A word from the Editor-in-Chief, Alexander (Sami) Kardos-Nyheim   The last edition of the Journal ended with these words, from Léon Bloy:   ‘Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence’.   This edition is ultimately about human suffering and how it has affected the domains of law, politics, and art. These three domains have been shaped to a significant extent by what Robert Burns might have called ‘Man’s inhumanity to Man’, and the urge to limit it and prevent its reoccurrence. Law, politics, and art are not just three fields that are external products of a society. They are projections of what is going on within us as human beings; of the instinct to understand the world, structure it, control it, express oneself upon it, appreciate its complexity and beauty, and to live a fuller life. Human rights abuses have brought tragedy to the world; but they have also prompted huge developments in the fields of law, politics, and art. Amidst the destruction—past and present—there is a human instinct to learn from mistakes and achieve a higher level of consciousness. This is one interpretation of Bloy’s words: that inhumanity forces us, in turn, to forge new levels of humanity.     I started the Journal because I wanted to create a forum for balanced and calm thinking at a time of clash and chaos. Nowhere is this harder to achieve than with this subject matter. As illustrated by the actions of American soldiers against German officers during the liberation of Dachau in April 1945, it is difficult to remain calm and balanced when faced with human atrocities. Undoubtedly this edition reflects that difficulty. But this edition also constitutes an important collection of individuals from our three fields of focus who have wrestled with this challenge throughout their professional or personal life, and significantly contributed to the world.   I am pleased to present our first Special Edition, and our third published edition since I started the Journal three years ago. These have been three rich years in which we have grown a community of contributors spanning Nobel Laureates to Cypriot monks, Supreme Court Judges to national museum curators, artists to law students. We are also blessed with a wide community of engaged readers from around the world.   To that community, I present the risk that this Special Edition also carries. Focusing on a specific theme requires curation. That is precisely what I was trying to get away from when the Journal began. I wanted to allow for free thinking not constricted by categorisation or intrusive editorial intervention. On the other hand, to address a theme coherently, a level of structure is required—and we have ensured that our editors continue the Journal ’s practice of light-touch revisions. To break up the structure and introduce space to think, we have woven in freestanding arts articles that do not fit into specific chapters, but which are relevant to the wider subject matter of this Special Edition. See these as an opportunity to draw breath between powerful and at times heavy articles.   ‘The Sleep of Reason produces Monsters’, reproduced below, is the 43rd plate from an album of prints by Francisco de Goya entitled Los Caprichos  (‘The Fantasies’). It can be found in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and is perhaps Goya’s best-known etching. The point, while overused, is clear: reason promises an escape from base human instincts. My fear, however, is that we are ‘over-reasoning’ in today’s political and legal discourse, which at times feels disembodied from the heart and the creative instinct—or whatever you call that which cannot be explained but makes us human.   What is less known about this particular plate of Goya’s is this added inscription, by the artist:   Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of all arts and the source of their wonders.   Just as reason should not abandon imagination, nor should imagination abandon reason. With only one of these, we are indeed liable to become monsters; with both, we become capable of something better. This is why we are The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art . The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (Francisco Goya y Lucientes 1799, etching and aquatint, 30.48 x 20.32 cm). © Paul Rodman Mabury Trust Fund

Preamble   ‘Tunisia will remain a state that will fight for the oppressed (or stand with the oppressed) and prevail for the victims of any kind of racial discrimination and does not accept that there be a victim of any form of discrimination against human beings, either in Tunisia or anywhere in the world’.[1] Statement by the Presidency of the Republic, 5 March 2023   A picture of the mother ‘Fatie’ and her daughter ‘Marie’, dead on the Tunisian-Libyan border went viral on social media.[2] Their fate, however, was an expected outcome of the hatred campaign against migrants (re)ignited by the infamous speech of the Tunisian president Kais Saied in February 2023. Saied, who rose to power in 2019 from outside the political sphere, took advantage of popular anger, frustrations, and rupture with the post-uprising political elites and became president with a large lead over his rival.   ‘What has happened in Tunisia is a real revolution using the tools of legitimacy’.[3] In his inaugural speech of 23 October 2019, this is how Saied described the ‘new revolution’ for which he was responsible. Less than two years later, Saied would enact another revolution: the self-coup of 25 July 2021. He activated the state of exception, dismissed the Chief of Government, and froze the then-newly elected parliament. These early measures were but the tip of the iceberg in Saied’s political project.   The project unfolded quickly as a unilateral political course based on hostility towards and stigmatization of political and civil elites, inciting the ‘masses’ against these groups and institutions. President Saied presented himself as the saviour of the people, committed to protecting them from political parties, the corrupt, and the conspirators. In August 2022, Saied enforced the adoption of a new Constitution which he himself had written. A few months later, in February 2023, he designated himself as the people’s protector from the imminent dangers of migrants’ presence in Tunisia and consequent threats of socio-demographic engineering, arguing that such a presence should be understood in the context of a conspiracy instilled at the beginning of the century by ‘evil forces’.   The February speech was an obvious green light from the head of the state to address migration as part of his populist project. It marked the start of new, more violent, and unprecedentedly blunt violations against Sub-Saharan refugees, asylum seekers, students, migrant workers, and their families: verbal and physical assaults, evictions from homes, bans on movement, expulsions to borders, random stops, and other forms of digital and invisible violence against migrants and even black Tunisians. An atmosphere of terror prevailed among migrants. Sub-Saharan African countries were forced to evacuate their citizens from Tunisia, while others remained stuck, unable to return to their conflict-torn countries or to stay in Tunisia in such an agitated landscape. The state claimed that that these arrests, housing bans, and expulsions to the border came in the context of law enforcement. They relied on legal texts drafted tens of years ago that are now in contradiction with several articles of the constitution and of international agreements and regional conventions.   This starting point raises a number of questions: What was the political context that paved the way for the development of an anti-migrant discourse? How has the situation of migrants in Tunisia evolved since February, and what violations have they been exposed to? And how has the European strategy of border externalization contributed to the repression of migrants in Tunisia?   I. Tunisia: A Political Context in Crisis   According to the dominant narrative, Tunisia has succeeded temporarily in its transition to democracy through the organization of elections and a smooth transition of power following the 2014 and 2019 elections, having slipped into neither armed conflict and armed struggle (as in Libya, Syria and Yemen), nor into the return of authoritarian forces to power under new covers (as in Egypt). The discourse of exceptionalism was later reinforced by the launch of a dialogue sponsored by national organizations that united political parties around a roadmap that included the formation of a technocratic government, the ratification of the new constitution, and the organization of the 2014 elections. The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet was awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize.   However, Tunisia’s was an ‘unfinished revolution’: the emerging political elites were unable to offer economic and social alternatives that meet the expectations of vulnerable groups, who saw in the revolution as an opportunity to remedy years of deprivation, marginalization, and poverty.[4] Throughout the early years of democratic transition, Tunisia found itself embroiled in internal conflicts between the forces of the religious right—with rising waves of Islamic radicalism—and civil and democratic forces. The Tunisian street was shaken by the political assassinations of two leaders of the democratic left, as well as terrorist attacks on security forces and tourist sites.   Tunisians headed to the 2019 legislative and presidential elections with a notable abstention rate. As Arbi argues, ‘electoral abstention shows hostility towards political elites incapable of change and who have treated social groups, especially young people, by refusing negotiation, ignoring, rejecting and marginalising them, adding to this society’s aversion to partisan rivalries’[5] and resulting in a punitive vote. Tunisia’s nascent democracy was undergoing a serious crisis, which led to the emergence of new political elites and the decline of traditional parties. By setting himself apart through his hostility to the political and civil elites and rupture with traditional electoral practices, Saied succeeded in winning the second round of the 2019 presidential election. He subsequently declared that ‘what has happened in Tunisia is a real revolution using the tools of legitimacy’,[6] and began to implement his hostility towards all political, civil, and social media in practice.   Saied took advantage of popular resentment against the fragile performance of the political elites and their involvement in parallel conflicts to continue targeting them in all his media appearances. The parliamentary scene, despite its electoral legitimacy, seems hardly representative of the reality and expectations of society. In January 2021, Tunisia experienced a social shock due to the state’s mismanagement of the health crisis resulting from the Covid epidemic, which deepened the feeling of contempt and marginalisation among large sections of the population, particularly young people. The state and its apparatuses met the popular uprising in popular neighbourhoods with a repressive response from the security forces.[7]   On 25 July 2021, Saied took advantage of popular protests mobilised on social networks to announce exceptional measures, based on Article 80 of the Constitution, removing the Prime Minister and freezing the work of Parliament, turning against the crippled democracy. He closed the headquarters of the Supreme Anti-Corruption Commission in August 2021 and issued Decree 117, according to which the President of the Republic alone had the power to legislate in all areas. This ranged from the organisation of the justice sector and the judiciary to the media, the press, political parties, trade unions, associations, and professional organisations and bodies, as well as their financing, from the organisation of internal security forces and border control to electoral law, human rights and freedoms, personal status, local government, and the budget. The Presidency has gone even further, overriding the general rule of constitutional supremacy by considering the presidential order as the highest value.[8]             Saied subsequently dissolved the elected Supreme Judicial Council and replaced it with a temporary one on 12 February 2022, thus changing the mechanism from election to appointment. In March 2022, he announced the definitive dissolution of Parliament, and in April 2022 the dissolution of the Independent High Authority for Elections, modifying its law, and indemnifying seven of its members. Since July 2021, dozens of political and civil figures have been arrested on political charges, the most important of which is conspiracy against state security, intended to alter its structure. On 13 September, the President of the Republic issued Decree 54 of 2022 regarding the fight against crimes related to information and communication systems, according to which dozens of journalists and activists have been tried since its launch.   On the other hand, the President of the Republic launched a unilateral course that culminated in a referendum on a new constitution on 25 July 2022, which saw low turnout and aroused the ire of political and civil forces. This was followed by legislative elections on 17 December 2022, with a turnout of no more than 11%. Saied has been pursuing his project with determination ever since he took total control of the government and all the authorities, adopting a fiery rhetoric against all the political, civil, and economic elites. To achieve this, he has taken a path in which he has dismantled institutions considered as minor gains of the revolution. He reinforces himself with unlimited powers and security and military institutions, which he exaggerates at every opportunity in their praise, and among whom he has summoned personalities who occupy ministerial and advanced positions in the state.   II. Irregular M igration D ynamics in the R egion   Migration dynamics in the Mediterranean experienced significant changes after the 2015 crisis, which brought remarkable inflows and subsequent measures to limit arrivals. Since 2016, irregular movement operations have begun to decline across the eastern Mediterranean, from 835,386 migrants in 2015 to 182,277 migrants in 2016 following an agreement with Turkey, before reaching the lowest level of 19,681 migrants in 2020. Meanwhile, the Central Mediterranean route is emerging, mainly starting from the Libyan coast, where the number of arrivals reached 153,946 immigrants in 2015 and peaked at 181,376 immigrants in 2016. Then the number gradually decreased, before going back up again in 2021.[9]   These figures reveal major changes in the Central Mediterranean Basin, where departure operations are mainly based off the Tunisian coast. This is due to the danger posed by the land route for migrants leaving sub-Saharan African countries once they arrive in southern Libya, where the violations to which they are exposed on land and at sea are intensified through detention, torture, and forced displacement back to sea. Since 2016, the European Union has gradually abandoned its core responsibilities of search and rescue off the Libyan coast, where thousands of migrants have been killed, and has instead provided money, ships, training, and air support to armed groups in Libya to prevent the arrival of migrants. Attempts to cross from Libya have become a terrifying adventure for those dreaming of crossing to the northern shore. The UN Fact-Finding Mission in Libya has announced that it has reasonable grounds to believe that a wide range of war crimes and other crimes against humanity have been committed, including sexual crimes against migrants.[10]   On the other hand, the western rout (Morocco and the Canary Islands), recording its highest numbers in 2018 with the arrival of 57,034 migrants, has shown a decline, reinforced by the Hispano-Moroccan rapprochement upon the reconciliation over the ‘Western Sahara’ issue and Morocco’s commitment to strengthening coastal control.[11] Consequently, migrants began to opt for safer places to depart. Tunisia’s geographical proximity to Europe is an incentive to explore as a route as the Italian island of Lampedusa is only 130 km from the Tunisian coast, compared to 290 km from the Libyan coast.   Attempts to explore the route through Tunisia began in late 2020 with the arrival of a small number of migrants across the Algerian border, mainly of Guinean and Malian nationality. Arrivals’ flow via the Algerian border evolved gradually, accompanied by tragic events such as the death of two women and four children from thirst in the Douz desert in the summer of 2021, and the discovery of the bodies of four migrants who died of cold and thirst in March 2022 in the governorate of Kasserine, near the border with Algeria. The number of arrivals then increased, reaching 2310 via Algerian borders in February 2023, and 998 asylum seekers via the Libyan ones.[12]   The crossings of sub-Saharan migrants to Europe from the Tunisian coast did not attract attention because they were infrequent, since migrants of non-Tunisian nationalities who were thwarted before leaving Tunisia accounted for only 9% in 2017.[13] This percentage rose to 33% in 2019.[14] In 2022, the rate of sub-Saharan migrants intercepted in Tunisia reached 61.76%. In the first nine months of 2023, this figure rose to 82.24%.   These quantitative data monitoring the transformation of migratory routes in the Mediterranean have prompted the Tunisian authorities to act swiftly to stop the movement of migrants through Tunisia. The manifestations of this shift have given further justification to the escalation of rhetoric arousing fear of migrants. This is what Tunisian officials rely on to reiterate the idea that Tunisia will be neither a stable nor a transit country for migrants. III. February 2023, ‘The Big Transformation’   Usually, the National Security Council meets when convened by the President of the Republic, who sets the agenda, at least once every three months and whenever necessary—when an imminent danger threatens the national entity, security, or independence of the country, or when it is exposed to crises.[15] The meeting on 21 February was a one-off, held with the aim of ‘confronting the migrants’ danger’. During the meeting, Saied argued that the situation was not normal, suggesting that there was a criminal arrangement at play, which had aimed since the beginning of this century to change the demographic composition of Tunisia. He also suggested that certain parties had received huge sums of money after 2011 to enact this plan and settle irregular migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in Tunisia, implying that these successive waves of irregular migration had the undeclared aim of making Tunisia a solely African country, with no affiliation to Arab or Islamic nations.[16]   The Presidency’s statement was preceded by a security campaign entitled ‘Strengthening the security network and reducing the phenomenon of irregular residence in Tunisia’, targeting migrants from sub-Saharan Africa,[17] which resulted in the arrest of dozens of migrants. The press release was based on a report published by the Tunisian Nationalist Party entitled ‘Report on the Negro colonisation project and the dismantling of Tunisia’[18] and on a number of misleading facts that accompanied the campaigns on social media platforms. This party has played a key role in stirring up anti-migrant sentiment and racist rhetoric in Tunisia.   The Tunisian Nationalist Party was founded in December 2018 and organises its priorities around four focal points: linking insecurity to the presence of migrants; suggesting that their presence on Tunisian territory threatens the country’s identity and aims to destroy it; demonising human rights organisations and accusing them of imposing their visions of migration policies on governments; and the so-called ‘national priority’, according to which employment priority should be given to Tunisians.[19]   The Party led the security campaign mentioned above online and on the ground against migrants in Tunisia. The 21 February statement crowned this campaign and ushered in a new course of violations that affected all categories of migrants. State agencies recalled obsolete texts and laws which have long been the focus of criticism from human rights defenders and led campaigns targeting migrants. The General Labour Inspectorate, a supervisory body affiliated with the Ministry of Social Affairs, has called for the immediate suspension of all irregular migrant workers, and has threatened to punish anyone who contravenes this measure.[20] The judicial authorities also threatened to punish anyone renting accommodation to irregular migrants. Security forces continued their operations to track down migrants, stepping up surveillance operations in all public spaces. Hypothetical discriminatory rhetoric turned into hysterical field campaigns aimed at expelling migrants from their jobs and places of residence.   Calls for help were frequent, signalling evictions from houses, dismissals from jobs, and physical and verbal attacks. For fear of attacks, migrants—especially students and workers—were forced to stay at home. Civil society organisations and individual citizens have set up crisis cells to assist and intervene urgently to assist the injured or provide medical care and food. The Tunisian Association of Young Doctors communicated emergency numbers to facilitate contact with injured migrants or those in need of care.[21]   The President of the Republic’s racist speech in February 2023, in which he characterized the presence of migrants in Tunisia as a criminal scheme aimed at changing the demographic composition of the country, sparked many reactions. The African Union condemned Saied’s stance on migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and called on its member states to ‘refrain from any racist hate speech likely to harm people’.[22] The Tunisian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in turn responded that it was surprised by the African Union’s statement, rejecting what it called ‘unfounded accusations’, and claiming that the statement was based on a misunderstanding of the positions of the Tunisian authorities.[23] Guinea sent its Foreign Minister specifically to repatriate its nationals, the Ivory Coast and Mali did the same, and many African countries summoned their Tunisian ambassadors to express their displeasure at the President’s violent rhetoric and to demand further explanations.   In his annual report, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, criticised ‘the racist rhetoric targeting migrants, most of whom are from sub-Saharan Africa’.[24] The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has urged Tunisia’s highest authorities to condemn and distance themselves from racist hate speech delivered by politicians and public / nongovernmental figures.[25] As for the World Bank, it called—in an internal note—for the suspension of the partnership framework with Tunisia. It then postponed its board meeting, scheduled for 21 March, to consider a new strategic agreement with Tunisia until further notice.[26] Amnesty International announced that the President’s comments had contributed to an increase in racist violence against black people.[27] On the other hand, the far-right extremist who ran in the French presidential elections, Éric Zemmour, was quick to hail Saied’s speech as a role model and congratulate him on his work.[28]   On the national level, Tunisian civil society organisations considered Saied’s speech to be unprecedentedly racist and fascist, and called for demonstrations in the streets of the capital Tunis on 25 February 2023.[29] At the same time, pages and accounts on social networks adopted the position of the Presidency of the Republic and launched intimidation campaigns against migrants, portrayed as a threat to national security, as well as an economic, social, and sanitary threat. All migrants, regardless of their administrative status, and all those who support them, including organisations, associations and even black Tunisian citizens, have not been spared by the climate of terror that followed the February quake.   Under pressure, Saied tried to remedy the situation by making media appearances to justify his positions and describing as traitors all those who denounced them.[30] During his visit to the governorate of Sfax on 10 June 2023, a region where many sub-Saharan migrants gather, President Saied gave a speech using ‘yes…but’ phrases more than thirteen times. The following are the most striking excerpts, bearing witness to this rhetorical strategy, which constructs a humanist and humanitarian description of the migration phenomenon, but then cancels it out under the pretext of ‘maintaining order’:   The solution can only be humanitarian and collective, based on humanitarian standards, ‘ but ’  in accordance with the legislation of the s tate.   We are Africans, they are our brothers and we respect them, ‘ but ’ this situation that Tunisia is experiencing and has never experienced is an abnormal situation and we must put an end to these inhuman conditions.   They are victims of poverty, civil wars and the absence of the state, and they turn to Tunisia as a refuge. ‘ But ’  we are also a state that has its own laws and respects the law and human beings. ‘ But ’  everyone must respect the laws and sovereignty of the Tunisian state.   The solution must not be at the expense of the Tunisian state. We naturally preserve and protect these people and don’t let those who attack them walk away,  ‘ but ’  they must also respect Tunisian laws.   We will not accept any attack against them, and we will protect them, ‘ but ’  they must be under legal conditions.[31]   In most of his media outings, Saied continued to attack all those who expressed a position against the decisions of the National Security Council, and with every reference to the issue of irregular migration, he reiterated:   The humane treatment these migrants receive stems from our values and character, contrary to what is promoted by colonial circles and their agents whose only concern is to serve these circles, and nothing is more obvious than that their positions are the same as those of the frenzied trumpeters abroad who are paving the way for a new type of colonisation, falsifying facts and spreading lies.