Abby and Adam review films during a meeting.

by Abby Goldberg

This post follows the previous update on Adam and my trip last month to Nigeria.  We learned about many challenging human rights issues that local groups are facing. Some of the major challenges we were told about involve the struggle for freedom from violence and persecution, including the issues listed below that groups we met with are working to change.

Forced displacement (mostly of slum communities in Lagos): Forced displacement has long been a challenge for Nigeria’s poor. Lagos is attempting to develop a new waterfront area, informally named “Atlantic City”, which will largely service wealthy clientele, while displacing some of the most marginalized and impoverished communities.  The development of this area also provides an additional, illegal source of income for members of the government who, through corruption, take large sums of money off the top of developer contracts.    The sheer scale of the housing crisis in the sprawling megacity of Lagos is hard to imagine – there may be as many as 10 million people living in informal housing, and thus under threat of forced eviction.

Members of the Maroko community, for example, who we met with during the last day of our trip, told stories of their 23 year battle to “resist” government agents who come unannounced with bulldozers and literally move everything, people included, that are in the way as it destroys the homes and livelihoods of the poor.  The leader of the community, Samuel Aiyeyemi, shared stories of his work to organize Maroko inhabitants.   He said their organizing efforts would never have been possible without the important work of groups like Social and Economic Rights Action Center (SERAC), which organizes slum communities and takes legal action on their behalf.  Historic communities like Makoko-on-Water, and massive slums that house many thousands of Lagos residents remain under threat. Unfortunately, despite the valiant efforts of these lawyers and community organizers, this remains an uphill battle with powerful economic forces at stake.

Extrajudicial killing: The pervasiveness of extra-judicial killing, or unauthorized murder by state police and security forces, is a critical and urgent issue to address in Nigeria.  During one meeting with the Legal Defence Assistance Project (LEDAP), we met with a lawyer who showed us both video and a report LEDAP had compiled which contained hundreds if not thousands of individual stories of deaths at the hands of police and state agents. Many of these murders have gone unsolved without investigation, contributing to a culture of impunity in the country.

In a separate meeting, we also discussed the dismal conditions under which police work in Nigeria, including months without pay, minimal training, and poor treatment by authorities.  Just like so many other Nigerians, they struggle in poverty to survive.  While this situation is no excuse for murder, it is also important to understand the conditions that generate the extrajudicial violence and corruption in order to learn how we can make an impact.  In fact, some of the best sources of information about police abuse that our partners use comes from police who are unable to speak out for fear of reprisal but are appalled by the lawlessness among police in Nigeria.

Violence against women:  Sexual violence is one of the most pressing problems in the country, and it remains an under-reported crime, in part because sexual abuse and harassment by police discourage many women from coming forward with their experiences. Under the weight of this endemic violence, however, there are several NGOs working to address this issue.  For example, we learned how new model police stations in Lagos employ female officers and offer a specific desk for female victims of violence which is intended to encourage more reporting. It remains to be seen whether this will be an effective remedy, but I hope it will be a step in the right direction.

These are just three issues regarding freedom from violence and persecution. My next post will address another set of rights that Nigerians are working to secure: political, legal, and environmental rights. 

Participants of the N-Map workshop at the MacArthur Foundation in Abuja

by Abby Goldberg

Last week, N-Map Executive Director Adam Stofsky and I traveled to Nigeria as part of a year-long project supported by the MacArthur Foundation. Our goal is to explore how N-Map can support the work of local groups in Mexico and Nigeria to advance human rights through the integration of tactical video and new media into legal and advocacy campaigns.

Nigeria is not an easy or simple country.  With over 160 million inhabitants (on record), it is larger than the rest of West Africa combined.  The nation has a long history of political instability, which was exacerbated by the discovery of oil in the 1970s.

Over six days in Nigeria, we split our time between Lagos and Abuja.  The two cities could not be more different.  Lagos is a sprawling, boisterous city of millions (estimates range from 11 million to as high as 21 million!).  The city is an exceptionally vibrant mix of chaos and enterprise, of poverty and creativity.  It is hectic, noisy, sprawling, and traffic-ridden – but many Lagotians have a deep passion for their city. Abuja, the capital, by contrast, was designed by urban planners, and the city sports green vegetation and flowers, organized roads, and a much greater number of “oyibo”, or white people, as they are called.  There is also a much stronger Muslim presence than in the predominantly Christian south.

