providing domestic labor, the companies behind these apps are making billions by using algorithms to assign tasks, set pay, evaluate performance, and even fire workers.

For the companies that built these systems, the model promises high rewards and low risk. But for workers, like Apraham, Agnes and Graeme, they’ve rewritten the rulebook, shifting the dangers of doing business onto their shoulders while limiting their control over earnings and working conditions. This week, host Ngofeen Mputubwele speaks to gig workers and researcher Léna Simet about the pitfalls of these platforms, and what governments can do to help.

Apraham Urfalian: Uber driver in Lebanon

Agnes Mongera: Platform worker in Kenya

Graeme: Bicycle courier in Scotland

Léna Simet: Senior Advisor on Economic Justice, Human Rights Watch

In late 2024, the international football association (FIFA) announced that Saudi Arabia would host the 2034 World Cup. This means the world’s largest sporting event will be taking place in a country where the government imprisons scores of activists and dissidents for peaceful criticism, denies women fundamental civil and human rights, and cheats migrant workers out of their pay, after treating them brutally.

There’s a word to describe countries notorious for human rights abuses hosting major sporting events: “sportswashing.” Host Ngofeen Mputubwele traces the history of sportswashing from the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany to Saudi Arabia’s hosting of the World Cup. What can fans and athletes do to fight back against sportswashing? Listen to find out.

Minky Worden: Director of Global Initiatives at Human Rights Watch

John Hird: Co-founder of Newcastle United Fans Against Sportswashing

Now that Maung has learned about the history of the Rohingya community, he begins working towards an escape route. He hopes to leave the refugee camp and get an education so that he can advocate for his community. But his freedom of movement is limited and educational resources are scarce. This week, host Ngofeen Mputubwele charts Maung’s journey out of the refugee camp in Bangladesh and into New York City.

But even when Maung, and other refugees like him, settle into their new homes, the human rights abuses they have suffered linger. How is mental health impacted not only by past atrocities, but also by the current systemic mistreatment of refugees? And with refugees becoming political flash points across the world, what can be done to support refugee communities around the globe?

Maung Sawyeddollah: Agent of Change, Rohingya Muslim

Philippe Bolopion: Executive Director, Human Rights Watch

Nadia Hardman: Researcher, Refugee and Migrant Rights Division at Human Rights Watch

Emina Ćerimović: Associate Director, Disability Rights Division at Human Rights Watch

Spyros Orfanos: Director, New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis

Now that he’s arrived in Bangladesh, Maung finds himself stuck in an in-between. He’s safe from the violence he faced in his home state of Rakhine, Myanmar, but there are restrictions on his freedom of movement, limiting his education and leaving him to grapple with the history that brought his community to the world’s largest refugee camp.

In this episode, host Ngofeen Mputubwele traces this history. Within the story of ethnic cleansing and apartheid enacted upon the ethnic Rohingya community, other big themes rise up. Witnesses and experts recount the role that social media played in Maung’s trajectory, and point to other communities facing this crisis across the globe.

Maung Sawyeddollah: Agent of Change, Rohingya Muslim

Matt Schissler: Lecturer in history and anthropology at the University of Melbourne

Htaike Htaike Aung: Director of the Myanmar Internet Project

Kaamil Ahmed: Journalist for The Guardian; author of "I Feel No Peace"

Shayna Bauchner: Researcher, Asia Division at Human Rights Watch

Maria Ressa: Nobel Peace Prize laureate; co-founder and CEO of Rappler

When Maung and his family, his neighbors, strangers, cross the border from Myanmar into Bangladesh, they are officially refugees. But there’s no rest for the weary, and the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees escaping to Bangladesh have to build a refugee camp for themselves. As Maung helps his family assemble a temporary shelter, a sort of shadow city starts to rise up around them. Almost a decade later, Maung’s family is still in Cox's Bazar.

This week, Maung, other refugees and experts take listeners through a tour of life in the world’s largest refugee camp and life as a refugee more broadly.

Maung Sawyeddollah: Agent of Change, Rohingya Muslim

Chinda Precious: Nigerian refugee

Johannes van der Klaauw: Former representative at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Tamanna Tiku: Urban Designer

Mausi Segun: Executive Director of the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch

Nadia Hardman: Researcher, Refugee and Migrant Rights Division at Human Rights Watch

Kyle Knight: Former Associate Director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch

Belkis Wille: Associate Director of Crisis & Conflict division at Human Rights Watch.