[32]   The Tunisian state used laws, agencies, and rhetoric to defend its policies, but Saied’s speech in February 2023 marked a sea change in that direction. The authorities stuck to their strategies and continued to use this both internally in the internal political conflict between Saied and his opponents and externally in persuading the European Union to sign a memorandum of understanding, despite the pressure that was evident in the dissatisfaction of Tunisian civil society and the responses of sub-Saharan nations and international organizations.   IV. ‘Sovereign’ Violence   Migrants—from sub-Saharan Africa in particular—in Tunisia have been the victims of sporadic racist attacks for years. But the situation has worsened since the February speech. As Amnesty International summarized:   President Saied’s remarks at the National Security Council meeting on 21 February, characterised by unfair discrimination and hatred, have provoked an increase in racist violence against blacks. Groups of people took to the streets and attacked black migrants, students and asylum seekers. Police arrested dozens of migrants and deported them.[33]   Social media platforms exploded after the President’s speech demanding that migrants be expelled from their jobs and places of residence, and that they represent a real danger to Tunisians. Various accounts posted videos and photos documenting the forced expulsion of migrants from their homes, and their belongings being set on fire. Civil society organisations received dozens of distress calls from migrants who had been attacked and were unable to reach hospitals, especially as they do not trust the police to deal with their calls and complaints. Human Rights Watch said that between 24 February and 3 March, it   interviewed 16 citizens from West and Central African countries residing in Tunisia and documented their tales of the violence, robberies, and assaults they faced after the president’s speech. The 16 interviewees are distributed as follows: seven workers, including six undocumented workers and one legal resident, five students and four asylum seekers registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.[34]   The February speech did not mark the end of the crisis, but rather its development in the wake of the murder of a young Tunisian by migrants following a conflict that culminated in a campaign to expel migrants from the city of Sfax. The Tunisian authorities have used this situation as a pretext to carry out a campaign of successive arrests, followed by forced and illegal expulsions under threat, with the aim of ‘purging’ the town of anyone from sub-Saharan Africa by transferring them from the centre and delegations of the Sfax governorate to unknown destinations.   Video clips posted on social networks also revealed the arrival of a large number of buses carrying migrants, both men and women, from Sfax towards the Tunisian-Libyan border, with the intention of evacuating them to deserted areas, in temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius, in poor conditions and without any help or resources.[35] The National Guard and army expelled or forcibly transferred up to 1,200 people in several groups to the borders with Libya and Algeria.[36] Data from the National Institution for Human Rights in Libya has confirmed the transfer of migrants to the border by the Tunisian authorities in order to evade their moral, legal, and humanitarian responsibilities towards these migrants and asylum seekers on its territory and dump them in Libya.[37] This has led to the disappearance of dozens of people and deaths from thirst in the desert, as in the case of the migrant Fatie and her daughter Marie.[38] The Tunisian authorities have also transferred dozens of migrants to the Algerian border in an area of the Tozeur governorate known as ‘Wadi Al-Mghatta’, a place with no shade or grass, no water, no electricity, no Internet, and no means of communication, full of insects and far from hospitals and vital infrastructures.[39]   The Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights has documented the harsh human and climatic conditions, where ‘through hot weather, thirst and hunger, the migrants have no roof to shelter them from the heat o nor mattresses to sleep on, they are scattered here and there along the valley, seeking shade under the palm trees and rocks of the mountains’.[40] The Forum stressed that ‘approving the deposition of migrants at borders, in the desert, in mountains and valleys, and isolating them from cities, neighbourhoods and commodities, is a racist political move’.[41] Other migrants have also been expelled to other border provinces with Algeria under open sky, in order to force them to enter Algeria. Living conditions in border areas and delays in receiving humanitarian aid can constitute acts of torture within the meaning of the United Nations Convention Against Torture. The lack of water, food, medical assistance, and shelter in a desert where temperatures can reach over 45 degrees Celsius has caused severe pain and suffering, both physically and mentally, to women and children forcibly detained in the buffer zones.[42] Tunisian organisations urgently called for an end to mass expulsions and humiliating treatment of migrants, and for respect of their dignity and rights, regardless of their administrative status, yet in vain.[43] This was accompanied by evacuations by African countries of their nationals, while others were forced to flee by sea in rickety boats, a situation exploited by migrant smuggling networks. The result was a humanitarian crisis that left over 1,300 people dead or missing on the Tunisian coast.[44] The campaigns of violence did not spare women, as the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women announced that it had documented a case of rape.   The violence affected refugees, asylum seekers, students, and migrant workers, in various forms, as described below.   Institutional violence : State institutions and agencies took it upon themselves to discriminate against migrants under the pretext of enforcing the law. Police forces led a campaign to arrest migrants under the pretext of illegal residence. Police officers spread out to check documents and raid neighbourhoods inhabited by a majority of migrants. Dozens of arbitrary arrests were made, with no legal support. The General Labour Inspectorate prohibited all employers from hiring migrant workers without residence documents. Judicial authorities also threatened heavy penalties against anyone renting accommodation to ‘illegal’ migrants, while the Presidency continued to publish repeated statements linking migrants to violence and crime. The Tunisian authorities adopted expulsion to the border as a systematic policy to remove migrants from the Sfax region, in difficult climatic conditions, where temperatures during the summer period exceeded 40 degrees. It continued to rely on this policy for all migrants intercepted at sea, in order to punish all those who dared to attempt to leave by sea.   Digital violence or cyber-violence : Virtual space was invaded by images, texts, and video clips of hatred towards migrants demanding their immediate expulsion. Fake news and misleading images and videos were used. ‘Falso’, a digital research platform that works to monitor the quality of content on the Internet in Tunisia, observed several misleading pieces of information used during the campaign and documented them in a report published on 28 February 2023.[45]   Physical violence : This includes threats and physical actions to which migrants have been exposed, such as beatings and mutilation. It also includes forced eviction from homes and workplaces, and the destruction of migrants’ belongings. Dozens of injured people were unable to reach hospitals due to fear and panic. A house in the Sfax region inhabited by sub-Saharan migrants was also attacked by a group of young men on the night of 20-21 May 2023, resulting in the death of one migrant and serious injuries to four others.[46]   Verbal violence : Such violence is well known to migrants but it occurred more intensely after the February 2023 speech—particularly in public spaces, migrant workplaces, and accommodation. Even some black Tunisians were not spared.   Economic violence : The crisis exacerbated the economic violations to which migrants were exposed, as they were subjected to expulsion from their jobs, confiscation of their documents, and seizure of their remaining wages. Some employers took advantage of the situation to impose free labour in exchange for protection.   Sexual violence : Women’s rights organisations documented cases of sexual assault and harassment of migrant women.   Violence against children : Children were exposed to numerous violations due to the deprivation of health and medical services and the inability to access food, in addition to the conditions that accompanied expulsions to the borders, including high temperatures and lack of water.   V.   Memorandum of Understanding between Tunisia and the European Union: Fortresses in the North and South   While hundreds of migrants were suffering in the desert and at the borders in harsh climatic conditions, dozens more were dying at sea in rapidly sinking steel boats, and Tunisia’s fragile space of free speech was being restricted following arrests that targeted political leaders, journalists, activists, and all those who expressed opposition stances, European leaders chose to come to Tunisia on Sunday 16 July 2023 to sign a memorandum of understanding on a strategic and comprehensive partnership.[47]   Characterising the negotiation phase was the absence of any information, particularly on the Tunisian side, which provided no feedback on the discussions, and the absence of any political or societal debate on the Tunisian vision of the negotiations. The memorandum of understanding included a general introduction and certain fundamental axes of varying importance: macroeconomics, economy, trade, green energy transition, rapprochement between peoples, migration, and mobility. With regard to the last axis, the most important in view of its scope and urgency, the memorandum referred in particular to the common desire of both parties to develop a global approach to migration, and also to develop regular immigration routes.   The memorandum confirms that Tunisia has renewed its position of refusing to be a country of resettlement for irregular migrants and to limit itself to the surveillance of its own borders, a clause frequently repeated in the speech of the President of the Republic. It underlined the European Union’s commitment in this context to providing additional support to Tunisia to acquire the equipment, training, and technical support needed to improve the protection of its borders. The two parties are also committed to enabling irregular migrants in Tunisia to return to their countries of origin, while respecting their dignity and complying with international law.   Clearly, the document signed does not constitute a full partnership aimed at the circulation or concerted management of migration with Tunisia, but rather a partnership focused on the ‘fight’ against irregular migration which, in the words of Mahdi Mabrouk, a sociology professor, ‘treats the symptoms and does not provide a solution to any problem’.[48] Amnesty International commented: ‘What is most worrying is that this agreement was reached without imposing any human rights conditions, without assessing or monitoring its effects on human rights, and without any mechanism for suspending cooperation in the event of violations’.[49] The risks inherent to the agreement can be identified as follows:   The growing violence against migrants in Tunisia and the criminalisation of solidarity : The signing of the memorandum was followed by further brutal attacks on migrants, who were expelled from the city of Sfax to the olive groves. The Tunisian authorities have also stepped-up mass expulsions to Tunisia’s borders, in places that are difficult to access, threatening to prosecute anyone who tries to help and criminalising solidarity. All those who provide help are accused of being part of migrant smuggling networks. Civil organisations see the agreement as an endorsement of violence against migrants by the European Union,[50] which encourages the adoption of ‘security measures’[51] and the use of forced repulsion operations at sea, where naval guards force fleeing iron boats to stop firmly through dangerous manoeuvres, attempts to ram engines, and the use of gas and sticks at sea.   The memorandum indirectly legitimises the use of whatever means the Tunisian side deems appropriate to stop the arrival of immigrants in the Schengen area. The state’s policies have not only created a hostile environment towards migrants, but aim to ‘dissuade citizens, men and women, from expressing solidarity with and helping refugees and migrants by threatening to use the 2004 law, exercising psychological harassment and withholding the papers of anyone providing assistance to migrants. Uniformed and plain-clothed police deliberately restrict solidarity with refugees and asylum-seekers’.[52]   The imposition of inadequate socio-economic reforms : The memorandum of understanding is part of a drive to promote so-called reforms aimed at facilitating Tunisia’s access to a new line of financing from the International Monetary Fund. These reforms are not agreed and are considered by trade unions and civil society to be of high cost to vulnerable groups, contributing to cuts in public spending on basic services and reducing the number of employees, freezing retirement benefits, and reducing the development budget, thus widening poverty, inequality, and unemployment.   Legitimising Tunisia’s status as a safe country : A country is defined as ‘safe’ if it enjoys a political and democratic system free from persecution, arbitrary violence, and armed conflict, and is able to protect its nationals from unlawful prosecution, as required by effective and active judicial and administrative laws to protect the people. This hardly applies to Tunisia in its current context, where political life and democracy have declined significantly, rights and freedoms are restricted, opponents, journalists and activists are subjected to trials for their opinions, and many are forced to leave their country for fear of persecution. The memorandum of understanding helps to encourage European Union countries to classify Tunisia as a reliable partner and a safe country, thus facilitating the automatic rejection of asylum applications submitted by Tunisians within the Schengen area.   Tightening visa procedures : The European Union wants Tunisia to open up further to Europe in terms of the movement of goods, services, and capital, but not in terms of the free movement of people. The memorandum therefore supports the intensification of control at European borders, determining who and what is allowed to cross them: alleged promises to facilitate entry and others to ease visa procedures under the slogan of ‘talent partnership’. These are nothing but false promises, as visa procedures are still extremely complicated for Tunisians wishing to travel to Europe, and instead widen the gap in social inequality and perpetuate inequalities between social classes in Tunisia (a small, economically fortunate group enjoys the right of movement, while excluded economically and socially marginalised groups do not).   Forced mass deportations under the cover of readmission : To achieve their goal of expelling migrants from Tunisia under the name of ‘voluntary return’, the Tunisian authorities intend to create a repugnant environment for migrants so that the only solution for them to survive is to agree to return, even if this also puts their lives in danger. The authorities have gradually created this environment through arbitrary arrests under the pretext of irregular residence, work bans under the pretext of applying the labour code, and bans on movement, by giving verbal instructions to public and private transport companies to prohibit the transport of migrants.   Anyone failing to comply with these instructions will be subject to traffic restrictions and fines. This forced hundreds of migrants to travel long distances on foot, or to surrender to the blackmail of some individuals seeking to make the most of the situation and accumulate wealth. The policy was a success, and the International Organization for Migration organised trips to Guinea, Burkina Faso, and the Ivory Coast. These trips were made possible by European and British funding. At the end of a meeting between the heads of the Italian and British governments, the British Prime Minister declared that they ‘have committed to help fund a project to promote and assist the voluntary return of migrants from Tunisia to their country of origin’.[53]   The return of migrants requires bilateral agreements and logistical procedures that the European Union is committed to fund, which could in the future mean the construction of detention centres for migrants prior to the deportation process. Voluntary repatriation also applies to irregular Tunisian immigrants in Europe, as Tunisia has pledged further cooperation despite criticism. The European Court condemned the Italian government in a 31 March ruling in a case involving four Tunisian immigrants on the basis of the European Convention on Human Rights, in particular article 3 of the Convention relating to Inhuman and Degrading Treatment, article 5 relating to the right to liberty and security and article four relating to mass forced deportations.[54]   In view of the above, it cannot be said that this memorandum will benefit Tunisia and the state of rights and freedoms to which the Tunisian people aspire, especially in the short term. Rather, it has been designed to serve the interests of European governments at the expense of the rights and dignity of Tunisian citizens and migrants in Tunisia and has been implemented in response to a crisis in receiving immigrants to Europe. The memorandum does not allow for mutual and equal freedom and dignity for the inhabitants of the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, and instead contributes to feed feelings of hatred and racism towards migrants in Tunisia.   Conclusion   Democracy is based on respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of association, access and exercise of power under the rule of law, the holding of elections, freedom of political action, separation of powers, independence of courts, transparency, accountability, and media freedom. These conditions have been gradually disappearing in Tunisia since the advent of Saied’s rise to power as a result of a crisis in representative democracy since 25 July 2021.   Saied presented himself as the embodiment of the people’s desire for ‘sovereignty’. He used his populism as a weapon to confront his opponents, and even to create opponents for the people. After having consumed the discourse on corrupt elites, parties, organisations, and media, Saied presented his people with the ‘migrants’ as a new threat and adversary who supposedly wanted to alter Tunisia’s demographic composition and were to blame for its economic and social crisis. He has exercised his ‘sovereignty’ over vulnerable migrants. Expelling migrants to the borders, forcing them back out to sea, and preventing them from working, finding housing, and moving—under the pretext of an irregular administrative situation—has become the norm. This sovereignty has no objection to statements by Italian officials about imposing a naval blockade to prevent the arrival of migrants, nor to the French President’s proposal to send security personnel to help Tunisia, nor to agreements that fail to respect the rights and dignity of migrants. It is a sovereignty that ‘neither sees nor hears’ about the hundreds of corpses dumped on Tunisian beaches and struggles to ensure a decent burial for migrants’ bodies. It is a sovereignty that does not provide answers for the families of people who go missing during irregular migration. Saied’s ‘sovereignty’ was nourished by what remained of the dignity of people fleeing war, conflict, climate change, poverty, and harsh economic conditions.   Despite this violent climate against migrants, civic solidarity campaigns for them are growing and finding a base even among local communities who are also suffering because of the economic and social situation. Yet the future holds little signs of hope or a path to survival for migrants and refugees stranded in Tunisia. Indeed, developments in the countries of Central and West Africa and the war in Sudan could be the sign of more people fleeing and dreaming that Tunisia’s shores will be a door of escape. Europe could succeed in reinforcing the walls of its fortress by striving to circulate the memorandum of understanding with the rest of the southern Mediterranean countries and further militarising the Mediterranean Sea to prevent the arrival of migrants at all costs. The ‘sovereignty’ of Kais Saied may give him the opportunity to be re-elected, but the human and civilizational cost has been high, and Tunisians must fight fiercely to defend their ignoble democratic dream and erase the ‘shame’ of the February 2023 speech. Romdhane Ben Amor Romdhane Ben Amor is a human rights advocate who was an Internet activist prior to the Tunisian revolution and one of the bloggers who covered the 2008 mining basin events in Tunisia. He joined the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights FTDES organisation after the revolution and developed an interest in the dynamics of irregular migration as well as social mobility in Tunisia. He was a member of the World Social Forum’s organising committee, which met twice in Tunisia in 2013 and 2015. Currently, he is pursuing a Master of Research in Demography at the University of Human and Social Sciences of Tunis.   This article was written in January 2024. [1] Statement by the Presidency ( Republic of Tunisia Ministry of Social Affairs , 5 March 2023) < https://www.social.gov.tn/en/statement > accessed 22 January 2024. [2] Photo published by Libyan journalist Ahmed Khalifa ( Twitter , 19 July 2023) < https://twitter.com/ahmad_khalifa78/status/1681672974246584321 > accessed 22 January 2024. [3] l  ‘موكب أداء القسم وكلمة رئيس الجمهورية المنتخب قيس سعيد’ ( Facebook , 23 October 2019) < https://www.facebook.com/Presidence.tn/videos/914211068964108/ > accessed 22 January 2024. [4] ‘The unfinished revolution : bringing opportunity, good jobs and greater wealth to all Tunisians’ ( The World Bank , 24 May 2014) < https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/658461468312323813/the-unfinished-revolution-bringing-opportunity-good-jobs-and-greater-wealth-to-all-tunisians > accessed 22 January 2024. [5]  H Arbi , ‘ Annual report on the 2019+ social protests’ 4 < https://ftdes.net/rapports/mvtssociaux2019 > accessed 1 May 2024. [6]   Facebook   (n 3) [7] ‘Lettre Ouverte au: Rapporteur spécial sur les droits à la liberté de réunion pacifique et à la liberté d’association la Rapporteuse spéciale des Nations Unies sur la liberté d’opinion et d’expression’ [‘Open Letter to: Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression’] ( FTDES , 25 March 2021) < https://ftdes.net/lettre-ouverte-au-rapporteur-special-sur-les-droits-a-la-liberte-de-reunion-pacifique-et-a-la-liberte-dassociation-la-rapporteuse-speciale-des-nations-unies-sur-la-liberte-dopinion-et-dexpress/ > accessed 23 January 2024. [8] ‘Joint Statement: Tunisia: Unprecedented Confiscation of Power by the Presidency’ ( Human Rights Watch , 27 September 2021) < https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/09/27/joint-statement-tunisia-unprecedented-confiscation-power-presidency > accessed 23 January 2024. [9] ‘Flux migratoires: les routes orientale, centrale et occidentale’ ( Council of the European Union ) < https://www.consilium.europa.eu/fr/infographics/migration-flows-to-europe/ > accessed 23 January 2024. [10] UN Human Rights Council, ‘Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya’ ( OHCHR , 22 June 2020) < https://www.ohchr.org/ar/hr-bodies/hrc/libya/index > accessed 23 January 2024. [11] ‘Infographic—Irregular arrivals to the EU (2008-2023)’ ( Council of the European Union ) < https://www.consilium.europa.eu/fr/infographics/irregular-arrivals-since-2008/ > accessed 23 January 2024. [12] ‘Tunisia Operational Map—Refugees and Asylum Seekers’  ( UNHCR , March 202 3) < https://reporting.unhcr.org/tunisia-operational-map > accessed 23 January 2024.   [13] ‘Annual Report Non-regulated Emigration from Tunisia 2017’ ( FTDES , 8 March 2018) < https://ftdes.net/emigration2017/ > accessed 23 January 2024. [14] ‘Annual report: Non-regulated migration in Tunisia 2019’ ( FTDES , 3 July 2020) < https://ftdes.net/ar/rapport-annuel-migration-non-reglementaire-en-tunisie-2019/ > accessed 23 January 2024. [15] Government Order No 70, 19  January   2017 on the National Security Council. [16] Statement by the Presidency of the Republic, 21 February 2023; Lilia Blaise, ‘Tunisia’s President Kais Saied claims sub-Saharan migrants threaten country’s identity’ Le Monde  (Paris, 23 February 2023) < https://www.lemonde.fr/en/le-monde-africa/article/2023/02/23/in-tunisia-president-kais-saied-claims-sub-saharan-migrants-threaten-country-s-identity_6016898_124.html > accessed 23 January 2024. [17] ‘Arbitrary arrests and hate campaigns against migrants of sub-Saharan origin in Tunisia’ ( FTDES , 16 February 2023) < https://ftdes.net/ar/arbitrary-arrests-and-hate-campaigns-against-migrants-of-sub-Saharan-origin-in-tunisia/ > accessed 23 January 2024. [18] l  ‘تقرير مشروع الإستيطان الأجصي و إزالة تونس من الوجو’ ( Tunisian National Party , 3 February 2023) < https://bit.ly/4fJsbhy > accessed 23 January 2024. [19] Najla Ben Salah, ‘الحزب القومي التونسي: العنصرية الزاحفة بمباركة الدولة’ ( Nawaat , 14 February 2023) < https://nawaat.org/2023/01/26/%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ad%d8%b2%d8%a8-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%82%d9%88%d9%85%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%aa%d9%88%d9%86%d8%b3%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d9%86%d8%b5%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b2%d8%a7%d8%ad%d9%81/ > accessed 23 January 2024.   [20] l  ‘بلاغ جهاز تفقديّة الشّغل بكامل ولايات الجمهورية يواصل القيام بحملات مراقبة مكثّفة لتشغيل’ < https://www.social.gov.tn/index.php/ar/%D8%A8%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%BA-%D8%AC%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%B2-%D8%AA%D9%81%D9%82%D8%AF%D9%8A%D9%91%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D9%91%D8%BA%D9%84-%D8%A8%D9%83%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%84-%D9%88%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AC%D9%85%D9%87%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%8A%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%B5%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%85-%D8%A8%D8%AD%D9%85%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%82%D8%A8%D8%A9-%D9%85%D9%83%D8%AB%D9%91%D9%81%D8%A9-%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%B4%D8%BA%D9%8A%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D9%85%D9%91%D8%A7%D9%84 >  accessed 24 January 2024. [21] Organisation Tunisienne des Jeunes Médecins ( Facebook , 23 February 2023) < https://www.facebook.com/OTJM.National/posts/3618424695053248?ref=embed_post > accessed 23 January 2024. [22] ‘The Chairperson of the African Union Commission strongly condemns the racial statements on fellow Africans in Tunisia’ ( African Union , 24 February 2023) < https://au.int/fr/pressreleases/20230224/le-president-de-la-commission-de-lunion-africaine-condamne-fermement-les > accessed 23 January 2024. [23]   See ‘ وزارة الشؤون الخارجية والهجرة والتونسيين بالخارج’ ( Facebook , 25 February 2023) < https://www.facebook.com/TunisieDiplo/posts/pfbid0k7RwaRyZD54JGFiUv1Z2usEPB86Vxvr9b3mMscMaDkjZzVNZxS2ufuAQGYb5dQdul > accessed 23 January 2024. [24] l  ‘مفوض حقوق الإنسان في خطاب شامل: قلق بشأن الوضع في دول عدة ودعوة لتعزيز الحقوق’ ( UN News,  7 March 2023) < https://news.un.org/ar/story/2023/03/1118687 > accessed 23 January 2024.   [25] l  ‘لجنة أممية تحث تونس على إنهاء خطاب الكراهية والعنف ضد مهاجرين من جنوب الصحراء’ ( UN News , 4 April 2023) < https://news.un.org/ar/story/2023/04/1119412 > accessed 23 January 2024. [26] Andrea Shalal and Angus Mcdowall, ‘World Bank says pausing future Tunisia work amid reports of racist violence’ ( Reuters , 6 March 2023) < https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/world-bank-says-pausing-tunisia-work-amid-racially-motivated-violence-2023-03-06/ > accessed 23 January 2024. [27] l  ‘تونس: الخطاب العنصري للرئيس يُحرّض على موجة عنف ضد الأفارقة السود’ ( Amnesty International , 10 March 2023) < https://www.amnesty.org/ar/latest/news/2023/03/tunisia-presidents-racist-speech-incites-a-wave-of-violence-against-black-africans/ > accessed 23 January 2024. [28]  Eric Zemmour ( Twitter , 22 February 2023)  < https://twitter.com/ZemmourEric/status/1628328739284176896?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet >  accessed 23 January 2024. [29] l  ‘بيان مشترك: تونس لن تكون فاشية كما يريدها رئيس الجمهورية’ ( LTDH ) < https://ltdh.tn/%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%86%D8%B3-%D9%84%D9%86-%D8%AA%D9%83%D9%88%D9%86-%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B4%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%83%D9%85%D8%A7-%D9%8A%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9%87%D8%A7-%D8%B1%D8%A6%D9%8A%D8%B3-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AC%D9%85/ > accessed 23 January 2024. [30] Abdellatif Hermassi, Revolution and Calvary: An Approach from the Point of View of Political Sociology  (Sotimedia Publications 2023) 268. [31] Watania Replay, ‘ تحول رئيس الجمهورية قيس سعيد إلى ولاية صفاقس ‘ ( YouTube , 10 June 2023) < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-MxKnUN-NQ > accessed 24 January 2024. See Khalid Tabbabi, ‘الحق لكن ‘القانون’: قراءة في الخطاب الرئاسي حول قضية المهاجرين’ ( The Legal Agenda , 15 June 2023) < https://legal-agenda.com/%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ad%d9%82-%d9%84%d9%83%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%82%d8%a7%d9%86%d9%88%d9%86-%d9%82%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%a1%d8%a9-%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ae%d8%b7%d8%a7%d8%a8/ > accessed 24 January 2024. [32]  See Présidence Tunisie ( Facebook , 8 July 2023)  < https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0s28VUh7cUAxrjuXd7Y6sxajxQwS8A6JfGhb66eca3KEh2kD3ZSS4FrdzCYT9n2Qol&id=100064458289062&mibextid=qC1gEa&paipv=0&eav=AfYSpoVLe1yoF56c1JIjTUdqSV2M4m3Dg4NmsJSP_I-rhDflPDsKPGehLcdwDa8K6uw&_rdr > accessed 24 January 2024.   [33]   Amnesty International (n 27). [34] ‘Tunisia: Racist Violence Targets Black Migrants, Refugees’ ( Human Rights Watch , 10 March 2023) < https://www.hrw.org/ar/news/2023/03/10/tunisia-racist-violence-targets-black-migrants-refugees > accessed 24 January 2024. [35] ‘Situation à Sfax : Préserver la vie humaine : un principe baffoué au cœur de la tragédie migratoire’ ( FTDES , 6 July 2023) < https://ftdes.net/situation-a-sfax-preserver-la-vie-humaine-un-principe-baffoue-au-coeur-de-la-tragedie-migratoire/ > accessed 24 January 2024. [36]   ‘Tunisia: No Safe Haven for Black African Migrants, Refugees’ ( Human Rights Watch , 19 July 2023 ) < https://www.hrw.org/ar/news/2023/07/19/tunisia-no-safe-haven-black-african-migrants-refugees > accessed 24 January 2024.   [37]   See NIHRL ‘ Communiqué de l’institution nationale des droits de l’homme en Lybie’  ( Facebook , 8 July 2023) < https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid022EVp9ksU1tAcPpfaJYcEUG33Bq3EeZQp2FwJTnUjJWWnQAbRCnSVMqvyfnqwzNeRl&id=100068959756519&mibextid=Nif5oz&paipv=0&eav=Afbf3MJGVJ-A_nfDvoV52gN61YQZ6zTd_L6vnuqs_Fqk5CB-a62J9hkg5AeGCN97u7Q&_rdr >  accessed 24 February 2024. [38]  Nadjib Touaibia, ‘Tunisia: Fati and Marie, victims of Kaïs Saïed’s racist policy’ ( L’Humanité , 2 August 2023) < https://www.humanite.fr/monde/tunisie/tunisie-fati-et-marie-victimes-de-la-politique-raciste-de-kais-saied-804963 > accessed 24 January 2024. [39] Khaled Tababi, ‘al-Mghaṭṭā Valley: An Open Space for Double Absence: A Story of Stranded and Forsaken Migrants at the Margins of the State’ ( FTDES , 27 July 2023) < https://ftdes.net/migration-mgatta/ > accessed 1 May 2024. [40]   ibid 38. [41]   ibid 47. [42] World Organization Against Torture, ‘Les Routes de la Torture: Cartographie des violations subies par les personnes en déplacement en Tunisie’ ( OMCT , 2023) < https://omct-tunisie.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Migration-et-torture-Finale-Planches-.pdf > accessed 1 May 2024. [43] l  ‘الطرد الى الحدود البرية والصّدّ بالقوة في البحر تعزيزا ‘للحصن’ الأوروبي’ ( FTDES , 6 December 2023) < https://ftdes.net/ar/expulsion-aux-frontieres-et-pushback-en-mer-pour-promouvoir-la-forteresse-europeenne/ > accessed 24 January 2024. [44]   ‘Statistique Migration’ ( FTDES , 9 November 2023) < https://ftdes.net/statistiques-migration-2023/ > accessed 24 January 2024. [45]  See ‘ رصد وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي في تونس: تطور المعلومات المضللة وتنظير المؤامرة حول المهاجرين من جنوب الصحراء ’  < https://drive.google.com/file/d/1etYGrDPlnBy7QaLWGGy2UsFNZJ06nKqO/view?fbclid=IwAR1JcbPA-v-rYA_FxZkmWhsfHaBp4DzKXwqg4tEnQeAVioZqaMdtHH9GkzY > accessed 24 January 2024. [46] l  ‘خطابات الكراهية والعنصرية تشجّع على القتل’ ( FTDES , 25 May 2023) < https://ftdes.net/ar/les-discours-haineux-et-le-racisme/ > accessed 24 January 2024. [47]  See < https://www.diplomatie.gov.tn/memorandum?fbclid=IwAR1QPNHEMn_i6QSU_gcz8_vojXtEbi-bi1jn2M5SIgNZIBZOae3z_HPma4c > accessed 24 January 2024.   [48] Quoted in Larissa Tschudi, ‘اتفاقية الهجرة بين تونس والاتحاد الأوروبي لن تحل أي مشكلة’ ( Swissinfo , 19 July 2023) < https://www.swissinfo.ch/ara/business/-%D8%A7%D8%AA%D9%81%D8%A7%D9%82%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%87%D8%AC%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%A8%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%86%D8%B3-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AA%D8%AD%D8%A7%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A8%D9%8A-%D9%84%D9%86-%D8%AA%D8%AD%D9%84-%D8%A3%D9%8A-%D9%85%D8%B4%D9%83%D9%84%D8%A9-/48667484 > accessed 24 January 2024. [49] l  ‘في تونس، يكرر الاتحاد الأوروبي خطأ قديمًا وخطيرًا’ ( Amnesty International , 25 September 2023) < https://www.amnesty.org/ar/latest/news/2023/09/in-tunisia-the-eu-is-repeating-an-old-and-dangerous-mistake/ >  accessed 24 January 2024. [50]   ‘Mémorandum UE-Tunisie : l’Union européenne approuve les rafles, les expulsions illégales et la violence à l’encontre des migrants’ ( FTDES , 20 July 2023) < https://ftdes.net/memorandum-ue-tunisie-lunion-europeenne-approuve-les-rafles-les-expulsions-illegales-et-la-violence-a-lencontre-des-migrants/ > accessed 24 January 2024.   [51] Khaled Tababi, ‘Le Mémorandum entre la Tunisie et l’Union Européenne : vers un Renforcement de la Dépendance, de L’autoritarisme et de l’Europe Forteresse ?’ ( European Council on Refugees and Exiles , 2023) < https://ecre.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/ECRE-Working-Paper-20_Le-Memorandum-entre-la-Tunisie-et-lUnion-europeenne.pdf > accessed 1 May 2024. [52] l  ‘التضييق على التضامن مع المهاجرين.ات تمهيدا للتجريم’ ( FTDES , 24 March 2024) < https://ftdes.net/ar/solidarite/ > accessed 24 January 2024. [53] l  ‘روما ولندن تتفقان على تمويل’ مشروع لإعادة المهاجرين العالقين في تونس إلى أوطانهم’ ( Info Migrants , 18 December 2023) < https://www.infomigrants.net/ar/post/53949/%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%85%D8%A7-%D9%88%D9%84%D9%86%D8%AF%D9%86-%D8%AA%D8%AA%D9%81%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%86-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%AA%D9%85%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%84-%D9%85%D8%B4%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%B9-%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%AC%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D9%8A%D9%86-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%86%D8%B3-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%A7%D9%88%D8%B7%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%87%D9%85 > accessed 24 January 2024. [54] l  ‘المحكمة الأوروبية لحقوق الانسان تدين الحكومة الايطالية’ ( FTDES , 31 March 2023) < https://ftdes.net/ar/hudoc/?fbclid=IwAR3V_GsgAqqUM07BuzHqyloJHPyi8EqNL0qJ0jtvVyp6j78UDKGpWdC9j6Q > accessed 24 January 2024.

Abstract   Sweden is globally considered not only a country with generous refugee reception policies but also a leading example of equality and respect for LGBTQ rights. The country recognises, for example, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) as legitimate grounds for asylum protection, via the Sweden Aliens Act (2006). This study seeks to understand the lived experiences of trans-African migrants’ integration process in Sweden . Data is gathered from three in-depth semi-structured interviews with diverse trans refugees. The heuristic model of integration processes was used for data analysis focusing on the structural, social and identity dimensions through an intersectional lens. Participants revealed experiences of intersectional discrimination, bias, and prejudice in the structure and social dimensions while accessing healthcare systems and the labour market, which led to increased insecurity from unstable income and housing, isolation from local ethnic migrant networks or family transnational ties, and inadequate support from LGBTQ organisations, which further impacted their sense of belonging. Yet, despite it all, they share a sense of agency, resilience, and hope.   Introduction   In many parts of the world, LGBTQ communities face persecution from both state and non-state actors due to strict cultural and gender norms. However, it is often trans people who are particularly vulnerable to discrimination, stigma, and violence in both public and private spheres. Consequently, many are often forced to seek safety and protection in other countries. LGBTQ refugees are amongst one of the fastest-growing migrant populations in the world, and the past decade has witnessed a drastic increase in the number of individuals claiming asylum based on sexual orientation and gender identity and/or expression.   The topic of LGBTQ refugees has been a staple for scholars globally: studies have focused on mental health,[1] post-migration challenges, the asylum process,[2] and perceptions of home and belonging.[3] The body of work related to the experiences of trans refugees is, however, still relatively small.[4] The emerging literature in this field leverages perspectives drawn from legal, psychological, and gender approaches, highlighting the need for a deeper understanding of their unique challenges and perspectives.   In Europe, studies on LGBTQ refugees’ mental health, the asylum process, and integration have begun to emerge,[5] yet few scholars have also focused exclusively on trans people in the asylum-seeking process. These studies have revealed continued experiences of isolation, discrimination, and vulnerability. For instance, scholars have argued that although LGBTQ ‘migrants/refugees’ may have fled from danger and injustices in their home countries, they still remain ‘unfree and isolated outsiders’ in their new country of residence. This is particularly true for trans people, who have reported feeling ‘insecure’ and ‘unsafe’ in both institutional settings of asylum and healthcare. Studies also revealed that participants experienced incessant threats to their human rights due to experiences of institutional discrimination by asylum authorities and in the labour market. They also face racial and social prejudice, which increases feelings of victimisation.[6]   Contrary to research that focuses on narratives of victimhood and persecution, other studies have highlighted the agency and resilience of LGBTQ refugees. Findings show that despite their challenges and traumas during the integration process, LGBTQ refugees exhibit a sense of agency and resilience and employ subjective coping strategies.[7] Alessi, for example, has investigated resilience in sexual and gender minority-forced migrants resettled in the United States and Canada, finding that ‘spiritual upkeep’ played a key role in strengthening resilience. Alessi concluded that although LGBTQ migrants are a vulnerable group,   they do not fail to acknowledge their resilience and own strengths to cope with challenges faced during resettlement in the host country.[8] This is worth further exploration in Sweden to understand the subjective strategies transgender migrants with intersecting identities leverage to cope with their integration process experience.   Compared to other countries in the EU, Sweden has a generous asylum system dating back to the 1970s and 80s, welcoming those seeking protection from persecution and wars in countries such as Chile, Somalia, and Morocco.[9] This was also evidenced in 2015 when Sweden was one of the countries which welcomed a high number of asylum seekers.[10] In connection with providing asylum to LGBTQ individuals, Sweden has opened its doors with the promise of equality, security, and safety for LGBTQ people wanting to freely express their gender identity. Sweden has globally positioned itself as an LGBTQ-friendly country, being a signatory to a wide range of international instruments that catalogue the fundamental rights of LGBTQ people, and has been amongst the top countries that continuously recorded the ‘highest proportion of respondents expressing acceptance of LGBTQ rights in Europe’. Additionally, Sweden ranks amongst the top countries that protect trans rights and has enacted anti-discrimination laws for trans persons in housing, healthcare, education, goods and services, and housing.[11]   Though a small body of qualitative research is emerging in Sweden that focuses on LGBTQ refugees,[12] very few studies have been conducted on trans individuals. Limited studies have explored the settlement experiences of LGBTQ migrants, let alone focusing exclusively on analysing the situation of transmigrants who have particular needs and challenges.[13] A notable government-commissioned inquiry into the general situation of trans persons highlighted how many trans people experienced heightened precarity, violence, and insecurity when accessing various public institutions and public spaces as well as securing permanent housing. The report recommends further intersectional investigation into the experiences of trans people, particularly those who have experiences of being ‘racialised’ in Sweden.[14]   Given this background, an understanding of transgender migrants’ lived experience is of great significance. This study thus examines how LGBTQ migrants experience their integration process in Sweden, a country in which the Aliens Act (2006) recognises Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) as legitimate grounds for asylum protection. We examine the integration experiences of LGBTQ migrants in Sweden, with a particular focus on African transgender individuals with migrant status. The integration framework used in this research is based on the heuristic model proposed by Spencer and Charsley, which conceptualises integration as a multi-dimensional and multi-directional process. Unlike traditional models that imply a fixed or desired end goal (such as full assimilation), this model understands integration as an ongoing, dynamic process influenced by interactions across various domains, including structural, social, cultural, and civic spheres.[15]   A key feature of this model is its emphasis on the non-linearity of integration, whereby different aspects of individuals’ lives, such as employment, social networks, or access to service do not develop in a uniform manner. Instead, progress in one dimension may lag or advance independently of others. Additionally, the model accounts for the interconnectedness of society, recognising that the boundaries between different groups are porous, and interactions between migrants and host societies are shaped by both local and transnational factors. Furthermore, the model’s multi-directional nature allows for a nuanced analysis of how both migrants and the host society adapt and change through these interactions. Rather than viewing integration as a one-way process in which migrants must adapt to pre-existing societal norms, this approach allows for a more fluid understanding of how migrants contribute to and reshape the societies they enter. This is especially relevant for LGBTQ migrants, whose social positions and experiences may challenge existing cultural norms in both migrant and host communities.   According to this model, integration processes take place within five dimensions: social, structural, cultural, identity, and civil and political participation. Of central importance to the present study are the social, structural, and identity-related dimensions, described by Spencer and Charsely as follows: ‘ Structural—  as in participation in the labour and housing market, education and health systems; Social —as in social interaction, relationships, and networks; […] Identity— the processes through which individuals of differing backgrounds may develop a shared identity and sense of belonging with the place, nation, communities and people among whom they live’.[16] I focus on these three dimensions to better understand the lived experiences of transgender migrants’ integration process, always bearing in mind that integration is not a compartmentalised process, but that in real life, these dimensions are often interlinked.   Spencer and Charsley designate as ‘effectors’ factors that influence the integration process by either enabling engagement or hampering it.[17] This study will similarly explore how individual, family, and societal ‘effectors’ such as language ability, care responsibilities, or job opportunities impact the integration of LGBTQ migrants in Sweden. By examining these effectors, it seeks to uncover how social structures and personal circumstances interact to facilitate or hinder integration. For example, a transgender migrant’s access to housing may be shaped by local attitudes towards gender diversity, while their ability to find employment may depend on the intersection of social capital, language proficiency, and institutional policies.   Additionally, an intersectional approach, as pioneered by Kimberlé Crenshaw, is used to identify the ‘structural and social contexts and norms that intersect to create structures of oppression and privilege for groups and individuals’.[18] This approach acknowledges that people’s lives are ‘multi-dimensional and complex, and their lived experiences are shaped by the interaction of intersecting identities, contexts, and social dynamics’.[19] By exploring the intersectionality of gender, migrant, and racial positions through this lens, we can gain a more nuanced understanding of how African transgender refugees experience their integration process in Sweden.   Analysis discussion and findings The analysis, following the methodology outlined above, revealed four main themes from the interviews: Intersectional discrimination, Insecurity, (Un)belonging, and Resilience and Hope. Core themes that will be presented were prominent in all interviews, although the perspectives provided in them differed.   Theme One: Intersectional discrimination   The theme of intersectional discrimination featured prominently in participants’ descriptions of their experiences of the integration process. It was apparent that their intersecting and ‘multiple historically marginalised social positions’ as transgender and black migrants made them more vulnerable to ‘intersecting forms of oppression’.[20] However, there were variations in individual experiences in structural, social, and identity dimensions, attributable to individual additional intersecting social positions.   Structural dimension:   Participants shared narratives that consistently underscored the theme of intersectional discrimination. As black trans refugees, they have several intersecting social positions, placing them in a position of increased vulnerability to what Crenshaw described as ‘intersecting forms of oppression’. In this section, I will examine these intersections through the lenses of the labour market, as well as health and social services.   Labour market:            A major area in which African transgender migrants experience discrimination and stigmatisation is in the labour market.   Magret, a black trans woman and a refugee, was initially cautioned by her social worker, who told her about the reluctance of Swedish employers to hire trans migrants. Her social worker cited the perceived costs and legal concerns associated with employing trans individuals. In Magret’s words, ‘[the social worker] said employers complained that it was costly because, in many cases, trans people came without experience and were only focused on their transition and taking employers to court for unfair treatment […] So many companies were just uncomfortable hiring trans people’. Magret’s perception here is that the feedback from the social worker was valid, given the barriers she was encountering in the labour market. In Magret’s understanding and experience, the social worker felt employers exhibited discriminatory hiring practices. Scholars have linked such stigma to work related transphobia, which creates barriers to employment and financial wellbeing for transgender individuals.[21]   The transphobia experienced in the workplace extended beyond their interactions with employers and infiltrated their relationships with fellow migrant co-workers. Magret shared instances where she was verbally abused by co-workers who perpetuated stigmatisation. She described her working conditions, stating, ‘I remember, I had a job of cutting grass in the summer […] people who were also working were busy gossiping like you know those are transgenders. They were saying all those nasty words about transgender, and these are fellow immigrants from different countries […] (laughs), you struggle. It wasn’t easy!’.   Another participant, Dan—a black trans man with a refugee background—pointed out that he faced homophobia from migrant co-workers who assumed he was gay. Trans people faced extreme hostility not only within the labour market but also within their migrant community; the experiences shared by Magret and Dan serve as a poignant reminder of how co-workers, who on the surface shared similar migrant backgrounds and held low-skilled positions, perpetuated stigmatisation of other forms. This interconnectedness of the oppressions that participants experienced in the workplace also reveals that these injustices emanated from multiple sources within the labour market. As highlighted in a report by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), trans individuals experience ‘structural discrimination’, which culminates in their marginalisation and exclusion from stable, formal employment.[22] Magret and Dan’s comments also align with Spencer and Charsley’s assertion that ‘employers’ or neighbours’ perceptions of migrants’ identities may influence their social and work opportunities’.[23]   Health and social services   Studies conducted in Sweden have consistently revealed how intersectional discrimination in the labour market contributes to a state of precarious employment, poverty, and poor mental health.[24] These findings align with the socioeconomic positions of our participants, which are further highlighted in their encounters with social welfare services. Experiences of transphobia have been found to impact multiple facets of life, including education, health care, and access to credit, further affecting trans people’s integration process and well-being.[25] The following focuses in greater detail on participants’ access to healthcare and social services.   Participants provided detailed accounts of transphobia in healthcare settings, recounting instances of deliberate misgendering and the disregard of their chosen names and pronouns by medical personnel. Dan, a trans man with unique healthcare needs due to his birthing experience, narrated the challenges he faced while accessing healthcare services, particularly during the pre-and post-natal period. His experiences were characterised by feelings of being disrespected, where his requests to be called ‘papa’ and referred to with masculine pronouns were consistently ignored. In Dan’s words: ‘They said we go with what’s on your personal number. At that time, I had not yet changed my gender marker. Even my own Barnmörska (midwife in Swedish) never respected my gender identity. I felt so angry and hopeless. I never felt like a transman during this experience’.   