In both cities, Adam and I presented N-Map’s work to two groups of about twenty organization leaders, and held strategy sessions with seventeen individual organizations. (See end of post for more information on these groups) The human rights defenders we met exhibited their amazing resiliency in the face of incredible challenges, a spirit that proved inspiring.  Meeting with so many different organizations, we had the opportunity to learn about all kinds of human rights challenges facing Nigeria such as forced displacement, extrajudicial killing, police abuse, sexual violence, among numerous others as well as diverse approaches to addressing them, from paralegal and community health work, litigation, public advocacy campaigns, work directly with the government and police to develop model police stations and advocate for better pay for police as a strategy to fight corruption, and more.  (These will be written about in more detail in subsequent posts).  From feedback we’ve received thus far, we have been excited and encouraged to learn that our work helped to spark new thinking among groups working on the ground in how to incorporate media into their advocacy for greater impact, and there is widespread interest in working with N-Map in the future.

Over the next week, we will be posting to the blog to discuss the major issues which the human rights community in Nigeria is confronting, as well as initial thoughts about N-Map’s findings as we develop plans for future collaborations in country. We look forward to hearing our online community’s feedback, reactions, and most importantly, suggestions.

MDGs sign ironically placed in slum community under threat near Lagos.

This first post focuses on two of the major issues that pervade every human rights battle in the nation: corruption and impunity.

CORRUPTION: The most prominent and pervasive issue we heard about, that touches almost every human rights problem in Nigeria, is corruption. In fact, on Transparency International’s 2012 Corruption Perception index, which tracks the level of fraud and exploitation in all nations’ government and public sectors, Nigeria ranks a low 139 out of 174.  During one meeting, I learned that despite thirteen years of 6% growth in GDP, poverty is rising in Nigeria. While one would have expected a rise in GDP to equate to a reduction in economic hardship among the larger population, the resources are illegally used for personal enrichment rather than the combat the myriad of problems the state is facing.

IMPUNITY: Another equally pressing issue undercutting many groups’ work is impunity.  With minimal investigation into criminal accusations, and a dismal rate of prosecution, most criminals in Nigeria get away with their crimes, which only further encourages unlawful behavior. One poignant example emerged while Adam and I were in Nigeria, as all the major news outlets covered the possibility of amnesty for an Islamist insurgent group operating in the North called Boko Haram.  Boko Haram is responsible for more than 2,000 deaths in their attempts to create an independent Islamic state in the nation’s predominantly Muslim North. Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan argued that an amnesty might offer the group an incentive to stop the violence and engage in peaceful, democratic discussions. However, if given amnesty, why wouldn’t other violent insurgents also feel free to commit heinous crimes as an entry point for negotiation with the government? The amnesty offer seems particularly toothless because the Boku Haram won’t even accept it!  This is just one concerning example of the widespread impunity we are working with.

While the above two issues pervade almost all of the specific areas of human rights we learned about, their effects pervade all the other issues human rights groups are working on as well, which we will discuss in our upcoming posts. Stay tuned!

Organizations We Met With in Nigeria:

1. National Human Rights Commission - http://www.hrcr.org.ng/
2. Enough is Enough – http://eienigeria.org/
3. WRAPA – http://www.wrapanigeria.org/
4. WARD-C – http://wardcng.blogspot.com/
5. IPAS Nigeria – http://www.ipas.org/en/Where-We-work/Africa/Nigeria.aspx
6. WANGO-NET- http://wangonet.org/
7. Global Rights – http://www.globalrights.org/site/PageServer?pagename=www_africa_nigeria
8. Open Society Foundations West Africa – http://www.osiwa.org/
9. SERAC – http://www.serac.org/
10. SERAP – http://serap-nigeria.org/
11. LEDAP – http://www.ledapnigeria.org/
12. Access to Justice – http://accesstojustice-ng.org/history.php
13. Partnership for Justice – http://pjnigeria.org/
14. Centre for Democracy and Development – http://www.cddwestafrica.org/index.php/en/
15. Justice for All – http://www.j4a-nigeria.org/
16. Yar’adua Center - no website link
17. Community groups in Ilasan slum.

On April 18, 2013, dozens of Uruguayan activists, politicians, and civil society members gathered at the Centro Cultural de España in Montevideo for the premiere of the campaign videos for Nunca Más Qué, (Never Again, What?). This campaign aims to mobilize support in Uruguay and abroad to ensure that the leaders in the country know that impunity violates the state’s responsibility to ensure the human rights of its citizens.

