By Viktoriya Sulzhenko
The summer I spent in Quebec City was full of new experiences and learning opportunities. As an intern, I primarily conducted research for the lawyers on Avocats sans frontières Canada’s legal team and prepared materials to support their work. Over the summer, I came to appreciate how diverse and complex human rights work is and better understand the crucial role that civil society plays in advocating and advancing human rights.
While conducting research, I learned a lot about the numerous regional and international mechanisms through which civil society organizations can advocate for human rights and provide input. After learning about the widespread grave human rights violations in some parts of the world, it was encouraging to see that additional platforms and mechanisms were being developed to encourage collaboration and dialogue between civil society and institutions with decision-making power.
My experience also helped me understand some of the challenges and issues that human rights defenders face, as well as the additional planning, preparation, and resources required of international cooperation organizations working across multiple countries to facilitate their work.
For example, I learned that part of the difficulty of human rights advocacy lies in effectively persuading figures of power to take certain actions to bring about positive change. Thus, over the summer, I often heard about the importance of maintaining political neutrality, preserving credibility by drawing on international law and factual information, and avoiding direct blame of governments or institutions. Furthermore, factors such as political instability, armed conflicts, and resource constraints in certain countries add another layer of complexity to human rights work, making it difficult to address the underlying causes of human rights violations and to develop comprehensive solutions. Navigating these difficulties is a delicate exercise, and human rights work is a perpetual battle, so I often felt discouraged by the challenges and perils that human rights defenders have to face.
On another note, I have also come to understand how much of human rights work is rooted in collaboration and how people become catalysts for positive change. For example, I learned about ASF Canada’s approaches to fostering agents of change, raising awareness of human rights, and providing training to persons of interest (such as civil society organizations, judges, legal professionals, and persons in vulnerable situations).
When I started my internship, I had limited knowledge of what human rights work actually was like in practice. Even now, I feel like I only got a glimpse of the world of human rights defenders, and I acknowledge that my perception of their reality is limited, as I pieced it together from what I was taught by my colleagues, my research, and my observations of the workings of ASF Canada during the summer. While I did not see the direct impact of my work on victims of human rights violations, I was glad to support my colleagues at ASF Canada in their crucial work and help advance their projects.