Likewise, Dan’s experiences extended to the local clinic, where he felt unsafe due to transphobic treatment by nurses. The nurses deliberately misgendered him and referred to him as ‘mother’ in front of other parents, a situation that compelled Dan to withdraw from these gatherings. These experiences serve as a striking example of how negative treatment and disrespect due to gender identity adversely affects access to crucial services, ultimately reinforcing feelings of isolation and alienation.   Dan’s emotional account of a recent hospital stay highlights the profound impact of transphobia on his well-being. His vulnerability and sense of humiliation were palpable as he described an incident where a nurse treated him unfairly because of his trans identity. His harrowing experience in the hospital, as Dan described, involved being bathed by a nurse who displayed a visible disgust at the sight of his naked body. Dan, in a vulnerable moment, shared, ‘It was bad […] you know, like somebody showering you like you got [expletive] on your body, she looked disgusted seeing my naked body. Do you understand? This treatment was so heart-breaking. I remember crying to myself. I’m like, why am I passing through this’.   The compounded effect of Dan’s racial identity made him even more susceptible to discrimination. In a poignant reflection on his experiences, Dan stated, ‘There is a type of discrimination that you cannot even explain to somebody, saying this is discrimination. But you know that if I were somebody different or identified myself differently, I wouldn’t face this kind of challenge. So, on many occasions until today, the system failed me because I was a black trans man. As black trans men, we are still facing what white people don’t face […] If I were different in colour, I would be treated better’. This powerfully captures how Dan’s experiences were shaped by the intersectionality of his gender identity and race, intensifying the discrimination he faced.   Experiences of discrimination in healthcare also extended to Magret’s accounts. When Magret needed to enter rehab, she faced many barriers due to her gender and racial social positions. She discovered that no place was willing to accommodate ‘a black, let alone trans, English-speaking person’. She highlighted that it took over five months before her social worker could secure a place that was considered ‘trans-friendly’. Even during her stay in rehab, Magret said she was still confronted with stigma and abusive language from her white peers, who used demeaning and derogatory language to belittle her. These experiences of racial prejudice were distressing, and Magret characterised her time in rehab as ‘my worst experience’. She went on to express that she wouldn’t encourage another trans person to go through a similar ordeal, given the potential emotional toll, saying, ‘I cannot really encourage another trans person to go through it because you might get out of rehab and commit suicide. It’s possible!’ Magret’s account highlights the intersectionality of the ‘oppressions’ she experienced. Even in a rehab setting, among individuals who are part of a minority and often stigmatised group, her presence triggered racially abusive language from a fellow patient. In sum, Dan and Magret’s reflections illuminate how experiences of racism and transphobia on the basis of intersectional identities had cascading effects, permeating various aspects of their lives and influencing their integration process.   Social dimension:     The social dimension encompasses interactions, relationships, and networks. Experiences within this sphere predominantly revolve around engagement in broader society, as well as participation within ethnic migrant and home country diaspora communities.   Broader society     Participants recounted instances of encountering racial and transphobic prejudice when navigating society. They expressed feeling the weight of both stigma related to their gender identity and racial discrimination. For instance, Magret and Vilma, both black trans women and refugees, shared their encounters with racial discrimination in public spaces. However, their experiences diverged significantly. Unlike Vilma, Magret openly expressed her gender identity. She vividly described her daily ordeal: ‘Being a trans woman of colour requires an immense amount of courage just to step out of your house […] People often acknowledge the challenges of being black in Sweden or Europe, but when you’re also trans, the struggle intensifies!’   Furthermore, participants highlighted that they confronted discrimination and stigma even within their home country’s diaspora and ethnic migrant communities. As one participant candidly stated, ‘I avoid gatherings with black people because I know that the transphobia emanating from our own community cuts deeper than the prejudice from white individuals’. Dan revealed that he had been excommunicated from the church after his gender identity became known. The pastor convened a meeting and informed him that he needed to be spiritually reborn. In the interim, he was requested to cease attending while they deliberated on how to ‘assist’ him. Even when Dan attempted to conceal his gender identity primarily for safety, once it was discovered by the church leadership, he became an outcast within the religious community, compounding broader experiences of marginalisation and isolation, leading them to feel ‘invisible, socially ostracised, and subjected to discrimination’.[26]   Theme Two: Insecurity   Another significant theme connected to the experience of intersectional discrimination is a prevailing sense of insecurity. The individuals I interviewed shared their experiences of dwelling in precarious circumstances due to the absence of a stable, consistent income, suitable housing, and dependable support networks, across both structural and social dimensions.   Structural Dimension:   Labour Market   Insecurities emanating from not having a stable job and income featured prominently in participant’s experiences. They described their precarious situations, reliant on meagre support from the social welfare services, which they felt ‘infantilised’ them and ‘regulated’ their lives. Vilma, an unemployed, not educated black trans refugee woman who mentioned never finding employment in Sweden, lamented that: ‘At this moment, my home contains only rice, and the money they provide is meagre. Nevertheless, they burden us with many issues for this sum’. The experiences of these participants unveiled their status as the ‘new underclass: a minority within a minority’.[27] Scholars have highlighted that ethnic enclaves, local and transnational ties, and families are sources of social capital that can facilitate access to resources in host countries.[28] However, my interlocutors avoided such networks, fearing exposure and retribution due to their gender social positions.   In alignment with others, Dan recounted how experiences of insecurity and uncertainty about the future pushed him to the brink, leading to a suicide attempt. He shared, ‘At one point, my emotional struggles overwhelmed me. I found myself in a situation where I contemplated ending my life. Social services were pursuing custody of my child, and I lacked a stable residence, a steady income, or anyone to confide in’. Dan eloquently conveys the web of insecurities he grappled with, including homelessness, unemployment, and single parenthood without a support network or safety net to fall back on. The participants’ experiences of insecurity due to joblessness and homelessness align with findings in Sweden by SOU, which highlighted that transgender individuals, compared to cisgender counterparts, face ‘higher unemployment, lower incomes, and increased poverty and homelessness’.[29]   Housing   All participants emphasised feelings of insecurity regarding housing. They noted that without a stable job and income, finding secure housing became nearly impossible. Dan shared a personal experience, saying, ‘When I was identified as female, they protected me, made sure I was in a safe place and provided their home to me. But once I started transitioning, they left me alone. The system failed me because I was a black trans man. However, before, when I was a black woman with a child, they helped me. But now, as a black trans man with a child, the only thing they did was to fight me, break me, and try to take my child from me’.   In this account, Dan vividly portrayed his sense of being unfairly treated due to intersecting social positions as a black trans man. The impact of unstable income and homelessness among trans people has been documented in Europe.[30] Furthermore, the lack of stable income and homelessness has been associated with mental health challenges among transgender individuals in Sweden, as highlighted by Breight and Larsson.[31]   Healthcare   Participants described having different mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, and alcoholism. These experiences have also been pointed out by other scholars: Golembe et al, for example, found that post-migration LGBTQ refugees encounter re-traumatisation, social isolation, and increased mental health burdens.[32] Magret pointed out that being compelled to stop hormonal treatment by the gender clinic and having to wait for two years for the official process to begin had also increased her insecurities about her body and sense of self: ‘When I came here, I was already on hormones for two years, but here they said I need to stop. Nobody even thought about the withdrawal effects. I think that’s why I started taking more alcohol because I was like very angry, even today I have many insecurities as a transwoman’.   This experience shows how Magret’s insecurities are connected to the intersection of her gender identity and migrant social positions. While other migrant cisgender women might have insecurities, she needs access to hormones to feel more aligned and secure with her body. To be given access to state funded treatment, she needs to follow the legal regulations of the gender clinic. Spencer and Charsley’s model could also consider that in relation to the identity dimension belonging is not only about ‘a shared sense of being part of a diverse community’, but also about feeling a sense of belonging in your body .[33] In the above discussion on experiences of insecurity in the structural dimension, participants’ experiences revealed a complex, non-linear interlink between experiences within the same structural dimension as joblessness and homelessness also impacted on mental health.[34]   Social dimension:   Networks and relationships   A recurring concern centred on the increased precarity stemming from the absence of support networks and non-existent familial relations. Dan and Vilma, for example, expressed apprehension about disclosing their gender identity to unfamiliar individuals. They also recounted feelings of insecurity, characterising themselves as ‘isolated’ and ‘alone’, lacking significant local support from friends, families, migrant communities, or other LGBTQ organisations.   Participants highlighted that LGBTQ groups proved beneficial for those still seeking asylum, yet there was a dearth of support for transgender individuals facing precarious situations, particularly refugees, once they had obtained residency permits. As Dan pointed out, ‘We don’t know where to go; there are no organisations like the women’s organisations that offer safe homes for women. We don’t have safe homes for trans people. We lack an emergency number for trans people to call; we don’t have any support beyond the LGBTQ organisations. However, these organisations do not address such cases unless you are an asylum seeker. Real-life struggles emerge after the asylum, and regrettably, you face them alone’. This echoes the observations of other scholars, who have noted that transgender refugees ‘find themselves with rights but without community or home, and so unable to fully actualise these rights’.[35]   Theme Three: Un(belonging)   As described by Spencer and Charsley, the dimension of identity revolves around ‘the diverse experiences of individuals sharing an identity and a sense of belonging with the place, nation, communities, and people they live among’.[36] Participants’ reflections in the present study revealed that they did indeed experience a sense of belonging to local communities in Sweden in various ways. Interestingly, they all connected their sense of belonging to very intimate and personal spaces and individuals, underscoring how intersectional discrimination and insecurities profoundly impact one’s sense of belonging.   While Dan and Magret mentioned their involvement in LGBTQ organisations, they also expressed feelings of being ‘tokenised’ and ‘invisible’, believing that their voices and issues were not accommodated. This made them feel like an ‘outsider’, as Dan further elaborated: ‘I attended one group meeting, people were in little cliques, gays on their own, lesbians etc, and I was just alone as trans. Where is the sense of belonging in that?’ Magret also echoed similar sentiments when describing her experience: ‘Some organisations just want you to be on the board to be a flower […] we’re just being put there, you discover when decisions are being made that you just, you’re just a flower. They just wanted a black trans woman on the board’. This illustrates how individuals can be formally included in these spaces while simultaneously experiencing a sense of not belonging. Notably, in this case racial and gender social positions serve as both ‘axes of privilege’ granting inclusion in these spaces and contribute to feeling ‘tokenised’. Such reflections by participants about feeling isolated, unsupported, and having no sense of belonging to communities in Sweden, and in particular to LGBTQ organisations, challenge the findings of Konstenius et al, who emphasised that LGBTQ refugees in Sweden experienced a sense of belonging, safety, and improved health and well-being through participation in LGBTQ organisations, creating a supportive community.[37]   Theme Four: Resilience and hope     Despite these challenges, participants exhibited a remarkable sense of agency, resourcefulness, and a strong desire to enhance their lives and the lives of others. They explained how these difficulties fuelled their determination. Notably, they expressed their aspirations to pursue higher education and meaningful careers. As Vilma elaborated: ‘I want to be to be a vårdgivare (nurse) and help old people. I hope to get a decent salary […] support my mom, and make investments for the future’. As further testimony of her resilience and sense of agency, Magret said despite all the challenges she faces, she continues to show up for other trans asylum seekers, and she is now in the process of creating social spaces for youth, refugees, and migrants who are trans and non-Swedish speaking.   These insights align with the findings of other researchers, who have highlighted the resilience demonstrated by LGBTQ migrants in the face of adversity.[38] However, unlike in the work of Alessi, in the present study there was no indication that the participants’ resilience was linked to ‘spiritual practices’.[39] Instead, participants demonstrated a significant sense of agency by actively striving to change their circumstances, including pursuing further education. It’s also worth mentioning that, even if they did not necessarily feel a strong sense of belonging within various local communities, they remained eager and ready to contribute to the broader society.   Conclusion   This study aimed to gain insights into the real-life experiences of transgender African migrants. It sought to understand the challenges they face in their integration process within Sweden in relation to their gender, racial, and migrant social positions. This study utilised the heuristic model of integration processes proposed by Spencer and Charsley, to examine the structural, social, and identity dimensions through an intersectional lens.   Sweden, often perceived as a progressive and inclusive destination for LGBTQ migrants, presents a different narrative when delving into the genuine experiences of trans migrants at the crossroads of various social positions. This study revealed that the lived experiences of trans-African migrants in Sweden are characterised by intersectional discrimination due to their gender identity, race, and migrant social positions. These discriminatory experiences manifest in the structural dimension, impacting their access to healthcare services and the labour market. Simultaneously, this infiltrates the social dimension, affecting interactions within broader society, as well as in their home country diaspora and African communities. Consequently, this leads to a heightened sense of insecurity and precarity from unstable incomes, uncertainty and discomfort in healthcare settings, and the fear of unveiling one’s gender to strangers. Moreover, these experiences take a toll on participants’ mental well-being. Socially, trans-African migrants find themselves isolated from transnational family connections, isolated within their home country diaspora and migrant communities, and often lacking the support of local LGBTQ organisations. These factors have a profound impact on their sense of self, as well as their sense of belonging. However, despite these challenges, participants exhibit agency, resilience, and optimism. Miles Tanhira Miles Rutendo Tanhira is a Zimbabwean-Swedish International Migration researcher and Founder of Queerstion Media. He is a peace and LGBTQI+ rights activist and a core team member of the European Coalition of Migrants and Refugees. His achievements include being one of the recipients of the European Parliament´s Intergroup on LGBTQI+ rights' Go Visible Award and being selected as one of the Human Rights Campaign´s Global Innovators. He has served on several voluntary boards, including the War Resisters International (WRI) from 2010-2019 where he contributed to the Handbook for Non-Violent Campaigns 2nd edition. Miles is also a committee/forum member of the European Philanthropic Initiative for Migration and a certified speaker for the UNHCR Speakers Programme 2024. Additionally, he is an AI ethicist with a keen interest in the intersection of migration and AI technologies. [1] Edward J Alessi and Sarilee Kahn, ‘A framework for clinical practice with sexual and gender minority asylum seekers’ (2017) 4(4) Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity 383; Nate Fuks et al, ‘Acculturation Experiences Among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Immigrants in Canada’ (2018) 46(3) The Counseling Psychologist 296. [2] Edward J Alessi et al, ‘Traumatic stress among sexual and gender minority refugees from the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia who fled to the European Union’ (2018) 31(6) Journal of Traumatic Stress 805-815; Susan SY Li, Belinda J Liddell, and Angela Nickerson, ‘The Relationship Between Post-Migration Stress and Psychological Disorders in Refugees and Asylum Seekers’ (2016) 18 Current Psychiatry Reports; Matthew Porter and Nick Haslam, ‘Predisplacement and postdisplacement factors associated with mental health of refugees and internally displaced persons: a meta-analysis’ (2005) 294(5) JAMA 602; Sarilee Kahn et al, ‘Facilitating Mental Health Support for LGBT Forced Migrants: A Qualitative Inquiry’ (2018) 96(3) Journal of Counseling & Development 316. [3] Katherine Marie Fobear, ‘Accordion homes: lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) refugees' experiences of home and belonging in Canada’ (Univesity of British Columbia PhD Thesis 2016). [4] Edward Ou Jin Lee et al, ‘Knowledge and Policy About LGBTQI Migrants: A Scoping Review of the Canadian and Global Context’ (2021) 22(3) Journal of International Migration and Integration 831; Zoë Korten, ‘Queer Migration Perspectives: Identity construction and experiences of social inclusion and exclusion of LGBTQ refugees in Sweden’ (Malmö University Masters Thesis 2019). [5] Jasmine Golembe et al, ‘Experiences of Minority Stress and Mental Health Burdens of Newly Arrived LGBTQ* Refugees in Germany’ (2020) 18 Sexuality Research and Social Policy 1049; Katrina Struthers, ‘LGBTI Refugee Protection in a Culture of Disbelief: The impact of integration’ (RLI Working Paper No. 50, 2020) < https://www.sogica.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/LGBTI-Refugees-UK-2020-RLI-Working-Paper.pdf > accessed 1 November 2024; Alexander Dhoest, ‘Learning to be gay: LGBTQ forced migrant identities and narratives in Belgium’ (2018) 45(7) Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1075; Linda Piwowarczyk, Pedro Fernandez, and Anita Sharma, ‘Seeking Asylum: Challenges Faced by the LGB Community’ (2016) 19 Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 723; Soumia Akachar, ‘Stuck between Islamophobia and Homophobia: Applying Intersectionality to Understand the Position of Gay Muslim Identities in the Netherlands’ (2015) 2(1-2) DiGeSt. Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies 173; Sabine Jansen and Thomas Spijkerboer, ‘Fleeing Homophobia, Asylum Claims Related to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Europe’ (COC Netherlands and VU University Amsterdam, September 2011) < https://research.vu.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/2903587/Fleeing+Homophobia+report+EN.pdf > accessed 1 November 2025. [6] Yvon van der Pijl et al, ‘“We Do Not Matter”: Transgender Migrants/Refugees in the Dutch Asylum System’ (2018) 5(1) Violence and Gender 1; Jutathorn Pravattiyagul, ‘Thai transgender women in Europe: Migration, gender and binational relationships’ (2021) 30(1) Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 79; Fau Rosati et al, ‘Experiences of Life and Intersectionality of Transgender Refugees Living in Italy: A Qualitative Approach’ (2021) 18 Int J Environ Res Public Health. [7] Rosati et al (n 6); Catrine Kostenius et al, ‘From Hell to Heaven? Lived experiences of LGBTQ migrants in relation to health and their reflections on the future’ (2021) 24(11) Culture, Health & Sexuality 1590. [8] Alessi and Kahn (n 1) 11; Edward J Alessi, ‘Resilience in sexual and gender minority forced migrants: A qualitative exploration’ (2016) 22(3) Traumatology 203. [9] Korten (n 4). [10] ‘Number of Refugees to Europe Surges to Record 1.3 Million in 2015’ (Pew Research Center, 2 August 2016) < https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2016/08/02/number-of-refugees-to-europe-surges-to-record-1-3-million-in-2015/ > accessed 1 November 2024. [11] See Korten (n 4) 16. [12] Korten (n 4); Debra Carroll-Beight and Markus Larsson, ‘Exploring the Needs, Expectations, and Realities of Mental Healthcare for Transgender Adults: A Grounded Theory Study on Experiences in Sweden’ (2018) 3(1) Transgender Health 88; Aino Gröndahl, ‘Reasons for Refusal in LGBTQI Asylum Cases’ (RSFL 2020). [13] Paulie Amanita Calderon-Cifuentes, ‘Trans Discrimination in Europe. A TGEU analysis of the FRA LGBTI Survey 2019’ ( TGEU , 2021) < https://www.tgeu.org/files/uploads/2023/11/TGEU-trans-discrimination-report-2021.pdf > accessed 1 November 2024. [14] Statens Offentliga Utredningar (SOU), ‘Transpersoner i Sverige: Förslag för stärkt ställning och bättre levnadsvillkor’ ( Regeringen.se , 2017) < https://www.regeringen.se/contentassets/3e2e892900fc4034a9d822413fdaefe7/transpersoner-i-sverige---forslag-for-starkt-stallning-och-battre-levnadsvillkor/ > accessed 1 November 2024. [15] Sarah Spencer and Katharine Charsley, ‘Reframing ‘integration’: acknowledging and addressing five core critiques’ (2021) 9 Comparative Migration Studies. [16] ibid 16. [17] ibid 17. [18] Kimberlé Crenshaw, ‘Demarginalizing intersections of race and sex: a black feminist critique of anti-discrimination doctrine, feminist theory and anti-racist politics’ (1989) 1(8) Chicago Legal Forum 139, 145. [19] Sandra Fredman, ‘Intersectional discrimination in EU gender equality and non-discrimination law’ ( EQUINET , May 2016) < https://www.equalitylaw.eu/downloads/3850-intersectional-discrimination-in-eu-gender-equality-and-non-discrimination-law-pdf-731-kb > accessed 1 November 2024. See also Sumi Cho, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall, ‘Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis’ (2013) 38(4) Signs 785. [20] Crenshaw (n 18) 140 [21] See Emily Bariola et al, ‘Demographic and Psychosocial Factors Associated With Psychological Distress and Resilience Among Transgender Individuals’ (2015) 105(10) Am J Public Health, 2108; Lauren Mizock et al, ‘Transphobia in the Workplace: A Qualitative Study of Employment Stigma’ (2018) 3(3) Stigma and Health 275. [22] European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), ‘Being Trans in the European Union Comparative analysis of EU LGBT survey data’ (2014) < https://www.tgeu.org/files/uploads/2023/11/TGEU-trans-discrimination-report-2021.pdf > accessed 1 November 2024. [23] Spencer and Charsley (n 15) 18. [24] SOU (n 14). [25] Nick Drydakis,‘Trans employees, transitioning, and job satisfaction‘ (2017) 98 Journal of Vocational Behavior 1; Nick Drydakis, ‘Trans people, well-being, and labor market outcomes’ ( IZA , January 2024) < https://wol.iza.org/articles/trans-people-well-being-and-labor-market-outcomes/long > accessed 1 November 2024. [26] See Van Der Pijl et al (n 6). [27] Maggie O'Neill and Phil Hubbard, ‘Asylum, Exclusion, and the Social Role of Arts and Culture’ (2012) 12(2) Moving Worlds. [28] Sunil Budhiraja, Ujjwal Kumar Pathak, and Neeraj Kaushik, ‘A framework for untapped creativity: leveraging components of individual creativity for organizational innovation’ (2017) 31(6) Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal 7. [29] SOU (n 14) 45. [30] ibid; FRA (n 22). [31] Beight and Larsson (n 12). [32] Golembe et al (n 5). [33] Spencer and Charsley (n 15) 18 [34] ibid 16. [35] B Camminga, Transgender Refugees and the Imagined South Africa  (Palgrave Macmillan 2019) 227. [36] Spencer and Charsley (n 15) 16. [37] Kostenius et al (n 7). [38] Alessi (n 8), Rosati et al (n 6); Kostenius et al (n 7). [39] Alessi (n 8).