The New Media Advocacy Project (N-Map), along with its partner the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), launched this innovative effort to push the frontiers of current work that seeks to implement regional courts’ decisions, in this instance, the Gelman case in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. N-Map and CEJIL produced two short videos, Nunca Más Qué, a shorter film seeking to engage all Uruguayans about the relevance and important of justice in their nation today, and Romper el Muro de la Impunidad, which includes interviews with victims, experts, academics, and leading politicians to target the judiciary and encourage them to overturn the amnesty law. Together, these videos privilege the voices of Uruguayan citizens whose lives are affected daily by the official silence surrounding this dark period in the nation’s history and aims to spur the implementation of human rights guarantees.

Just days before the launch, the Inter-American Court highlighted the importance of these efforts when it reaffirmed the Gelman ruling, stating that the Uruguayan state still had an outstanding obligation to investigate, prosecute, and if necessary, punish those responsible for serious human rights violations committed during the nation’s military rule from 1973-1985.

In March 2012, N-Map traveled to Uruguay to film Uruguay’s president José Mujica’s acknowledgment of state complicity in the crimes perpetrated during Uruguay’s dictatorship. This momentous event was an important step towards shedding a culture of impunity that has enveloped the nation for the past 30 years. N-Map and CEJIL recognized this critical turning point and began an extended campaign to catalyze true change within the state and to seek accountability for human rights violations during this period. One year later, we ask, “What has been done? Nunca más, que?”

At the April 18 premiere of Nunca Más Qué, Uruguayans gathered to discuss exactly that. A panel was comprised of  representatives of victim groups, experts, members of government, and representatives from CEJIL who litigated the Gelman case. Speakers included Adriana Cabrera from HIJOS, Representative Felipe Michelini, former director of CEJIL Ariela Peralta, CEJIL attorney Liliana Tojo, and Elena Zaffaroni of Madres y Familiares de Detenidos y Desparecidos. This group offered a range of perspectives on why accountability remains a critical issue in the country. While Las Madres y Familiares continues to be one of the most active groups in Uruguay seeking justice and truth for their loved ones who suffered under the military regime, HIJOS is a newer organization comprised of the children of disappeared, exiled, and political prisoners who work against silence in society and embrace the spirit of their parents’ struggle. Both these groups are featured in the videos, along with other human rights advocates, who ask the Uruguayan state for accountability.

Combined with the screening of the campaign’s videos, the event probed questions about Uruguay’s recent past, the implications for the current societal fabric, and the future of truth and justice in the nation. Representative Michelini encapsulated the sentiment of the panel when he stated that the event, and the Nunca Más Qué campaign, represented a larger allegiance to fighting to reverse the culture of impunity in Uruguay and uphold a commitment to the victims who must not be forgotten.

The campaign is now in the hands of Uruguayans, with our support and yours.

In Montevideo but couldn’t attend the launch?

Outside of Uruguay but want to participate?

Here is what you can do to get involved in making impunity part of Uruguay’s past, and not its future:

• Follow #nuncamasque on twitter and participate in the debate
• Like Nunca Más Qué on Facebook and get involved in the online community http://www.facebook.com/nuncamasque
• Send the video to your friends and family (link in)
• Host a screening of the videos and hold a discussion about truth and justice in Uruguay (for instructions on how to do this, contact nuncamasque@newmediaadvocacy.org).
• Send your comments and ideas to nuncamasque@newmediaadvocacy.org
• Stay tuned for future screenings and events

For our Spanish speaking friends:

• See the joint CEJIL/N-Map press release
• Listen to CEJIL’s Program Director for Bolivia and the Southern Cone, Liliana Tojo’s  interview on Radio Uruguay

Our newest film, made in collaboration with our wonderful client, The Constitution Project, was screened last Friday evening at the Department of Justice!  Check out this photo of  Attorney General Eric Holder introducing segments of “Defending Gideon” to member of the DOJ.

50 years ago, Justice Hugo Black, speaking for a unanimous Supreme Court, wrote: “Reason and reflection require us to recognize that, in our adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided to him.” The landmark case had a transformative effect on the country’s many criminal justice systems –for the first time, states were constitutionally required to provide lawyers to every defendant in a felony case who could not afford an one.