Emina Ćerimović: Associate Director, Disability Rights Division at Human Rights Watch

When anti-Rohingya sentiment turned into gunshots in Myanmar in 2017, 16-year-old Maung Sawyeddollah was forced to flee. But what do you do when you’re forced to leave your home? Where do you go? This week on The Great Unrooting, host Ngofeen Mputubwele asks how migrants get from here to there.

What happens if you need medicine while you’re traveling or are living with disabilities that make traveling difficult? What challenges do migrants face as they make these strenuous journeys?

This week, we hear from people around the world who have faced these questions. We hear about Maung’s mom, who fled while pregnant. Her story, alongside accounts from HRW researchers, paints a picture of resilience and bravery of the migrants who risk everything in pursuit of safety.

Maung Sawyeddollah: Agent of Change, Rohingya Muslim

Nadia Hardman: Researcher, Refugee and Migrant Rights Division at Human Rights Watch

Emina Ćerimović: Associate Director, Disability Rights Division at Human Rights Watch

Lindsay Mputubwele: Doula and child-birth educator

Chinda Precious: Nigerian refugee

Hanaa Rahimi: Former Afghan policewoman sharing her story under alias

Maung Sawyeddollah grew up in a small town in Myanmar where, for years, life felt ordinary. That was before the rumors began. Social media fueled sectarian division, communities turned against each other. Then the soldiers arrived. It was a balmy night in August 2017 when Maung first heard the sound of gunfire. His family was forced to make an impossible choice: stay in the home they love or embark on a perilous journey to Bangladesh. They grabbed a few belongings and fled.

Through Maung’s extraordinary story—from fleeing for his life in Myanmar to attending the prestigious New York University—this episode explores the moment Maung’s family made the fateful decision to abandon their home, and the heart-wrenching decisions millions of people face when the world they know becomes unlivable.

The Great Unrooting begins with one life, and opens onto a global story of displacement, resilience, and hope.

Maung Sawyeddollah: Agent of Change, Rohingya Muslim

Mausi Segun: Executive Director of the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch

Nadia Hardman: Researcher, Refugee and Migrant Rights Division at Human Rights Watch

Kyle Knight: Associate Director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch

Belkis Wille: Associate Director of Crisis & Conflict division at Human Rights Watch.

Welcome to The Great Unrooting, a five-episode narrative podcast special season of Rights & Wrongs that explores what it means to lose home — and what it takes to start again. Anchored in the story of Maung, a Rohingya refugee now living in New York, the series traces his journey of flight, survival, and rebuilding and explores displacement at a moment when more people are forcible displaced than at any point since World War II.

Excerpt from forthcoming poem, "The Rusted Key" by Kumar M. Tiku.

The rights of LGBT people are on the chopping block across the world, with new countries criminalizing same-sex practices and banning representation of queer relationships in 2025. However, the landscape for LGBT rights has also shifted tremendously towards progress over the past decades. What gives? 

This week, we explore the texture of progress for LGBT rights. As Indonesia prepares for a new Criminal Code that will outlaw same-sex relations, prominent local advocate Dédé Oetomo charts the trajectory of LGBT rights from cultural openness to increasing repression. Indonesia’s path illustrates a pattern of both forward movement and backtracking on the rights of LGBT people across the globe.  

Dédé Oetomo: Scholar and activist 

Kyle Knight: Associate Director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch 

Phillip Ayoub: Professor in the Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy at University College London 

Since April 2023, more than a half-million people have been displaced in Sudan due to fighting between two armed forces who were once aligned. The story of how the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces turned on each other, with devastating consequences for Sudan’s civilians, can be traced back to 2013 when a group of dissidents were told by their interrogators to ride a bicycle drawn with chalk on the wall of a Sudanese jail.  

Detained for providing legal support to torture survivors, Human Rights Watch researcher Mohamed “Mo” Osman was introduced to the power structures that have shaped today’s conflict. In “The Chalk Bicycle,” host Ngofeen Mputubwele takes listeners through a decade that began with conflict, then saw the ousting of a dictator and great hopes for democracy only to be plunged back into conflict again.  

Mohamed Osman: Researcher, Africa Division at Human Rights Watch 

Christopher Tounsel: Associate Professor of History, Director of Graduate Studies and Director of African Studies Program at the University of Washington