Abdelkhalig Shaib is a Sudanese attorney and member of the American and New York Bar Associations, who specializes in constitutionalism and advocates for the importance of upholding the rule of law in Sudan. He actively contributed to Sudan’s constitution-making process and fostered political accommodation within the nation. He is a founding member of the Arab Association of Constitutional Law. CJLPA : We would like to begin by thanking you for taking the time to interview with us. Your extensive career as a lawyer, in which you have spent substantial time focusing on constitutionalism and good governance, will provide a valuable perspective on pressing Sudanese issues. What is the importance of these factors with regard to Sudan?   Abdelkhalig Shaib :  One of the issues we face in Africa, particularly in Sudan, is the lack of governance, specifically good governance. We have never experienced political stability in Sudan since Sudan gained its independence from British-Egyptian rule in 1956. Sudan’s post-independence history has been marked by prolonged military rule, with nearly five of its six decades since independence dominated by military or autocratic governments. Independent Sudan began with high hopes for democratic governance. However, political divisions, regional disparities, and economic challenges quickly destabilized the nascent democracy. In 1958, just two years after independence, Sudan’s first democratic experiment was interrupted by a military coup, setting a precedent for repeated cycles of military intervention and brief, fragile civilian governments. The era of military rule in Sudan was disrupted by key figures, including Generals Ibrahim Abboud, Jaafar Nimeiri, Omar al-Bashir, and the most recent military leadership amid Sudan’s ongoing conflict. Each leader imposed authoritarian rule marked by centralized control, suppression of opposition, and reliance on security forces to maintain power. This military dominance impeded the development of civilian institutions and hindered attempts to establish sustainable democratic practices. Sudan’s brief democratic intervals in the mid-1960s and 1980s ended with military takeovers, reflecting a deep-seated pattern where political turmoil and economic crises often led to calls for military ‘stability’. Over time, these patterns consolidated the military’s political influence, making it difficult for civilian actors to achieve a lasting transition. Efforts at democratic governance, most notably following the 2019 ousting of Bashir, faced significant obstacles leading to the coup on 25 October 2021, which marked a significant setback for Sudan’s fragile transition toward democracy. Just two years after the popular uprising that led to the removal of long-time authoritarian leader Omar al-Bashir in 2019, Sudan’s military seized full control, dissolving the transitional government and detaining Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok along with other civilian leaders. The military’s actions suspended the power-sharing arrangement between civilian and military forces, which had been established to guide Sudan toward democratic elections. One could say that the 25 October coup in Sudan is one of the main factors that set the stage for the devastating conflict that erupted on 15 April 2023. Following the coup, the military leadership dismantled Sudan’s fragile civilian-military partnership, intensifying political divisions and undermining efforts to build a stable democratic government. The coup exacerbated tensions within the military establishment itself, particularly between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti). Without a unified government, Sudan became embroiled in power struggles and factional rivalries, especially between the SAF and RSF, whose leaders held differing visions for Sudan’s future governance. Attempts to restore civilian rule and implement security sector reforms only heightened the rivalry, as each faction sought to solidify its influence over Sudan’s political and economic spheres. This escalated into open conflict on 15 April 2023, when fighting broke out between the SAF and RSF across major cities including Khartoum, leading to widespread violence, civilian casualties, and a massive humanitarian crisis. The ongoing conflict is rooted in the instability following the 2021 coup, as unresolved disputes and weakened civilian governance have left Sudan’s military factions vying for control, plunging the country into one of the most severe crises since its independence. This cycle has not only affected Sudan’s governance but has also had a profound impact on its society, fuelling conflicts, marginalization, and repeated economic hardships that the people of Sudan continue to endure today. Sudan’s history of incomplete democratic transitions has left it in a continuous quest for a permanent constitution, reflecting the country’s struggle to establish a stable, inclusive political framework. Each attempted transition, marked by brief democratic interludes interrupted by military coups, has prevented Sudan from enacting a lasting constitution that genuinely represents its diverse population. Military rule has often imposed temporary or provisional constitutional frameworks, which fail to address the deep-seated aspirations for representation, human rights, and federal governance. When examining constitutionalism in Sudan, this context of military dominance and stalled democratization is essential. Military regimes have typically shaped constitutional documents to entrench their power rather than to facilitate genuine civilian governance. As a result, Sudan’s path to a permanent constitution remains closely linked to its ongoing struggle for a sustainable civilian-led democracy, where constitutionalism could finally take root, free from the influence of military interventions. The constitution has become more of a draft document rather than a set of institutionalised principles. For constitutions to be effective, they need to be internalised in behaviour and require functional institutions across different branches of government including the executive, legislative, and judicial systems. The challenge lies in balancing power to achieve good governance and uphold constitutional principles. However, one of our main problems in Sudan is that we have been drafting constitutions reactively, in response to peace talks, negotiations, political unrest, or conflicts, rather than through a collective effort to move forward. Consequently, Sudan has long been in search of a permanent constitution which we have yet to achieve.   CJLPA : So the Sudanese constitutions are drafted for that particular moment in time?   AS :  Sudan’s constitutions have historically been transitory, drafted to address specific political needs or crises at a given moment rather than as part of a sustained, collective vision for the nation’s future. Each constitutional document has largely been reactive—crafted in response to immediate issues such as conflicts, military takeovers, peace negotiations, or transitional arrangements. These constitutions often cater to the demands of the dominant political or military actors of the time, lacking the broader consensus needed to unify Sudan’s diverse society around a shared national identity and set of enduring principles.   As a result, Sudanese constitutions have repeatedly fallen short of establishing a lasting framework that genuinely reflects the will of the people or supports long-term nation-building. This limited, issue-driven approach to constitutional drafting has left Sudan in a cycle of constitutional instability, where each document is soon replaced or disregarded, perpetuating the country’s quest for a constitution that could serve as a foundation for a lasting democratic order.   CJLPA : In 2013, you warned in an article titled ‘Is Sudan on the Brink of Another Civil War?’ of a potential slide into civil war if the government continued its suppression.[1] Can you say more about that?   AS :  In 2013, Sudan experienced what many referred to as its own ‘Arab Spring’, although the broader movement officially began in 2011. Unlike the Arab Spring in North Africa and MENA, which started in Tunisia and spread rapidly to Egypt, Libya, and beyond, the movement in Sudan followed a distinct path, culminating in widespread protests in September 2013. These protests were less focused on constitutionalism and more on demands for freedom of expression, a call for regime change, and a call for democratic elections. This period also came shortly after the historic secession of South Sudan in 2011, a breakpoint moment that significantly shaped Sudan’s political and social landscape.   CJLPA :  Looking at 2013, could anything have been done then to salvage the situation and come up with good constitutional principles?   AS :  From a constitutional perspective, the regime at the time could have demonstrated the political will to engage genuinely, inclusively, and comprehensively with citizens and political parties. The secession of South Sudan in 2011 presented a pivotal moment, especially as Sudan continued to operate under the 2005 constitution. This constitution emerged from negotiations between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), led by the late John Garang and Omar al-Bashir, respectively. Their power-sharing agreement under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was incorporated into the 2005 constitution. Following South Sudan’s independence, however, there was a strong desire among Sudanese citizens and opposition parties for new constitutional arrangements that would reflect a post-secession Sudan. The expectation was that the NCP would be willing to engage in voluntary dialogue with civilian forces, making structural reforms to enable a multiparty system and lay the groundwork for genuine elections. Yet the regime, represented by the NCP, was unprepared to take these steps, resisting calls for an inclusive political transition and failing to seize the opportunity for a constitution that could reflect the aspirations of a redefined Sudan.   CJLPA :   I would like to fast forward to some of the issues in the current conflict, beginning with the 2019 revolt. These include human rights abuses and mismanagement of the economy. The revolt started in a very slow manner, beginning with issues related to the price of bread increasing. Is this curable through constitutional means? How does one go about it to reform such issues?   AS :  I would argue that the economic issues in Sudan were deeply tied to the broader political economy and the regime’s use of power to control and access resources. At its core, it was about corruption and a lack of transparency in resource appropriation and allocation, particularly in certain regions of Sudan. While it initially appeared to be a purely economic issue, it was fundamentally about freedom, liberty, and the need for genuine representation. The Sudanese people wanted the right to elect their representatives and participate in decision-making. These factors fuelled the movement—it was not just about access to basic needs like bread, but rather about broader issues of governance, transparency, and corruption, where the regime reaped benefits at the expense of the Sudanese people.   CJLPA : What I understand is that it is an issue of lack of inclusivity, especially for some regions like Darfur. It is akin to a total collapse of the rule of law. Coming from that, how can constitutional mechanisms serve as a tool for creating a more inclusive and accountable political environment?   AS :  We need to differentiate between two key aspects. There is no doubt that the 2019 Constitutional Charter had critical shortcomings, which have contributed to our current situation. These issues arose from both flaws in the document itself and the way it was implemented, as well as from the actions of those involved in its execution. The charter was neither faithfully nor genuinely put into practice, and the challenges extended beyond mere deficiencies in the document’s drafting.   One significant example is that the charter envisioned a functioning legislature or parliament within 90 days of its adoption. Instead, what emerged was an Executive branch (ie, the Cabinet) and a Sovereignty Council, which effectively operated in practical terms above the Executive. However, two essential elements were missing: the Parliament and the Constitutional Court. Those who expected a swiftly appointed (not elected) parliament appeared uninterested in actually establishing it, as a functioning parliament would have provided oversight over the government as an executive branch.   The 2019 Constitutional Charter included a provision stating that until the Legislative Council was formed, its powers would rest with the Sovereignty Council and the Cabinet, who would exercise them jointly, with decisions made by consensus or a two-thirds majority. This effectively left the executive and Sovereignty Council as de facto legislators, all in the absence of a Constitutional Court to advise on the legality and constitutionality of the laws. A Constitutional Court was never established as required by the charter.   Could the 2019 Constitutional Charter have been drafted better? Yes, but the challenges go beyond a well-written document. The issues are rooted in the structural and systemic deficiencies of the political system, far beyond the text of the constitution itself.   CJLPA : There was a lack of clear separation of powers.   AS :  The lack of separation of powers—or more accurately, the absence of political will—was a significant issue. Certain provisions were misapplied, while others went entirely unimplemented. For instance, the 2019 Constitutional Charter stipulated the establishment of a Constitutional Court, yet this never occurred. In the absence of a Legislative Council, laws were being drafted in joint sessions of the Sovereignty Council and the Cabinet, without the critical oversight of constitutional review. Without a Constitutional Court, there was no avenue for appealing these laws, which posed serious challenges. Additionally, there was a concerning overlap between the Sovereignty Council and the cabinet in managing day-to-day state affairs. The Sovereignty Council was intended to hold largely ceremonial powers, not to engage in the executive functions of governance. However, some members of the Sovereignty Council assumed executive roles, chairing key committees. For instance, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) headed both the peace commission and the Economic Committee, despite the fact that the prime minister, with an economic background, should have led the latter within the cabinet. This irony was always present, with Sovereignty Council members—often Hemedti or others—overstepping their intended roles. Such overlaps complicated the transitional process itself, adding layers of dysfunction to an already challenging period.   CJLPA :   Besides the peace agreements, the international community and state actors have been accused of hindering justice in Sudan. Can you shed more light on this?   AS : The warring parties in Sudan receive backing from various states within the region and beyond. In this conflict, both sides have openly accused different states of supporting their opponents. The Sudanese military, in particular, has frequently levelled accusations, adding strain to relationships with those allegedly involved. For example, the SAF accused Kenya when President William Ruto proposed deploying troops to protect civilians and ensure the flow of humanitarian aid. A prominent SAF General responded by accusing Ruto of seeking to occupy Sudan, going as far as to challenge Kenya to bring its forces and fight.   In another instance, the same General accused the UAE of supporting the RSF, further heightening tensions between Sudan’s de facto government and the UAE. Meanwhile, many claim Egypt is backing the SAF, with evidence cited to support these accusations. Such allegations—this country supporting one side, that country supporting another—greatly complicate peace efforts, as regional powers are deeply entangled. The UAE, for example, has close ties with the RSF, while Egypt maintains a strong relationship with the SAF. Unless these regional actors are brought to the negotiating table and agree to cease their support, achieving peace will remain challenging. This conflict could not have persisted without such regional support, which provides the warring parties with weapons and resources. As long as international powers do not hold regional actors accountable, the situation will likely continue, with tragic consequences. The UN Panel of Experts on Sudan has raised serious concerns regarding external support to Sudan’s warring factions. According to a recent report, there is evidence suggesting that the UAE has supplied weapons to the RSF with alarming frequency. The report alleges that shipments were made ‘several times per week’ via Amdjarass, a town in northern Chad, serving as a strategic entry point for the RSF’s supplies. These consistent arms transfers have reportedly enabled the RSF to sustain its operations, escalating violence and complicating peace efforts in Sudan. The UAE’s alleged involvement has intensified diplomatic tensions, as such support directly impacts the conflict’s longevity and severity, underscoring the need for stricter accountability measures to curb external interference that fuels the ongoing crisis.   Although the concept of ‘African solutions for African problems’ is valuable, bias among involved states complicates its effectiveness. As a Sudanese lawyer and African, I advocate for taking responsibility to address our issues, but we are far from achieving this. Our inability to intervene effectively allows our problems to become globalized.   The intense conflict that erupted in Sudan on 15 April 2023, between the SAF and the RSF, transcends a simple power struggle between two ambitious generals who had once aligned to stage a coup against the civilian government on 21 October 2021. This conflict is not merely a contest for dominance where the defeat of one leader signifies victory for the other. Instead, it represents a calculated and brutal campaign by the RSF, directed not only at the military but at civilians, leaving a devastating impact across Sudan. Women and girls, in particular, have borne the brunt of this aggression, facing heightened vulnerabilities and abuses as the violence intensifies. The conflict’s civilian toll underscores the need for urgent intervention and accountability for the atrocities committed against Sudan’s people.   CJLPA : Sudan has experienced numerous conflicts and major events, including the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005), the 2019 revolt, and the recent 2023 conflict. From a governance perspective, how can we prevent such recurrences? What measures should be taken?   AS :   I believe the first step is to ensure that the military withdraws from political life and that mechanisms are put in place to prevent its involvement in the economy. Achieving this will require a structured dialogue with the military, similar to the long-term processes seen in Latin America, notably in Chile and Argentina. Additionally, political parties must engage in sincere, inclusive discussions involving all stakeholders to determine the most effective governance system for Sudan. These discussions should explore whether a presidential, parliamentary, or quasi-presidential system would be best suited to the country, as well as how to balance the executive branch with an independent judiciary.   The inherited Westminster model from British colonial rule may not be ideal for Sudan, given the large number of political parties and the difficulties of forming stable coalition governments. Considering alternative models, such as a presidential or quasi-presidential system, could offer greater stability and functionality. These are essential considerations for a viable path forward in Sudan’s political development.   CJLPA :   In moving forward and developing a constitutional system through constructive dialogue it is important to address Sudan’s Achilles heel, which is Darfur. The Darfur conflict has long plagued Sudan, marked by ongoing atrocities and humanitarian crises. How can the discussion on constitutionalism be integrated to address the Darfur question and highlight its significance?   AS :  I believe the issue of Darfur touches on several fundamental aspects of constitutionalism, including the Bill of Rights and the judiciary’s independence in prosecuting grave crimes committed by military personnel. It also involves addressing war crimes and crimes against humanity within a legal framework. A significant challenge in Darfur is the widespread immunity and impunity enjoyed by perpetrators, exacerbated by Sudan’s non-ratification of the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC), despite signing it in 1998. This gap led to the ICC’s involvement in Darfur-related cases through UN Security Council Resolution 1593. (2005), which decides to refer the situation in Darfur since 1 July 2002 to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court   There are three potential avenues for prosecuting such crimes: first, conducting trials domestically, which has faced obstacles due to the influence of previous regimes; second, creating a hybrid tribunal, which has not yet been proposed; and third, referring cases to the ICC. However, serious discussions with Sudan’s civilian-led government have yet to yield tangible actions. Embedding mechanisms to address past atrocities within the constitution is essential for accountability and conflict prevention. Transitional justice provisions should prioritize criminal justice as a foundation before implementing broader transitional justice measures. However, achieving this requires strong political will and societal unity, as demonstrated in South Africa under Nelson Mandela’s leadership.   Building these mechanisms into the constitution necessitates not only robust legal frameworks but also functional local institutions and capacity-building efforts for those operating within them. Ultimately, it is about establishing a comprehensive ecosystem in which constitutional principles are deeply internalized and democracy becomes part of the societal fabric. However, Sudan still has a long journey ahead to realize these ideals.   CJLPA : So what will it take? Is it about implementing punitive measures to deter future crimes before delving into transitional justice? Should we first hold perpetrators accountable through punitive actions, and then transition to transitional justice, allowing communities to discuss their history and collaboratively map out a way forward?   AS : I do believe that if people know who is responsible for the crimes committed against them, it is unrealistic to expect them to engage in transitional justice mechanisms without accountability. Ultimately, it should be up to the victims to decide the type of justice they wish to pursue or whether to take an alternative path. Without assigning responsibility for these crimes, moving forward becomes exceedingly difficult, as this is not a minor community issue. These individuals have endured profound rejection and oppression, making it essential to address accountability before implementing transitional justice.   Unfortunately, transitional justice has often been used to downplay or normalize issues affecting communities. For example, when the RSF discusses transitional justice, they often refer to the most basic version—focused on ‘moving on’ without a genuine commitment to accountability. During the 2019 sit-in, it was alleged that military forces and the RSF killed over 200 people. Despite establishing a fact-finding committee with a six-month mandate, from June 2019 to 25 October 2021, the committee failed to submit a report to the Prime Minister. This lack of results raises serious doubts about the credibility of such fact-finding missions. Without meaningful prosecutions or tangible outcomes that the community can see and claim ownership of, trust in these processes erodes.   