Unfortunately, 50 years later, it has become clear that the country has not lived up to the great promise of the Gideon case. Although there are many dedicated, talented, and tireless defense lawyers working heroically in very challenging conditions, the overall system has failed profoundly to provide adequate counsel for many defendants. This has resulted in an explosion of guilty pleas and, in the worst case, wrongful convictions.

The Constitution Project and its National Rights to Counsel Committee are fighting to change this. Their thoughtful analysis of ethe issues facing indigent defense systems and a call for reform can be found in this report: Justice Denied.

The Constitution Project asked N-Map to produce a documentary about Gideon and the right to counsel to be released on the 50th Anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision. For the last few months, we have been working with them to tell the stories of the eminent lawyers and journalists involved with the case, as well as many other judges, defense attorneys, prosecutors, and defendants for whom the issue of adequate counsel is of paramount importance.

Start taking action now. Watch the video. Share it with your networks. Follow the conversation at #defendinggideon. Help us realize the great promise of Gideon and ensure the right to a fair trial for all Americans.

UPDATE: Just in and available for viewing is Romper el Muro de la Impunidad (Breaking Down the Wall of Impunity). This is the extended video (11 minutes) that N-Map and CEJIL are launching as part of their campaign to overcome the barriers to truth and justice in Uruguay. It includes interviews with leading politicians, academics, journalists, family members and victims themselves.

The video was shot a year ago–in March 2012–around President Mujica’s public acknowledgement of state responsibility for grave crimes against its citizens during  period of military rule from 1973 – 1985.  With your help, we can keep the momentum alive and let Uruguayans and their leaders know that impunity, and lack of knowledge about a society’s past, is an impediment for the future and violates the state’s responsibility to ensure the human rights of its citizens.

• See the joint CEJIL/N-Map press release
• Listen to CEJIL’s Program Director for Bolivia and the Southern Cone, Liliana Tojo’s  interview on Radio Uruguay

_________________________________

Sandra Pelúa was in grade school before she first found out her biological father had been disappeared by the Uruguayan military during the nation’s dictatorship from 1973-1985. Unaware that her mother’s husband was not her father, it was not until she first entered grade school that she recognized her surname was different from her siblings’, while all her friends with brothers and sisters had the same name. That was when Sandra first learned who her real father was.

Sandra never knew this man though. Her family, constrained by the silence enveloping Uruguayan society following the dictatorship, never spoke openly about him or his disappearance. Instead, the trauma of the past remained an unspoken reality and haunted her family’s interactions as they struggled to create a new life in a country that had the highest rate of political incarceration in the world.  

Knowing that she cannot change her own upbringing, which was tacitly but consistently affected by impunity and a culture of silence, Sandra looks towards the future of Uruguay as the best hope for overcoming the difficulty of her own past. Sandra believes in promoting justice and truth about Uruguay’s past, not only for herself and the father she never knew, but also because she believes that her son “has a right to know that he has a future, but mainly that he also has a past, a history.”

The New Media Advocacy Project (N-Map) and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) produced two videos to highlight Sandra’s story, and those of many others like her, to advocate for reopening cases related to crimes committed under the military dictatorship and justice for families of the disappeared, as well as victims of torture and rape. While the crimes committed during the dictatorship occurred over thirty years ago, the abuses that so many Uruguayans suffered are still not only present to them, but important for all citizens in the country – to their history, and also to their understanding of the future hopes for democracy and the possibility of justice and rule of law in Uruguay. The first video called Breaking Down the Wall of Impunity is an 11-minute piece, which provides an analysis of the barriers to truth and justice in Uruguay. It includes interviews with leading politicians, academics, journalists, family members and victims themselves. The shorter 2.5-minute video called Never Again, What? seeks to act as a platform for change by engaging all Uruguayan citizens about the relevance and important of justice. It is intended for social media, television, and radio distribution. Together, the videos are part of a comprehensive strategy for helping to implement human rights guarantees for victims and their right to justice.

Despite an ever-increasing group of voices like Sandra’s, impunity continues to be entrenched in the small Southern Cone nation. Many Uruguayans do not have access to records to learn about their past, and most perpetrators are protected by an amnesty law, which states that they cannot be tried for crimes committed during the nation’s military rule, and which conflicts with Uruguay’s international legal obligations.

