Strength & Solidarity

South African human rights lawyer Kayum Ahmed’s entire career has been spent defending and extending the rights of excluded and oppressed people, at home and abroad.  But this former CEO of the South African Human Rights Commission harbors considerable doubt about whether the human rights framework rooted in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights can meet the demands of radical black and brown activists.

In this episode: 

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Excerpted from Strength and Solidarity Episode 2. Turkish human rights leader Murat Celikkan shares an Ariel Dorfman poem evoking the determination of the “disappeared” and their loved ones.

In 2017-18, South African social justice movement, Equal Education, went through a major –and very public -upheaval after allegations emerged of sexual harassment by members of the movement’s leadership.  General Secretary Noncedo Madubedube describes her root and branch effort to rebuild Equal Education’s culture and restore confidence in the organization.

In this episode:

For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, please visit www.strengthandsolidarity.org/podcast

Send us your ideas and your feedback at [email protected].

Excerpted from Strength & Solidarity Episode 1. A reading of the Persian poet Hafez’s ‘10,000 Idiots’ by Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Afghanistan’s Human Rights Commission chair Shaharzad Akbar talks about the challenge of entrenching and enforcing rights amid continuing conflict and violence against civilians. With a state that struggles to deliver public services and great uncertainty about the future of President Ashraf Ghani’s negotiations with the Taliban, how can Afghan citizens have confidence that the human rights framework give them meaningful protection?

In this episode: 

For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, please visit www.strengthandsolidarity.org/podcast 

Send us your ideas and your feedback at [email protected]

Strength and Solidarity is a podcast that takes you into the ‘engine room’ of human rights activism. Every two weeks, we invite human rights leaders to speak with us about the dilemmas they face, and the tactics they use to achieve their goals. By speaking with defenders at the heart of critical struggles, as well as the lawyers, journalists, researchers, artists and organizers engaged with their movements, we hope to offer an up-close view on the current and future course of human rights. Join Akwe Amosu as she interviews smart, passionate guests and check out The Coda –a regular opportunity for someone in the human rights field to tell us about the literature, music, and art that inspires them.