This brings into question whether we are truly committed to justice. While we may state our intent to confront impunity and address abuses of immunity, granting immunity to those responsible and failing to act on the recommendations of critical mechanisms like the fact-finding committee signals a lack of genuine commitment to justice for the victims.   CJLPA : Let’s turn to the transitional period, post-2019. Regarding the challenges and setbacks, in your view, what should have been done?   AS :  Transitions are challenging and complex. Sudan’s political parties had been suppressed for over 30 years and, consequently, lacked experience in governance and exercising power. When the transition began, individuals with little practical experience were suddenly placed in cabinet positions and tasked with running the state. In such complex situations, a collective, inclusive approach is essential—everyone must be involved. The issues went beyond the constitution; they extended to how we implemented its provisions and conducted the process itself. If we were to approach this differently, underlying issues would need to be addressed first. One key issue was legitimacy: determining who was entitled to be the political representative. Initially, the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC), a broad coalition of civilian and rebel groups, held public support. However, as confidence in the FFC waned, the question of legitimacy—specifically, who could negotiate with the military—resurfaced. The Sovereignty Council, comprised of both military and civilian members, represented an unprecedented partnership. This model—a civilian-military agreement—was new not only for Sudan but also for Africa, and it posed significant challenges. Moreover, neighbouring countries and regional actors viewed this model with apprehension. If successful, it would set a precedent that militaries cannot govern alone but must work alongside civilians. In my view, this notion was unsettling for some neighbouring states, who were not supportive of Sudan’s transitional model, adding another layer of complexity to the process.   CJLPA : The historical struggle between military leaders and civilian governments poses a significant challenge, particularly in the context of another transitional period. How did you plan to resolve these past struggles, and what measures were you contemplating to implement?   AS :  This is a complex and challenging issue, with no straightforward answer. The military-civilian relationship in Sudan has historically lacked a structured approach. Rather than addressing these relations directly, civilians have often responded to military dominance through uprisings or revolutions, focused on governing arrangements rather than establishing a clear framework for military-civilian interaction.   In the 2019 transition, the military assumed it could create a Transitional Military Council (TMC) to oversee the process, following a model from Sudan’s past revolutions in 1964 and 1985. The precedent was the 1985 TMC, where the military expected civilians to hold partial elections for a constituent assembly, form a government, and let the TMC run the remaining affairs. However, in 2019, political forces, civil society leaders, and political parties pushed for a fully civilian-led government, even proposing that the head of state—through the Sovereignty Council—be a civilian. The compromise became a 50-50 split between civilians and military within the Sovereignty Council.   Since no elections were held, the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) emerged as the de facto political incubator of the transition. However, the FFC itself faced internal struggles with divergent voices and approaches to handling the military. Under the power-sharing agreement signed in July 2019 between the TMC and the FFC (which one month later in August 2019 paved the way to the Constitutional Charter), a transitional council was established with six civilian and five military leaders, rotating leadership throughout the transitional period. The military held the council’s chair for the first 21 months, followed by the FFC for 18 months. The agreement granted the FFC significant control over the transitional government—excluding the interior and defence ministers—along with a two-thirds parliamentary majority and the appointment of Abdullah Hamdok as Sudan’s first civilian prime minister since Omar al-Bashir’s rise in 1989.   If we hope to do things differently, meaningful dialogue with the military is essential. Military transitions, as seen in many countries in Latin America, and also in other countries, often require a lengthy process; it is not a piecemeal exercise. Transitions in Sudan are particularly challenging due to decades of dictatorship. There may be no exact blueprint, but it is clear we need a different approach from the one we attempted in the past.   CJLPA:   You said it will involve a process and some form of dialogue—what kind of process, and what kind of dialogue? What are we looking at?   AS : Addressing this issue requires a dialogue between political parties and the military, including security forces, with a focus on comprehensive security reform. However, the current conflict adds layers of complexity. Even if the military partially or fully prevails in the conflict, negotiating with them will remain challenging, as they may view security matters as exclusively within their jurisdiction. Nonetheless, engaging with the military is essential, as they must operate as a component within a democratic state.   Reforms are necessary to establish civilian oversight of the military, prevent its involvement in the economy in ways that compete with the private sector, and ensure its primary role is to protect the constitution rather than its own interests. Mechanisms should be developed to define when military intervention in political matters is permissible, with the goal of safeguarding—rather than usurping—political authority.   CJLPA : In the current political situation, the conflict partly stems from an agreement between the paramilitary and the military. One of the main causes of the conflict, as I understand it, is the paramilitary’s reluctance, or outright refusal, to integrate into the military.   AS : The issue with the paramilitary force, specifically the RSF, is its classification as a militia involved in atrocities in Darfur, where it has been implicated in acts of terror, international war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Some members were indicted for these crimes during al-Bashir’s rule. The RSF was established under the Bashir regime—not by the military—with the purpose of protecting the regime’s interests in Darfur. The RSF are essentially a continuation of the Janjaweed militia, which was first mobilized and recruited in the early 2000s by the Sudanese government under Omar al-Bashir. Al-Bashir deployed these Janjaweed militias, often referred to as ‘devils on horseback’, to suppress the rebellion in Darfur led by the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). The regime armed and supported the Janjaweed, facilitating their violent attacks on non-Arab ethnic groups in the region. Al-Bashir’s use of the Janjaweed reflected a pattern from the 1990s, when he relied on militias like the Murahileen to fight in South Sudan, Kordofan, and the Nuba Mountains. During that period, tribal militias such as the Fursan were also deployed to crush the brief insurgency led by Daud Bolad in Darfur.   In 2017, a law formalized the RSF’s status, requiring it to report directly to the President Al Bashir but placing it under military command during emergencies. However, after the 2019 transition, Hemedti successfully removed this restriction, granting the RSF independence in emergencies. With no president in place and the head of the Sovereignty Council also leading the military, this further complicated the RSF’s role and contributed to its refusal to integrate into the military.   In negotiations prior to the eruption of the conflict on 15 April 2023, there was an agreement that the RSF should integrate into the military within a shortened timeframe. While the RSF initially proposed nearly 20 years for this process, later reducing it to 10 years, the armed forces pressed for reintegration within a maximum of two years. This disagreement intensified tensions between the SAF and the RSF. Furthermore, the post-April 15 atrocities reveal that the RSF has never operated as a disciplined paramilitary force but rather continues to function and recruit as a militia.   CJLPA : Because its history is from Janjaweed?   AS :  Yeah, and still is referred to like that by the Sudanese people, they call it Janjaweed.   CJLPA : In the transitional period, were these issues discussed between the paramilitary, the military, and the civilians? AS : There were no productive or constructive discussions specifically focused on how to address the role of the RSF. Instead, most discussions centred on the broader objective of unifying Sudan’s military forces and reducing the number of armed groups operating independently across the country. This effort included integrating various military groups that had joined the transitional government under the terms of the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement, which aimed to bring numerous armed movements, primarily from Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile, into the formal political and military framework. However, despite the commitment to a unified military structure, the discussions often overlooked the unique position of the RSF. Unlike other armed groups entering the transitional process, the RSF did not see itself as merely another faction to be incorporated or subordinated within the national army. Instead, it viewed itself as an equal entity, operating independently and wielding significant military and economic influence. This self-perception set the RSF apart and led to increased tension, as it resisted any attempts at integration under traditional military command. The RSF’s autonomous stance posed a significant obstacle to military reform efforts. While other groups entering the transitional government under the Juba Peace Agreement were more willing to engage in integration and restructuring, the RSF’s perception of itself as an equal, rather than a subordinate, force hindered meaningful progress towards a unified national military. This dynamic underscored the difficulty of achieving true military cohesion in Sudan, as the RSF’s substantial autonomy and influence remained a point of contention, complicating the broader objectives of peace and stability in the country.   CJLPA : During the 2019 protests, there were numerous human rights abuses, including stories of people being thrown into the Nile and used as speed bumps. As a constitutional lawyer, how do you address the immediate human rights concerns and integrate laws and statutes that protect human rights and property?   AS :  This consistently brings us back to the question of accountability—how justice is pursued, the practicality of immunity, and whether it allows impunity to persist while addressing past grievances. This touches on the concept of ‘never again’ and the role of the judicial system. For instance, consider the massacre that occurred when security forces violently broke into the sit-in, resulting in the deaths of over 200 people, some burned and others missing. In response, a fact-finding mission—the Sudanese Fact-Finding Mission—was established under the 2019 Constitutional Charter with the mandate to investigate these atrocities and submit a report to the Prime Minister within six months. However, the mission took more than two years, with multiple extensions of its mandate until it was ultimately disrupted by the October 2021 coup.   This prolonged delay raises serious questions about the effectiveness of such missions during transitional periods after dictatorships, where known perpetrators and political agreements can complicate the pursuit of justice.   If a fact-finding mission fails to assign responsibility and accountability, what purpose does it truly serve? The 2019 Constitutional Charter itself included provisions for human rights protections. Specifically, it mandated the formation of a national, independent investigation committee, with optional African support as assessed necessary, to conduct a thorough, transparent investigation into the violations committed on 3 June 2019, as well as other incidents involving abuses against both civilian and military citizens. This mission was intended to investigate the massacre, yet it never delivered a final report. For justice to be achieved regarding human rights violations, the state must act with sincerity and commitment, either prosecuting these cases domestically or referring them to another body. Despite the transitional government’s cooperation improving after the regime change, no one has been handed over to the ICC, highlighting the persistent challenge that having constitutional provisions does not necessarily lead to accountability.   International actors have a vested interest in the stability of the Horn of Africa, as conflict in Sudan could lead to regional instability or even collapse, affecting neighbouring states like Chad, the Central African Republic, Libya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea—all potential flashpoints. Therefore, it is crucial for international actors to intervene with caution and constructively to foster stability. Resolving the situation will require a commitment from Sudanese civilian and military factions to collaborate, though this is challenging given the prevailing desire for military dominance among various factions. While I don’t have a specific proposal for the international community, I believe they must engage transparently with all stakeholders in Sudan to work toward a sustainable resolution.   CJLPA : Could you explain the contents of the constitutional charter, particularly concerning human rights, issues related to the courts, and mechanisms for holding individuals accountable?   AS : Sudan’s response was largely symbolic during the transition in 2019, a form of window dressing intended to calm public outcry in the moment. The political agreement that paved the way for the 2019 Constitutional Charter aimed to appease victims and their families, signalling that they were serious about accountability, but their actions suggested otherwise. This reflected a lack of political will—not only on the part of the military but also among civilian leaders. Civilians were part of the government for the first two years and played a significant role in many decisions, while the military and the RSF also shared in governance. There seemed to be a mentality of ‘let us govern and forget about accountability’. Attempts to address these issues through transitional justice ultimately fell short.   As a lawyer, I believe that well-crafted provisions alone are not enough to ensure they will be enforced or functional within the system. Justice and accountability require a coordinated system in which the executive, judiciary, and legislature work together; no single branch can achieve these goals on its own.   CJLPA : You are suggesting that achieving transitional justice may be impossible given the current circumstances. Even after addressing the issues stemming from this conflict, there remain challenges in upholding transitional justice.   AS : Consider the case of Yugoslavia: individuals implicated in crimes were handed over to a hybrid tribunal and were never tried in their own countries. This is a common scenario, as regimes often lack interest in prosecuting these individuals due to their own involvement or complicity. For those within such forces—even if not currently engaged in criminal acts—the prospect of facing consequences in the future can be unsettling, creating a cycle where accountability is evaded. This is why an international mechanism is essential.   While a fact-finding mission may be launched, its mandate typically centres on recommendations rather than indictments, resulting in reports rather than enforceable actions. Ultimately, effective justice requires courts with the power to act. Yet even with established courts, enforcement depends heavily on state cooperation. The ICC’s experience in Africa illustrates this challenge: without dedicated law enforcement, these courts rely on state participation, which can be withheld if regimes feel threatened. Today it may be Sudan; tomorrow, it could be another nation facing similar challenges. This dynamic underscores the need for international accountability structures that can operate independently of complicit states.   CJLPA :   Going into the future, the expectations and hopes of the Sudanese people are that this war will come to an end as soon as possible. How do you envision constitutional principles playing a role in resolving the crisis in Sudan?   AS : This brings us back to a foundational issue we discussed earlier: distinguishing between constitutionalism—a set of ideas, attitudes, and behaviours that uphold democratic principles—and the constitution itself, the supreme political-legal document. It’s also crucial to differentiate between the constitution’s text and how its provisions are enacted or neglected. Building institutions that uphold constitutional norms is essential, yet it’s a continuous process, aimed at establishing a judiciary, cabinet, and executive that maintain a true balance of powers—something that has yet to be fully achieved in Sudan.   A constitution should represent not just specific groups but the entire nation, taking into account diverse ideologies, religions, and Sudan’s rich cultural diversity. Sudan has never engaged in a comprehensive exercise to openly discuss institutional frameworks, address collective issues, and create a document reflecting national expectations for governance. The 2019 Constitutional Charter, established under the civilian government, was later amended in ways that undermined its original principles. This breach of the 2019 framework underscores the need for a more robust process.   There is no doubt the future likely calls for political dialogue culminating in a constitutional conference, a complex process involving multiple phases beyond simply drafting a document. Constitution-making requires exploration, drawing from extensive literature and global experiences, to craft a framework that suits Sudan’s unique context. This approach must honor the diversity of Sudanese society and embrace its multi-ethnic culture and identity, creating a foundation that genuinely represents all Sudanese people.   CJLPA :   Reflecting on the current stalemate, how can the deadlock be broken and what constitutional reforms would you propose going forward? So as not to have a repeat of many cycles of conflicts.   AS : Any constitutional arrangement in Sudan must clearly define the military’s role and strictly limit its involvement in political affairs. There is no place for the proliferation of separate armed forces, as this only exacerbates arms control challenges. Sudan’s top priority should be establishing a single, unified army. Whether you agree or disagree that this army needs reform is another matter. Once consensus is reached on unification, the reform process can follow.   Safeguards are also essential to prevent the military from interfering in the day-to-day political affairs of the state. However, this process must go beyond knee-jerk responses or temporary peace agreements. Some mistakenly view the conflict as a simple power struggle between Burhan and Hemedti, but it’s far more complex. It is a conflict embedded within the state itself, involving different factions within the transitional process, some of which actively resist the transition. Ultimately, this is not merely a struggle within the military but a challenge facing the entire state apparatus. The Sudanese people are aware of this complexity, and reducing the conflict to two individuals oversimplifies the issue. Such a narrow view risks superficial interventions that fail to address the deeper, structural issues at play.   CJLPA :   What is the way forward?   AS : The path forward requires that we, as Sudanese, persist in our struggle to reclaim control of our nation and build a democratic future. We deserve a civilian-led government, stability, prosperity, and sustainable economic growth—and we have the capacity to achieve it if given the chance. Ending the war is crucial, but addressing and eliminating the root causes of the conflict is even more essential to prevent a repeat of history. We cannot afford to overlook these foundational issues or merely push them aside; genuine progress demands confronting them head-on for a lasting peace.   CJLPA :   In 2021, you penned an article describing ‘Three scenarios for post-coup Sudan’: to ‘continue down the path which the military set out and normalise the coup’; to ‘reverse the coup and return to the status quo before October 25’; or to ‘see all stakeholders involved agree on a peaceful political settlement’.[2] Looking at the current conflict, would you still go by them or would you even add more scenarios?   AS : I feel that we’re facing a situation far more severe than the coup—it’s now a prolonged assault on the state by the RSF. This is not to absolve the military; they have their own share of responsibility in this crisis. But as I look at the current scenarios, I fear we are on the brink of a civil war. I genuinely hope we don’t descend into a full-scale conflict. We need to take a hard, honest look at how we arrived here. What did we do? Where did we go wrong as civilians? We played a part by appointing individuals unfit for the executive branch and by failing to hold the military accountable when we should have. In some ways, we contributed to this situation, too—it’s not solely the military’s fault. We share in the responsibility.   It’s crucial for us to reflect on our actions, to consider what we could have done differently to avoid this crisis. This reflection is incredibly challenging and emotionally heavy. We have people scattered across the region and the world, and the weight of responsibility is immense for all of us. Facing the brutal realities of rape, gender-based violence, and extrajudicial killings is excruciating, as is the thought of never seeing our loved ones again. It’s a burden that is profoundly difficult to bear, yet it’s a reality we must confront if we are to rebuild our nation.   CJLPA : I am deeply sorry about the situation back home. Today, my main takeaway is centred around constitutionalism. We must prioritise the establishment of institutions that operate on principles rather than individuals, ensuring their durability over time. The military should not be involved in any aspect of governance except for national defence. Many thanks for speaking to us today. This interview was conducted by Solomon Njombai, Legal Researcher at CJLPA. Solomon, an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya, holds a Master of Arts degree in International Relations and an LL.M in Energy Law. His primary focus lies in comprehending how energy intertwines with global issues and how it drives interactions between states on a global scale [1] Abdelkhalig Shaib, ‘Is Sudan on the brink of another civil war?’ ( Al Jazeera , 27 October 2013) < https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/10/27/is-sudan-on-the-brink-of-another-civil-war > accessed 1 August 2024. [2] Abdelkhalig Shaib, ‘Three scenarios for post-coup Sudan’ ( Al Jazeera , 9 November 2021) < https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/11/9/three-scenarios-for-post-coup-sudan > accessed 1 August 2024.