Within the past few weeks, two disturbing events occurred that reinforce the continued challenges Uruguay faces in their fight to achieve justice. First, judge Mariana Mota, who had long fought for holding military leaders accountable for crimes committed by the military dictatorship, was transferred from her criminal post to a civilian jurisdiction without any explanation, just as trials were slated to begin. Days later, the Uruguayan Supreme Court ruled that the dictatorship crimes could not be considered crimes against humanity and that the time within which to prosecute has expired. The ruling effectively means that most gross human rights violations committed under the dictatorship will go unpunished.

These two events created uproar in the nation, particularly because just two years ago an important decision came down from the Inter-American Court for Human Rights (IAHCR), calling for the reopening of trials and investigations into past abuses. While international pressure is combining with local protest movements to mount a social challenge against impunity in Uruguay, the local amnesty law from 1986 still stands, contradicting these international rulings. While the Court’s decision is binding, local judges need to know that there is public support for reopening investigations into the nation’s history and establishing the truth about this dark period in the past—for both the victims and their families, but also for the rest of the nation. With growing attention to these issues, stemming from the recent judge transfer and Supreme Court ruling, there is now an opportunity to demonstrate that these crimes must be punished once and for all. Over twenty-five years later, impunity needs to become a part of the nation’s past, not its future.

We need your help to do this. So what can you do?  Join Sandra, Valentin and many others, who the IACHR case was litigated on behalf of, in speaking out for justice in Uruguay.

• Follow #NuncaMasQue
• Like the ¿Nunca Más Qué? Facebook page and stay involved in the ongoing advocacy efforts
• Share the video with your friends and networks on Twitter and Facebook
• Email or show the video to your friends and family
• Write your representative and President Mujica about the need to reopen cases related to dictatorship crimes to bring truth and justice to Uruguay. Essentially ask them “Nunca MMás Qué?”
• Attend Uruguay’s launch of the videos to commemorate a year since the state acknowledgement of responsibility to the people of Uruguay on April 3.
• Translate the video into another language (We already have it in English, Spanish, and Portuguese!)
• Send us your thoughts at nuncamasque@newmediaadvocacy.org

N-Map recently travelled to Georgia for the project, where we filmed arraignments, criminal hearings, and interviews with attorneys and former indigent defendants.  The three former defendants we interviewed gave powerful testimonies about the failings of the under-funded and over-burdened public defense system. Hearing their stories of injustice, hardship, and ultimately, of courage and perseverance, was incredibly moving and made clear the need for reform of a broken justice system.

One of the most moving interviews was with Maurice, a young African-American man from a small town in Georgia. Maurice shared his story of being arrested for possession of cocaine, although no cocaine was ever found on him. The police made the arrest based on a statement from a confidential informant, who later admitted that she’d lied in exchange for $40. Maurice was facing 20 years to life in prison for the alleged possession of half a gram of cocaine—a half gram that he didn’t have.

The N-Map team preparing to interview Maurice.

Maurice’s public defender refused to file motions, so he wrote his own.  The lawyer also repeatedly encouraged Maurice to take a plea deal, but he maintained his innocence, despite the threat of a severe sentence.  Maurice said that as an American citizen he felt he had a right to a good lawyer, but described, “once you’re in the system, you’re not a complete citizen. You’re an alien of the system. You’re an alien to the country.” Having experienced the criminal justice system, Maurice doesn’t buy the presumption of innocence or believe that an accused individual can rely on the public defense system.  “It’s your obligation, the individual that’s incarcerated, to fight for your right. I don’t believe you’re innocent until proven guilty. I believe you’re guilty until proven innocent,” he said.

Maurice spent 15 month in jail awaiting his trial. At Maurice’s request, he was eventually assigned a new public defender—three days before trial.  The new lawyer didn’t know anything about his case or have time to prepare. In a stroke of luck, Maurice was found not guilty after the confidential informant revealed that she’d lied.  Maurice is now free, but things could have turned out very differently for him if he hadn’t fought for himself.

Across many states and counties in the U.S., public defender systems operate like a machine, spitting out plea deals to compensate for a lack of funding and manpower. Thousands of indigent defendants across the United States are being failed by this system, facing unnecessarily harsh sentences and wrongful convictions.  It is time for the U.S. justice system to make good on the promise of the Gideon v. Wainright decision.

N-Map is thrilled to have the opportunity to work on this issue. Many of the lawyers we met with described the struggle in indigent defense as the new civil rights movement, and we are excited to be part of that movement. Stay tuned for the video (to be released in March) and to find out how you can help reform an unjust justice system!

For more N-Map videos on criminal justice, see our video Fighting Prosecutorial Misconduct.

On February 13, 2013, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) held a private hearing to monitor Uruguay’s compliance with the Gelman v. Uruguay judgment from February 24, 2011. In this important ruling, the IACHR held Uruguay responsible for forced disappearances committed during the 1970s dictatorship for the first time. The case continues to serve as a representation and opportunity for justice, not only for the Gelman family, but also for the thousands of victims who have never had chance to have their claims heard in court. This hearing aimed to uncover the progress Uruguay has made in instituting the directives for accountability that the IACHR judges made in the decision almost two years ago.

In 1976, María Claudia García Iruretagoyena de Gelman was abducted in Buenos Aires while seven months pregnant. As a result of Operation Condor, wherein Southern Cone dictatorships coordinated their repressive activities to eliminate dissidents, María Claudia was transferred soon thereafter to Uruguay. In a Montevideo prison, her daughter, Macarena, was born. No one ever heard from or found María Claudia again, but her daughter, Macarena, was adopted by a family associated with the Uruguayan Police Force. Macarena’s experience was not an isolated incident; according to human rights groups, as many as five hundred children in Argentina and Uruguay were taken from their imprisoned parents and given to childless military or police couples who the military regimes favored. After years of searching for his missing granddaughter with the help of the Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, poet Juan Gelman, Maria Claudia’s father, finally found Macarena in 1999, and brought the case of the disappearance and illegal adoption before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

The case was presented to the regional court because of Uruguay’s entrenched impunity towards crimes committed during the country’s military regime from 1973-1985. In 1986, during the nation’s transition back to democratic rule, Uruguay passed an amnesty law, which protected all those involved in the military regime from prosecution for human rights violations. That law was then reaffirmed in two subsequent public referendums. In 2011, the IACHR found that, despite public reaffirmation, this amnesty law was inconsistent with international human rights obligations. Human rights protections cannot be subjected to popular vote; instead the nation’s government and judiciary has an obligation to guarantee basic human rights to the citizenry. The IACHR directed Uruguay to begin to comply with instituting accountability efforts in three key areas to reverse the trend of impunity. First, it ordered Uruguay to guarantee that the amnesty law did not present further obstacles to the identification and, if applicable, punishment of the responsible parties for crimes against humanity. Second, it directed Uruguay to institute reparations for violations suffered, and lastly, the ruling stated that the small Southern Cone nation needed to make an official apology .

Uruguay has taken important steps to comply with these duties in the past two years. The nation instituted an economic reparations program and President José Mujica, who himself was a victim of the military government’s repression, made a dramatic public acknowledgement of state responsibility for crimes committed during the dictatorship in March 2012. However, as recently as April 2011, the Uruguayan parliament rejected overturning the amnesty law, despite the fact that the Supreme Court found the law unconstitutional in 2009. Although the country has taken important steps forward, the refusal to overturn the amnesty law illustrates the continued intransigence within Uruguayan society about fully opening up a culture of truth and accountability. Since the Gelman decision came down, judges have been able to open new cases, but still, no new cases for crimes committed during the period of military rule have moved forward. Although the crimes addressed in the Gelman case occurred over thirty years ago, they remain relevant to thousands of victims who continue to live in the country today.  Victims of torture and rape, and whose families were ripped apart by the dictatorship’s crimes, have never had their justice concerns addressed, and public records from the time of dictatorship remain inaccessible to victims who still do not know their history. The Gelman case is just one example of a woman, who, for the first 36 years of her life, believed she was a Uruguayan and the daughter of a military family, only to find out that, in fact, she was a victim of their regime and an Argentine. The investigation was also the first time that the practice of kidnapping pregnant women and taking their children was acknowledged as a strategy of terror during the war in Uruguay. The possibility of reopening accountability efforts in Uruguay is important for both the nation’s democratic future as well as for these individual victims reckoning with their own personal and traumatic past experiences.

At the private hearing monitoring Uruguay’s compliance with the Court’s ruling this month, the government representative acknowledged that Uruguay still has a ways to go in its quest for truth and justice. He admitted that the investigation clarifying where Maria Claudia’s remains might be located and the circumstances surrounding her disappearance and daughter’s adoption is still ongoing. The Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), who litigated the case for Gelman, argued at the hearing that Uruguay still needs to remove the final obstacles for prosecution domestically, and that numerous constitutional challenges need to be ruled on by the Supreme Court before human rights trials can resume.