Yasmin Ullah is a Rohingya author, poet, and human rights activist based in Canada. Born in the North Arakan state of Myanmar/Burma, she is the founder and executive director of Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network, a United Nations Minority Fellow 2023, and author of the children’s book Hafsa and the Magical Ring .   Doreen Chen is an Australian international human rights lawyer who co-founded and co-directs Destination Justice. She served as Lead Prosecutor for the Permanent People’s Tribunal on Myanmar and previously represented the senior surviving leader of the Khmer Rouge at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.   This interview was conducted on 18 April 2024. CJLPA : To begin, I know that when CJLPA originally reached out to you both, we did so individually, not knowing that you were colleagues or collaborators! Can you tell us how your working relationship began?   Yasmin Ullah : I met Doreen in a conference at Columbia University in New York. We did not really have the time to chat, but I saw her with her husband and her child in a stroller and I thought, ‘wow’ throughout the panel that that she was speaking at, ‘what an articulate person’. She was such a badass. I really wanted to speak with her, we just got to say hi, that was it. But then there was another conference where we really got to spend time and talk. We began texting and we got to know each other even deeper on a personal level. I think the kids would say that we really ‘vibed’ with each other. I really respect Doreen and her work ethics and the framework that she has going on, and that has really inspired me to continue my journey. As an advocate it showed that there is such a person in this work that has not been bogged down by all the suppression and systemic violence that we deal with on a daily basis.   Doreen Chen : The only thing I am going to add to that little history is that I remember that when we first met, I sought Yasmin out at the conference in New York because she stole the show. She stopped a roomful of 200 people with her remarks. I do not think I have ever heard the same level of passion, the testimony of the survivor, the strength of an advocate, and the analytical horsepower, combined in one incredibly articulate person. So as I recall it, at the very end, I did have my stroller with my toddler with me at this conference. I came up to Yasmin at the end to tell her that I thought she was one of a kind. And we did ‘vibe’! I think what we sensed there was sisterhood, the power of connection, and mutual support that you can have in advocacy, and maybe how much we could both support each other in collective movement towards accountability for the Rohingya. We were both very busy but we kept trying to find ways to meet up across many different continents. That was seven years ago now—and the rest is history.   CJLPA : Amazing! My next question is about how the two of you came to work in this field—how did you both end up at that conference that day?   DC : Really, if you drill down into it, it comes from my parents. My parents were stateless. My mum was born in a civilian internment camp in World War Two and my dad is the child of refugees. They were raised in Southeast Asia—Mum in Taiwan initially, but mostly in Indonesia, and Dad born and raised in Burma. They eventually ended up in China, experienced the Cultural Revolution in China and then moved to Hong Kong. Eventually, Mum was given Australian citizenship because she had been born in Australia during in the war in the civilian internment camps, so she was entitled to it. My dad and my sister were able to naturalise that way, and they migrated to Australia. That journey that they had meant that they had this vision of social justice from very early on, it was just hardwired into the family. This has been dinner table conversation since I was a child. The notion of service and the value of supporting others has been drilled into us since a very young age. So that has always been the kind of direction I was taking.   I think I naturally gravitated towards Asia and Southeast Asia at the start of my career because of the many connections, there is a lot of history there. I ended up working in Cambodia in different things, including establishing my NGO Destination Justice. But I also worked at the Khmer Rouge tribunal in various capacities, including as the International Council for the senior surviving leader of the Khmer Rouge. And I think that role led to different connections with activists in Southeast Asia because it was one of the only international tribunals that has ever been established in the region, in addition to Bangladesh, that has dealt with accountability for mass atrocity crimes. There were a lot of academics, activists, and others visiting the tribunal on a regular basis to learn more about that accountability journey, and to see to what extent that could be applicable to their own struggles to achieve the same. So I ended up meeting activists working in and around the Rohingya accountability space, and that led eventually to work on the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Myanmar, which eventually led to that conference in New York. The subsequent work I have done since has largely been in collaboration with my wonderful husband.   YU : For me it was very similar, but also a little bit different. I had grown up, of course, in displacement in Thailand. We were refugees for a very long time. I was in Thailand for 16 years without really any protection status from my own government, the Burmese government, nor the Thai government at the time that we were living in in Thailand. That sense of injustice is something so difficult to swallow, it opens up so many sorts of vulnerabilities for us. Living life like that really taught me how I do not want to be treated and how I probably should not treat others. And I think, potentially, what happened was that I learned that the oppression that happens to Rohingya people is so deep-rooted in so many different layers, at different places, wherever we are in this world, until we find some sort of third place or third countries to resettle in. Even then, we remain exposed to this ongoing oppression by the Burmese government and others in the region regardless of where we have ended up, because our families are still exposed to these kinds of oppressions. It had been instilled in me for a very long time that we are just different from other people, and we are going to continue to have to struggle like this. At one point I did not want to be a Rohingya anymore, because why should it be such a struggle? Why should I claim this heritage of mine?   It was not until I moved to Canada, and resettled here through private sponsorship in 2017, that I realised I could make a really good life here for myself. I could venture into a career that pays well, live a life here and settle down. But what good is it if I cannot really protect those that are close to me, the people that I met when I was young yet never had a chance to go back to reconnect with? The people who share my roots, my culture, and my tradition. They make up everything that I am today, even when I do not know it or do not realise it. For a time, I felt quite helpless. But in 2017, when the genocidal campaign was launched by the military and aided and abetted by the civilian government, I realised, ‘I need to do something—I do not know what, but I needed to do something. I cannot just sit and cry’. I remember crying for like 24 hours straight before realising ‘okay, this is enough tears’. And suddenly an opportunity came through where I got to have fun by crowdfunding and fundraising among friends and family. At that time, I did not expect for more than around $2,000 to be donated by those around me. I talked relentlessly about the Rohingya plight in 2017, and people began to say ‘okay, how can we help’. I did not know how to do any of this at the beginning, but somehow, I found a way to gather this money together. It was like a hot coal because I did not want to keep it in my hand! This was so much money, and it was meant for someone else. I did not want to hold it with me for a long period of time.   Somehow, through the help of my mother and people that we knew in our network, we found ways around to get the money through the cracks into Burma during the crisis in the fall of 2017. Despite the fact that we had not even become a formal organisation at that time, we managed to send almost $40,000 by the end of December. It was very strange for me to feel so empowered, and to realise how far we got just crowdfunding among friends and family, and setting up a page online. But it really saved a lot of people. It helped a lot of the displaced population to be able to decide whether they want to stay in a country where their future is so uncertain and their safety is not guaranteed. They now had the choice to leave. Many people were able to use that money to actually either stabilise their situations and find immediate needs like food, water, and shelter, or they could use it to decide to leave. They would then pay fishermen to take them across, and not have to swim across the borders.   So I realised that this was my newfound confidence. It was so daunting and I did not know how to go from there. But through just working and talking to different groups of people, I was interviewed by a few different radio stations. And through that, I got connected with other activists in Canada who are concerned about this. And we basically came together and the Rohingya Human Rights Network was formed. We then began pushing for Canada to make a genocide determination regarding the treatment of the Rohingya. I think that that was where the wheels started turning for me. I began to think, ‘okay, this is traditional advocacy, this is lobbying, this is a top-down approach, and this is how to do that’. We were also looking at cultural influence for advocacy purposes, by using institutions like museums to actually do the bottom-up work. By using museums, we can try to influence culture and peoples’ understandings about Rohingya, or even simply learn about Rohingya in the first place. I think that all of these different efforts combined to bring together the pieces of what advocacy means for me. But Doreen and I also got to work together and really, really find support and strength within each other.   CJLPA : Yasmin, can you tell me a bit more about the scope and goals of the Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network? How often do you work with Doreen’s organisation, Destination Justice, and what does the work together look like?   YU : I obviously have a lot of a lot of respect for Doreen and I continue to be inspired by her work and her tenacity every single day. We also converge in terms of our understandings of intersectionality, feminism, and various different aspects of mass atrocity and gender. That heavily influenced my work. Because I realised, in every single mass atrocity, and especially the Rohingya genocide, gender was weaponised against the people who are going to be the carriers of violence and trauma in the long-term. This was done deliberately to ensure that the community is as broken and desecrated as possible.   From the very beginning with my former organisation Rohingya Human Rights Network and now with the Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network, I have continued to have this idea of the significance of gender to mass atrocity in the back of my mind informing all of my work. I do not think I would have been able to actually understand or make sense of everything without Doreen being there to guide me. Sometimes I cannot make sense of why a system is so broken and hell-bent against women, and Doreen is there to say ‘well, let me tell you something about it’. It is so heart-warming in such a cold and harsh place like this world to find someone like Doreen and so many other women who have been my mentors and advisors as well.   I think that the work between Destination Justice and the Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network is more than simply collaboration on projects, but more so intertwined in principles, our hopes, and our end goals for our people and for the collectives—particularly the principle of Southeast Asian liberation. So, I think that our work together goes beyond what we have done or are currently doing, but is focussed in how we support one another. Destination Justice has worked with us on certain projects based around justice and accountability, but very specifically on women-led, refugee-led, and community-led initiatives.   These are initiatives that will not be bogged down by systemic discrimination or various different forms of white supremacy that inherently gets embedded in this in this kind of work, especially in the accountability work. Unfortunately, a lot of the time victims and survivors of genocide and mass atrocities are spoken down to, rather than uplifted. Our principles converge in the sense that we would like to see victims being at the centre and being agents of change rather than being the people who the laws or the decisions are made and targeted to. We are hoping to shift the gears a little bit for more widespread practice in the hopefully near future.   For the Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network specifically, the aspect of gender aspect heavily influences our work, beginning from the fact that we are an organisation founded by five Rohingya women in the diaspora. We each have stories of displacement and surviving genocide which are different, but all the same in the sense that we were all displaced from our own homeland. We now have to find our place elsewhere in the world. Our hope is for community-led initiatives and refugee-led organisations to be at the front and centre in receiving aid. We are pushing for aid to come to us directly rather than sifting through so many layers of NGOs and international organisations, and never really directly benefiting the people that need it the most. That is our general framework in general, but we also push for things that would help sustain our community beyond aid.   We understand that aid will not last forever, and our community needs to be sustained by other means, like social enterprise, which Doreen happens to know so much about. This means we may need a cultural revolution on the Rohingya issues beyond our surviving of genocide and being victims of genocide or mass atrocity. Beyond ‘woe is us, we have dealt with this for the past seven years’. How do we move beyond this victimhood and the mentality that is so rampant in this work? How can we have others or people who have not experienced what we have experienced actually look at us as agents of change? This bears repeating in so many different layers of our work. But I think it always comes back to the question of how to ensure that people see Rohingya, and Rohingya women specifically, as agents of change and as experts on their own experiences and their own livelihoods. How do we ensure that when we are at the table, when we are discussing decisions and policies and changes to be made, that the decision will be up to us, rather than up to those who do not live our experience?   DC : It may sound like she is stating the obvious, but this is not something that you can really take for granted in these kinds of accountability movements. The Rohingya accountability movement is not the first movement, by any means, that has tried to achieve this victim-centred and victim-led approach to accountability. But it is still not that common. And unfortunately, we find that in, in these movements, in aid and so on, there is a lot of colonialism, there is a lot of sexism, there is a lot of discrimination. It is wildly ironic, obviously, given the kinds of human rights violations and mass atrocity crimes that these movements are there to seek justice for. That is, it is wildly ironic that the movement itself then sort of replicates these very same forces of oppression in some senses.   As Yasmin has already said, that is the initial connection that we had. We at Destination Justice, as an organisation, have always been very interested in upending that notion, and Yasmin is a force of nature who is driven in this sense. There was a very natural meeting of minds, and it is something that has continued as an ongoing conversation. We do not pretend to have the answers. The appropriate way to deal with all of these things continues to evolve as society evolves and the situations and needs of the communities evolve and our understandings evolve as well. That is sometimes part of the connection itself.   Our connection may often be that we are collaborating on something: a campaign, a piece of change, other things that we cannot mention here. But as much as it might be about a tangible output, sometimes it is simply just about also understanding how we are doing things and checking with each other just to be sure. I often will go to Yasmin, when I am not sure about how something should be or whether this is the right way to do things, or to what extent does this respect the community and so on—and vice versa. So we are just kind of keeping each other in check.   In that sense, Destination Justice tries to see how we can assist human rights defenders and changemakers to use international law and international advocacy realms as a force for good. You would think that they are a force for good by their nature, but it is not necessarily the case. The idea is to empower changemakers like Yasmin to be able to engage in these spaces themselves. Yasmin has just been gallivanting around Geneva, doing just that as a United Nations Fellow. Those are the kinds of things that we hope for. We just try to provide technical assistance to human rights defenders and community organisers like Yasmin in this niche space where we are able to support. However, we take a backseat on all of the community engagement which Yasmin has been rightfully should be leading. It has been been a really interesting collaboration, and a really fruitful one. Unfortunately, it is not only the acts for which you seek accountability that can present challenges, but the spaces which you are trying to navigate to be able to achieve this accountability. These spaces can be just as frustrating and difficult and oppressing.   I think that this is a part of our connection as well. Yasmin has gone out on her own and established her network, and Destination Justice did the same. We were both trying to break the mould a little bit and trying to be nimble. For example, Destination Justice deliberately does not have a physical office—we try to do a lot of remote work and think about other ways that you can make a career in human rights advocacy sustainable. Yasmin mentioned, for example, social enterprise. We had a Justice Cafe for a few years in Cambodia, which was a wonderful space that I miss very much. In sum, our collaboration is just a lot of trying to create a safe space between us and innovate in terms of social justice. How can you achieve social justice in the most inclusive and respectful way possible, and in a sustainable way—mentally, economically, physically, and so on?   CJLPA : The values that you two are espousing come across so clearly. I think it is because you are obviously putting these values into practice even in the smallest things. Whether it is the way you are speaking to and about people, or the way you both direct your organisations, I can tell that it is done so intentionally and in a way that prioritises distributing power to those to whom it should be going.   I wanted to ask briefly on the question of international law, how you would characterise the attitude in Burma/Myanmar today toward international law? What is the rhetoric going around specifically about human rights law? What do you actually see happening in practice?   YU : Myanmar is a very young country, young in the sense that we have basically just began our journey or our connection to the world about a decade ago. 2011 or 2012 is when the country opened up. The first social media platform was Facebook, which was so prominent and so encompassing for everybody and became the main source of information for people. This went downhill pretty fast, because there was no filter, no moderation of content and the creation of content. Political parties and political figures actually use it and weaponise it for mass atrocity. Unfortunately, I think that was a very quick progression of how a state could justify mass atrocity, and how fast and how effective social media could be.   I am using this as a very clear cut example of how unfamiliar the country is to the international law and human rights standards. We have lived under the military regime for a very long time. Not counting the decade of quasi-democracy that we had, it was basically 40 years of military regimes, one after another, and different discriminatory policies and systemic shifts towards colonial legacies. And a lot of those legacies are dispossession, mass atrocities, accumulation of wealth for military organisations and power elites. People did not know what it was like to live without oppression. And that inability to imagine what the world should be like, or what social justice means, inform a lot of ways that people work. We have conflict complexities with ethnic armed groups, ethnic organisations, and divisions that were created by the military junta and the civilian governmental later on. I think that it is still incredibly difficult to actually have conversations around feminism or gender or international human rights standards and justice and accountability.   I fear that that conversation still has not gone deep enough into the depth of ‘what have we done in terms of harming one another?’, down into the smallest unit of the society. What have we done to one another? What do we owe to each other? And I have tried to have these conversations for a very long time, but it has been an uphill battle. I think that international human rights law or accountability mechanism are largely understood at face value. And, unfortunately, a lot of the time these people in the international realm do not come from the community. Many times, someone from the ivory tower reaches down to those in Myanmar/Burma. And to be frank, it is really difficult to have these conversations when people do not come with the lived experience of endless military regime and endless poverty.   More than half of the country lives below the poverty line on a day-to-day basis. The current population of Myanmar is more than 60% made up of women and young people. The good thing is that us being a young country and being a young population does leave a window of opportunity to discuss shifting attitudes and thinking and mentalities, but unfortunately the military's ideology has been so vastly influential that, for example, things like Burmanisation or prioritising of the dominant group remains in the consciousness. Even in the resistance movement, even in the civil disobedience movement, Burmans are prioritised in all aspects of political life. And it then does not leave a lot of room for us to talk about reconciliation or establishing the truth or really thinking about reckoning.   So I do not really have a proper answer to the question that you asked, but I do see the shift. Since the most recent attempted coup in 2021, the country is still currently in turmoil. Civil war has broken out and violence is widespread across the country, where other civilians, other groups, and other ethnic groups are also implicated. But it also shows that the Myanmar public is no longer going to bow down to the military junta or to the organisation, and it no longer has the power or the grip of the country that it thought it had. It is losing grounds to a lot of ethnic or armed organisation and resistance forces. This is also a very complex scenario all on its own, because this is a country that is not used to having accountability embedded in armed organisations. And that is a conversation that we are trying to have: let us talk about gender, let us talk about the enormity of mass atrocity that could be a feature out of this civil war, out of this lack of accountability built into armed organisation or lack of protocols that adheres to at least some level of international human rights law and standards.   My answer might sound very convoluted, but this is the kind of dynamic we are dealing with. Although there has been a shift, it needs to be pushed even further. Especially because we have a bunch of young people in the country who are trying to reimagine what the country could look like without this dictatorship, without the authoritarian regime. But at the same time, we have not been fed enough examples of what that could look like. This process of change will be dangerous, but we are trying our best.   DC : Building on what Yasmin has just said, I was thinking that states in Myanmar's position often like to say that human rights standards are aspirational, and that as nascent states that are not a position to grant all of these rights, or Myanmar's case they may say ‘I was not a party to all of the relevant treaties’—but they are a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). And although those rights are sometimes perceived as aspirational or non-enforceable, the UN has said that that is not the case. We should see human rights in the treaties as a minimum standard. And also as obligations to which Myanmar as a state party should be bound. And if we are talking about civil and political rights, even if the country is not party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), many of those rights have been given the status of customary international law. So it is not relevant whether they are a party to that treaty at all.   What we should understand is that human rights standards are not aspirational. We have defined a set of minimum standards that we expect all states to be able to abide by, regardless really of their economic development status. Obviously, there is a little bit of a margin, but not that much. And so it just frustrates me no end because Myanmar and many other states tend to use the same kind of rhetoric in order to dismiss the field entirely. And I think it doesn't wash with the state of the law as it is regardless of the treaty participation.   YU : That said, I feel I have done a little bit of injustice to painting the broad stroke of the understanding of the international human rights standards or accountability. Burma/Myanmar actually jumped into a lot of treaties and international human rights suggestions or standards. For example, we were one of the first few that actually jumped into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. We also became a party to the Genocide Convention fairly soon after the draft. I think that was a very good indication that when democracy was flourishing in the country, there were there were a lot of things that we could accomplish in terms of our cooperation in the UN systems and beyond. And even now, as the resistance forces gain ground in the country, the military junta is receding and losing power and losing its grip on the country, and the National Unity Government—the alternative government that was made by the previous civilian government and personnel that that came through the election in in 2020—are trying to make amends. Some of the ways that they are trying to do that is by releasing statements and press releases acknowledging the Rome Statute’s coverage on genocide against Rohingya, and that was not something that I thought I would witness in my lifetime.   I saw Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the head of the previous civilian government, defend the military to the International Court of Justice in person, dismissing the victims entirely. Now her own people and her own party are saying the complete opposite. Although there is debate about the quality of how this subscription is going to work, that first step has been made. There is also a lot of discussion around cooperation with the with the legal team and with the Independent Investigative Mechanism of Myanmar, or the IMM. There are many other precedents set by the National Unity Government, again where we are still debating the practical steps beyond that, and we are still trying to push the needle a little bit further than where they are.   As Doreen said, it is aspirational most of the time. We want it to become more practical, rather than being treated as an aspirational goal somewhere up in the up in the sky. International human rights standards are great, but if they are not implemented in the country and embedded into the legal, political, social, or economic systems, it will be difficult for us to actually get anywhere at all. And we see the breakdown of these systems, hence why we are here today. So we are hoping that it could be translated into laws and reforms in the country. For example in Canada, we have Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that was heavily predicated on the UDHR. We are hoping something similar could happen in Burma/Myanmar.   CJLPA : Has there been any legislation that incorporates the rights of indigenous peoples or ethnic minorities?   YU : We have a constitution being drafted right now, the issue is, because of this Burmanisation and Burman dominant culture, Rohingya and other ethnic groups are somewhat excluded from the process. The Rohingya are excluded entirely. Currently there is not a single group representing them at the National Unity Consultative Council, which is the council that goes on to actually advise the National Unity Government, our alternative government from the previous civilian government. This in and of itself is an issue. There is one Rohingya organisation, Women Peace Network, led by our amazing Wai Wai Nu. The issue is that her organisation is actually part of the NUCC not as a Rohingya organisation but as a women's organisation. Obviously, there is a convergence of issues. At the same time, however, if not a single Rohingya representative is on this council, then we do not have a lot of ways to negotiate different laws passed, or via which the constitution can be reformed, scrapped, or rewritten.   This has been an issue particularly in a transitional justice framework, when a lot of other groups have basically said, ‘Oh, we can deal with the Rohingya issues later’. And ‘later’, this Marxist form of ‘let us deal with all the issues later on, we just need to eat the rich first’—this does not work because it has not worked in the previous transition. And the rest of the world has basically bid against this transitional justice, we are thinking about it too deeply. When Daw Aung San Suu Kyi came into power and the National League for Democracy took over, we had quasi-democracy because there was no real consideration of transitional justice and how we can actually take stock, do the reckoning, and establish truth and reconciliation. Even at this stage, while we are while we are discussing the future of the country beyond the military, there is still this lingering Burmanisation or Burman nationalism that prevents and creates barriers for groups like us and groups beyond the Rohingya community to actually flourish and have a space to discuss their own future in this country.   CJLPA : Is there a lot of room in Burma currently for Rohingya groups or organisations like yours? Are these sorts of organisations mostly diaspora-focused or are there many within Myanmar as well?   YU : It is fairly difficult to actually organise in the country. So far, Rohingya have been quite badly hit throughout the entire attempted coup. Rohingya—our resources and our access to aid our access to livelihood—have been dwindling. There were so many different barriers that already presented themselves prior to the attempted coup as a result of this 2017 genocidal campaigns. So many layers of systemic violence and policies and practices are put in place to ensure that Rohingya cannot organise. We still try and there are ways that aid is operated or aid from within the community is actually sent into the country and distributed and ensure that everyone is taken care of. Of course, it is not nearly enough.   When it comes to how Rohingya could organise or whether or not we have a space at the table, it is very difficult because we are contending with this issue where Burman nationalists do not see Rohingya groups who are trying to represent themselves or trying to partake in this building and rebuilding of the nation. It is almost out of left field for a lot of Burman nationalist groups, especially Burman Buddhist nationalists, where they do not see Rohingya as belonging to the country in the first place. And this all comes back to the tiers of citizenship and how ethnic nationality subscription is only a design that was created, as a new creation by the junta and the military regime since 1962. During that process, Rohingya have not only been stripped of our citizenship. The common misconception is that this is what disempowers us. But it is also the subscription to ethnic nationality or indigeneity in the country. Because if you do not have indigeneity, then you do not have ancestors that could be traced back before 1820. The new creation that came into effect after the military junta took over in 1962 was the idea of Burman Buddhists, singled out as the only appropriate group and only correct citizen of the country. This inherently disenfranchised the rest of the country, made up of other ethnic and religious groups.   