While Uruguay has made great strides in beginning to comply with the Court’s judgment, the country is just beginning to reopen discussions about truth and accountability during the nation’s period of military rule. New opportunities for the long sought after realization of justice are starting to emerge. The IACHR has helped develop and promote robust international law to address important human rights claims, but implementing these decisions remains a fundamental challenge at the societal level. N-Map and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) are innovating how to close the implementation gap of these lofty standards by bringing the case to public attention and building political will. Working together, N-Map and CEJIL have documented the powerful stories of the continued struggles for truth and justice. Next month, CEJIL and N-Map will release a video about these efforts at a public event in Uruguay, and a coordinated follow-up event in the United States as well. Stay tuned!

While in Mexico, we met with numerous groups including various NGOs, technologists, and documentary filmmakers, exploring possibilities for partnership and learning about issues with the existing judicial system where we can have the greatest impact. For example, one of issues we learned about was the right to interpretation for indigenous defendants who do not speak Spanish. Among the worst stories shared with us was that of an indigenous man who spent 10 years in prison beyond his sentence because he did not understand that he had been freed.  Had the community been aware of this case, and motivated to help, years of the inmate’s life might have been saved.

N-Map Program Director Abby Goldberg outside the offices of ProDH, a legal NGO in D.F.

The groups we met with are doing impressive work in the legal, advocacy and film spheres, but few are connecting them effectively. All of the groups expressed great interest and enthusiasm to harness the power of media and video to maximize the impact of their advocacy during this transitional period. N-Map’s unique work connecting public advocacy with targeted legal advocacy through video and other medium are what we found—and what we were told—is most in need to end impunity in Mexico.

The energy of our meetings has left us inspired and eager to begin delving into the opportunities to support human rights and social justice in Mexico. Stay tuned for updates on new projects and partnerships!

Find out more about our potential partners:

Documenta

ProDESC

CEPIADET

Centro PRODH

Asilegal

Habitat International Commission

English

Spanish

According to UN and World Bank research, societies with greater respect for women’s rights are more likely to develop economically and to promote the rule of law, and are less violent. However, despite great efforts to promote gender equality and justice, discrimination against women and girls continues, with detrimental impacts on society at large. The Gender Justice Uncovered Awards is helping to change that. By highlighting the importance of judicial decisions in the lives of women and their communities through real stories and cases, the Awards encourage greater attention to the critical role of judges – and all of us – in advancing gender justice.

The Gender Justice Uncovered Awards sheds light on court decisions made around the world that negatively and positively affect gender equality.  The Awards solicit nominations of judicial decisions, and later, involve the public audience in voting for the winning cases – both sexist decisions (bludgeon award) and decisions that advance equality and human rights (gavel award).  All nominations are entered into a Gender Justice Observatory – a database of legal decisions related to gender justice used by advocates and lawyers from around the globe and managed by Women’s Link Worldwide. Whether focused on reproductive rights, gender violence or discrimination, the Gender Justice Uncovered Awards raises awareness about the influence that court decisions have on women and society at large, and promotes accountability through the engagement of the public.

N-Map and Women’s Link Worldwide (WLW) have joined forces for the 2013 Gender Justice Uncovered Awards in an innovative campaign using a short animated video as a central component for our outreach. In addition to raising awareness, the video educates and empowers civil society by inviting them to participate as nominators and voters, while also populating the Gender Justice Observatory.  Our goal is to reach the greatest possible audience through direct outreach and a video that people will share online.

We need your help sharing the video, nominating judicial decisions, voting, and spreading the word! 

Here is what you can do:

• Share the video online and promote it on your websites, social media pages, and other outlets;
• Share the Observatory as a resource for gender justice advocates;
• Encourage the nomination of cases to the Awards;
• Support the People’s Choice Awards – the public voting process this spring… stay tuned;
• Translate the piece into your language!  As part of the effort to build the campaign’s reach and expand the regional diversity of those participating, we are looking for volunteer translators to help distribute the video in other languages (We have begun Arabic, Hebrew, French, Portuguese, Mandarin, Turkish and Armenian). If there are other languages you or someone you know could help with, please let us know.

Please visit the Gender Justice Uncovered Awards Campaign page for more information about the campaign and how to participate.

Thank you from all of us at the N-Map team!