The Rohingya were the group targeted by the military junta to be alienated first. It was almost like a test run. I think we are still the guinea pigs in this experiment, where the military is trying to see where how far it can push this marginalisation, disenfranchisement, and discriminatory policy and practice against us and against others in the country. But it ends in genocide and mass atrocity, which is, I think, the worst that it could be. This is based in the idea that the Rohingya never belonged in the country, that we migrated in 1970 or some years prior to that. But when you look at the historical, archaeological, and academic references and evidence, the factual findings, Rohingya ancestors have been there. We can route back to various other records, such as the Arab records from when there was a lot of intermingling and sailing across the ocean to enter the region. These records can be dated back as far as the seventh and eighth centuries.   This completely destroys the myth that the military junta and the Burman nationalists want to create. They want to create sense of belonging for themselves and for no one else. They have this very critical year of 1820, where anyone who cannot trace their ancestors prior to 1820 do not belong in the country. That is such an arbitrary year. British colonial records show the Rohingya people and even the term ‘Rohingya’ itself existing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At that time, the British East India company surveyed the area and recorded who the people were and what languages they spoke, and, voila , there was a group of people who speak Rohingya and practiced Islam. The idea that the country was mainly Buddhist, that mainly Burmans created everything, and that they are sole bearers of culture and the sole custodian of the country is inherently just nonsense.   All of this combined leads us to the contentious issues that we are currently grappling with today. Burma as a country still needs to go through so many different transformations, and one that is so crucial is moving away from the military and the Burman Buddhist nationalist ideology. In this ideology no one else belongs, and this country belongs to a very arbitrary group of people that was dated back to this date or this date. The reform needs to happen far beyond that and digging up all these pieces to actually do the reform will be extremely dire. But then, while we are having these discussions, Rohingya are excluded from this process. So the people who know best what this oppression looks like and how to undo it is completely excluded from it.   CJLPA :   Doreen, I was hoping to ask you about your work with the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Myanmar. What is Rohingya inclusion like in that setting?   DC : I would say I saw a lot. Obviously, one of the difficulties with any tribunal is where you are located. The Cambodia tribunal that I worked at regarding the Khmer Rouge, for example, was one of the few that was actually located in the country where the crimes were committed. This means that accessibility for the relevant community is very easy. That said, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Myanmar was in Malaysia, where there was a vibrant and large cohort of Rohingya refugees living. Extensive efforts were made to bring in Rohingya colleagues, not only because the tribunal dealt with Rohingya but also Kachin and Shan peoples. Ultimately, I think, the Kachin and Shan did not participate in the final instance, but there were representatives from all communities. There were extensive efforts made to bring folks in to participate in the tribunal, and more importantly, to make space for what people had to say about their experience.   One of the advantages of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal is that in terms of Rules of Procedure, it is a lot more flexible than, for example, the ICC, due to the type of institution that you are dealing with. And one positive outcome for victim survivors is that they were much more able to speak freely, and with the narrative of their choosing to describe what their experience was, which was critical. This is not something that normally happens—time limits are usually tighter. Normally, victim survivors, or the Civil Party seeking reparation, are asked to speak to a specific topic. This was sort of the case for the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, but we understood that truth-telling is probably the greatest outcome that a victim survivor can have, and doing so in accordance with their own framework of their own experience. We deliberately made a great effort to ensure that accommodations were made so that people could engage with the tribunal on their terms. So I absolutely cannot fault the institution in that way.   One thing I will also point out is that there was a special session that involved women specifically about sexual violence. This is probably less reported on the public because it was a closed session. Many parameters were set up so that women would feel comfortable testifying. They testified from memory before female judges only and with female prosecutors only. I was participating. There was a lot of preparation done with these people before and debriefing afterwards to ensure that the experience avoided retraumatising them as much as possible. I think that those are all commendable things.   I think international tribunals are magnificent for lots of things, particularly if you are looking for formal legal forms of justice and certain legal consequences to occur for individuals or perhaps even for states. But I am not sure that they are always the best. I am not sure that they are often the best suited for individuals participating in those structures, whether as witnesses, victims, or perpetrators, to be able to tell the story. Unfortunately, they are not really designed that way.   The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal took place in August 2017, just as the genocide for the Rohingya was unfolding, it was really ‘live’. The way that that actually fed into the hearing was that individual testimonies captured by the media and NGOs were screened and relayed to the hearings in real time, so that people could hear those stories directly from those individuals as they were arriving in Bangladesh or as they were being interviewed by organisations like Human Rights Watch on arrival.   CJLPA : Before we bring this interview to a close, I was hoping Yasmin could speak about how being a woman specifically has played into your role in advocating justice for the Rohingya, and other instances where you have seen women playing a major part?   DC : Can we talk about what it is to be young as well? Because she is both!   YU : Oh, this feels like a lifetime ago. I am thinking on the ways that Rohingya women have held this community together after being endlessly desecrated, just constantly being bombarded with attacks, and policies and practice that do not just discriminate but also really destroy the connection between people in the community. Carrying our culture and our traditions across the river and across the borders, trying to ensure that the community still remains to this day: that is the work of Rohingya women. It cannot be mistaken for any anyone else's labour.   Throughout all of this, after surviving, women have been the ones who are predominantly more open to cooperating with different groups of people who are collecting testimonies. The most dire and heart-breaking stories, the ones that go on to establish mass atrocities and establish the suspicion of genocide, come from women. They are the ones speaking about sexual and gender-based violence openly. The have been the ones relaying information to lawyers and prosecutors and they continue to do so until today.   Unfortunately, we feel that they have been over-interviewed and over-extracted for their information and continuously put through this re-traumatisation process. Beyond the refugees or the survivors or the victims, those in the diaspora also have a role to play, beyond translation and interpreting and beyond trying to repackage the information for those outside the communities to understand. There are also roles that we play, for example, in documentation. Razia Sultana wrote a book called Rape by Command  that actually sheds light on the chain of command in terms of who orders rape and the mass rape to happen, who orders the sexual and gender-based violence, and that could be routed back to the mastermind and architect of this genocide, General Min Aung Hlaing.   Women Peace Network have done a lot of work in terms of documentations but also working on sustaining and uplifting the community from the inside, and from the outside ensuring that the international community understands what goes on in the country. They are also playing the role of peacemaker and connecting with other communities. Even though our community is not well represented in the NUCC, they are still bearing that responsibility to ensure that some level of representation remains.   I do not think that we cannot downplay any part of the work that Rohingya women have put into our role at Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network. We are focusing solely on changing the ways that people look at Rohingya in Southeast Asia because we understand that ASEAN has a role to play, even if people think that it is dead because it has an approach of non-interference. We think that it should change and why not—just let us just put in the work and see how far we can push it!   Every revolutionary that has that ever existed has had to sit down and say, ‘No, we are not going to let the status quo operate the way that it has operated. We are going to challenge it’. This is what we are trying to do. On so many levels, Rohingya women have done all that we can to ensure that our voices are heard and that the world understands what happened inside our country and to us. At the same time, we are also trying to push further into the reforms, into the changes, in the best way that we know how.   The challenge remains that we are not only looked down on by those outside our communities, but also prevented from participating meaningfully in the rebuilding of our community and in the rebuilding of Myanmar/Burma. As women, as young women, and as an organisation made up of young women on top of all of this, we have dealt with so much scrutiny. For example, in Southeast Asia right now there is a hate campaign against Rohingya. Something terrifying is that the language in these hate campaigns is very similar to the genocidal language leading up to the events of 2017. Our fear is that ultimately these groups of people, a few hundreds of thousands of Rohingya that are currently residing in Southeast Asia, will not find a safe place, and will eventually be pushed into vulnerable situations or unsafe circumstances or be forcefully repatriated.   The bulk of the work is not just about us contending with politicians and policymakers. There are also issues around hate comments on any sort of content we push out, because today we live in a digital age. For example, there was a video of my colleague Noor Azizah, a director at our network, featured by UNHCR Asia Pacific. The video was one minute long, no longer, and it was about Rohingya wanting to sustainably repatriate and what conditions should be met. It was very standard practice thing—there was nothing new that she was introducing—but the video went viral. There were only around 150 likes, but there were more than 5000 comments and counting. They all came from Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia talking about how Rohingya should go home, they are uncivilised, they are this, they are that. Noor is a very poised, graceful young woman—even younger than me! It is so mind-boggling that even when she is not making any sort of controversial statement, just stating facts and talking about what Rohingya people want, that she is not being listened to or treated with kindness and grace that it should. This is merely one instance of this sort of online treatment.   On top of this, we deal with not just the public, but also people in our community, men in our community, who are threatened by our presence and existence. Unfortunately it exists in all of the communities. As women become louder men become really, really threatened. Regardless of what label we put on ourselves. It is almost impossible to exist as a woman in this world, having to feel like you are smaller and being made smaller and irrelevant every single day. But Rohingya women show up and we continue to show up every day. In the International Court of Justice and in the Universal Jurisdiction case against Myanmar in Argentina, there are four main victims that are featured. These four women have shown so much courage, tenacity, and bravery. They have shown their faces and told their stories over and over again, been scrutinised by the court and the media, just so that they could raise the status of our issues. That is participation of Rohingya women.   I hope that in our work with Destination Justice, that we could make it a little bit safer, more victim-centric, deeper rooted in the future that we want to imagine, in the reforms that we are trying to push. We do not want to just use the labour of Rohingya women left and right without rewarding them for what they have brought to the table. At the same time, we want to also be able to participate meaningfully, and not just limit Rohingya women to storytelling roles where they must cry in front of camera. Beyond that, how can we uplift them to the point that they no longer need these systems that uphold white supremacy, colonialism, and all these other oppressive mechanisms, but actually be able to raise their status, wherever they may be, and keep them safe?   DC : Finishing with the idea of redundant systems, I would say that our goal at Destination Justice is to be redundant. We want to be out of a job! Our hope would be that we do not exist in the future because there is no need, no injustice, and all is well. But even if we continue to exist, we are looking to be even more in the background and have even more empowered human rights defenders and communities being able to take things forward themselves. We will provide support as needed in the background. But in an ideal world, I would say we should not exist at all. If we do, let us hope there is a little bit more accountability down the road, and that that accountability has been truly led by the victims and survivors from outside and by women and young people. This interview was conducted by Alexandra Marcy Hall, Legal Researcher on The Human Agenda. Alexandra Marcy is a human rights professional who has practiced and researched extensively in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. She currently works in advocacy for asylum seekers, refugees and migrants living in London.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, just over seventy-five years ago the international community embraced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948) as a cornerstone for global peace. The preamble of the UDHR rights starts with this paragraph: ‘Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world’.[1] Human rights encompass amongst others the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education. Everyone is entitled to these rights without discrimination. As noted by Brock-Utne, ‘peace involves equality of rights through which members of a society participate equally in decision-making and distribution of resources’.[2]   The international community cannot both recognize human rights as the foundation for global peace and accept the Taliban regime’s system of gender apartheid. As a member of the United Nations, Afghanistan ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Afghanistan has also ratified most of the major conventions and treaties of human rights, including the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1976); the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1976); the International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICEFORD, 1969); the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, 1981), without any reservation; the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT, 1987); the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1990); the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (1957); the Geneva Conventions (1949) and protocols; and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, 2008). In addition, Afghanistan committed to the Beijing Platform of Action, which outlined comprehensive action for the promotion of gender equality, the Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000, and many other resolutions on women’s participation on different levels of peace building and development. Likewise, Afghanistan endorsed the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which establish sustainable goals with the slogan of ‘Leaving no one behind’.[3] However, the Taliban’s opposition to and violation of these human rights, particularly their systematic discrimination against and exclusion of minorities and Afghan women, obstructs Afghanistan’s path to peace.   Historical context and background   Unfortunately, Afghanistan has been at war for 45 years, starting with the Coup d’etat of the pro-USSR factions in 1978. Since then, the people of Afghanistan have been held hostage between the extreme left—the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), the USSR, and its military invasion—the extreme right, and fundamentalists supported by the Western and Arab countries. Islam, our religion, was used as a weapon of war to defeat the USSR and stop the advancement of so-called communism to South Asia. The Taliban is the by-product of this short-sighted Cold War policy.   Because of gross human rights violations, including arbitrary bombing and the arrest of people who were not with the PDPA, millions of people were forced to become refugees in neighbouring countries, particularly Pakistan and Iran. Soon after the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan, Iran experienced the Islamic Revolution. In Pakistan, self-appointed President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq started his Islamization of the country. Afghan refugees who had lost their livelihoods were put in refugee camps. Due to poverty and lack of facilities, refugees were not able to feed and educate their children. Religious schools (madrassas) were established to this end. Access to quality and modern education was denied to Afghan refugee children. madrassas replaced formal education with the brainwashing of male children with extremist world views.   During the war, women’s rights were denied as the men fought against the USSR. After the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan the Mujahedeen factions took power, and soon started fighting among themselves, destroying what was left after 14 years of fighting with the puppet regime and Soviet army. They started to violate the rights of women including restricting their clothing and their appearances. During 1992-96, for example, the government at that time initially declared that women could not show their faces on TV. They replaced women’s faces on the screen with an image of a rose, with their voice in the background. After a few weeks, they ordered that even the voice of women should not be heard by unrelated men. Similarly, they forbade the Afghan delegation from participating in the Cairo Conference on Population and Development in 1994, on the grounds that un-Islamic issues would be discussed.   The country was divided between different political and ethnic groups. Emerging from the madrassas in Pakistan, the Taliban began their existence in 1994 in Kandahar and took Kabul in 1996. They issued their first decree banning women’s education, movement, and presence in all of public life, including forcing people to paint their windows if they had second floors in their houses, to prevent women from being seen from outside and women from seeing the outside. They made Afghanistan an open prison for women from 1996 to 2001. At the same time, Afghanistan became a training camp for terrorist groups and the biggest producer of opium in the world.   The international community placed no priority on women’s rights in their relief programs for refugees. They did little to increase access to education for women and girls or provide reproductive health care or access to contraception. Afghan families ended up with so many children that they were not able to feed or educate them. Poverty increased. Boys ended up in madrassas. Girls became victims of domestic violence, including child marriage and forced marriages.   Advances for Women’s Rights under the Afghan Republic Government   After 9/11 and with US military intervention the Taliban were removed from power. A new interim administration and transitional government was established with high hopes for the promotion of democracy and human rights. Although it faced continued challenges and barriers, the Afghan Republic government (2001-2021) made tremendous achievements to promote and fulfil its international obligations regarding human rights and women’s rights. The Afghan government had sought to create a legal framework in compliance with the country’s international legal obligations. The new constitution ratified in 2004 guaranteed equal rights for men and women. It was the first iteration of the Afghan constitution to contain the word ‘women’. The new constitution allocated 25 percent of Afghanistan’s parliament and provincial councils to women. The constitution also provided for religious liberty, allowing Shias in the country to exercise their personal status law. Many other laws were reformed during this period. Importantly, for the first time domestic violence was criminalized with the Elimination of Violence Against Women Law.   How did these international commitments and their integration into local Afghan laws change Afghan women’s daily lives? What did these policies mean to Afghan women in practical terms?  Afghanistan established its first Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) to address and recognize the challenges Afghan women faced. For the first time, an Afghan woman was appointed as a vice president in the Afghan interim government. Afghanistan established a national human rights institution, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), to monitor, promote, and protect human rights in the country. Afghanistan held its first presidential elections to allow average Afghans to participate in political processes and decision making. For the first time, an Afghan woman ran for office as a presidential candidate. Afghan women had some form of representation at high level official positions as ministers, members of the parliament, governors, mayors, university professors, judges, prosecutors, army and police officers, in sports, media, and all other aspects of life. Although some of these gestures were symbolic and mainstream Afghan women still continued to suffer from violations of their fundamental human rights, they were nonetheless huge first steps towards the institutionalization of women’s and human rights in the fabric of Afghan society and its institutions.   With the establishment of the Afghan Interim Administration, people were very hopeful, but in truth the international community and the new Afghan government lacked the strong political will to build a democratic peaceful society. Instead of a long-term multi-dimensional strategy, planning was limited and the approach was incoherent. The international community did not fully understand the history and culture of Afghanistan and its ethnic and religious diversity. Every country that was involved in reconstruction implemented projects in their own way, rather than based on the needs of the people. Contracts were given to companies from their own countries, which then subcontracted to Afghan companies. Rather than employing young Afghans in a labour-intensive project and promoting community ownership of the project, the contractors used machinery and the profits enriched a few individuals.   The majority of the projects were designed by men and were not gender sensitive. For example, the contract to build the main road between Kabul and Kandahar, which is about 450 miles in length, was given to an American company for more than $700 million. Not a single public toilet was built for women who had to travel on this long road.   Unfortunately, the US viewed its intervention in Afghanistan as a success story and in 2003 invaded Iraq. Not only did the US lose its focus on Afghanistan, but the invasion of Iraq also fuelled the recruitment of young Muslim men by terrorist groups and the spread of more militant tactics such as suicide bombings. In Afghanistan, corruption and nepotism took hold in the highly centralized government, including in elections and democratic institutions.   The Taliban never fully disappeared from the country’s political reality, even after their removal from power in 2001. Instead, they spent the next 20 years fighting against the people, the newly formed government, and particularly against modernity and democracy in Afghanistan as represented by women’s participation in society. The lack of international coordination and problems within the Afghan government allowed the Taliban to exploit the deprivation in remote provinces to recruit children and unemployed young men to join the ‘holy war’. The US peace deal with Taliban on 29 February 2020 and lack of effective management by President Ashraf Ghani and his corrupt exclusive team allowed the Taliban to take control of the country. On 15 August 2021, all of the progress that Afghanistan had made in establishing institutions, rule of law, and women’s participation in economic, political, and social sectors of society was lost in a matter of days with the Taliban’s takeover.   The Return of the Taliban and Plight of Afghan Women   With their return to power on 15 August 2021, the Taliban abolished and reversed the hard-earned achievements made in two decades overnight. They made clear through their words and actions that they did not respect any of the laws. The Taliban Prime Minister publicly proclaimed that all the laws made by people are not good enough for the people, and that we need to implement the ‘Law of God’. Afghanistan is now the only country without a constitution.[4] The Taliban violates the women’s basic human rights that Afghanistan had committed to protect and promote, including the fundamental rights guaranteed in UDHR: freedom from any form of discrimination; the right to quality secondary and higher education; the right of access to quality healthcare services, including the ability to choose how many children one wishes to have; economic and employment rights; the right to political participation and decision making; and the right to freedom of movement. In fact, they apply gender apartheid in the country, without any fear of accountability.   The Taliban do not have a strategy for governance. Instead, in the years since 2021 they have issued more than three dozen decrees and statements that violate human rights and restrict women’s freedom, including:[5]   Banning women from most public life, work, teaching at high schools, universities, and employment in local and non-governmental organizations, including UN agencies, in violation of economic and employment rights. Banning women and girls’ schooling beyond sixth grade, including attending universities and higher education institutions, violating the rights to primary, secondary, and higher education. Forbidding schools from teaching the standard curriculum, which was replaced with their version of extremist education, violating the right to quality education. Banning women from entering public parks, public baths, gyms and sports clubs, a basic form of discrimination against women. Banning women from holding public office including judiciary roles, in violation of the right to choose one’s occupation. The compulsory veiling of women in public, even among the extremely limited number of permitted female TV anchors, who can be counted on one hand. Failure to adhere to this rule results in punishment for the male family member, ultimately reinforcing patriarchal control more than ever before.   In reality, there are no rights left to be taken from Afghan women. The Taliban’s overall strategy is to erase, discriminate against, and eliminate women from public life. They abolished the institutions that made these gains possible. While the former Afghan government and international community attempted to build institutions and enforce the rule of law, the Taliban did the opposite, seeking to deconstruct the legal and institutional bases of the nation. First on the chopping block was MoWA. Although MoWA could not solve all the problems of Afghan women and actions to promote gender equality were needed in all departments, it became an important symbol of the promise of women’s equality. When the Taliban abolished MoWA, they replaced it with the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.   The second institution that the Taliban abolished was the AIHRC, which played a central role in the promotion, protection, and fulfilment of human rights in general, and particularly women’s rights. The AIHRC had become a full member of the Asia Pacific Forum and also gained an ‘A’ status as a member of the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions. The Taliban’s next step was to destroy the nation’s prospect for peace by undermining the entire concept and value of human rights. One of the basic tenets of Islam is that all human beings are born with equal dignity. However, the Taliban do not respect this equal dignity and view themselves as superior to all. They closed the Independent Election Commission, Election Complaint Commission, Constitution Oversight Commission, and all other institutions necessary for democracy and good governance.   Restrictions on education   Afghanistan’s Constitution of 1964 granted educational rights to all Afghan women and men, noting that:   Education is the right of every Afghan and shall be provided free of charge by the State and citizens of Afghanistan […] Primary education is compulsory for all children in areas where facilities for this purpose are provided by the State.[6]   In addition, the Afghanistan Constitution of 2004 emphasized the creation of educational programs for women and the elimination of illiteracy in the country:   Education is the right of all citizens of Afghanistan, which shall be offered up to the B.A. […] Afghanistan, the state shall design and implement effective programs and prepare the ground for teaching mother tongues in areas where they are spoken.[7]   The 2004 Constitution obliges the government to provide free and mandatory education to its citizens. Beyond the requirements of Afghan laws, the right to education is accepted as a core human right in various international standards. Discrimination based on sex or any other basis in the realization of this right is a violation of human rights. The right to education is recognized in the UDHR and the ICESCR. The CRC obligates states to provide mandatory and free primary education. According to the above conventions and the CEDAW, any form of discrimination against women is a violation of human rights. According the ICESCR:   The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to education. They agree that education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity, and shall strengthen the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. They further agree that education shall enable all persons to participate effectively in a free society, promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations and all racial, ethnic or religious groups, and further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.[8]   As a party to these international standards, Afghanistan is obligated to fulfil its commitments to provide and make education accessible to Afghan girls and boys. However, the Taliban is in full denial and violation of both Afghan national laws and Afghanistan’s international commitments regarding the right to education and behaves contrary to all its obligations. Afghanistan is the only country in the world to bar girls from secondary and higher education. The Taliban has also banned schools from teaching the standard curriculum and forces children to learn extreme interpretations of religion. As a result, the quality of education has deteriorated.   While the Taliban claim that their ban on education is Islamic, both their actions and discourse contradict not only international conventions and human rights norms and values, but also Islamic values for education. The first message to the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was ‘Iqra’ (‘read’), emphasizing the value of education in Islamic principles. No other Islamic country in the world bans women’s education. Education of girls will not serve the Taliban’s long term political interest as educated women will not allow their sons to fall prey to Taliban recruitment and join their ranks.   The de facto government’s inability to ensure the safety of girls on their way to school, to protect the schools and to create an inclusive and secure environment for them to learn, coupled with a pervasive culture of impunity, has perpetuated a cycle of fear and hindered access to quality education. Women who work in education are being targeted and threatened. Terrorist attacks and bombings of educational institutions have continued to occur under Taliban rule. In one of the suicide bombing incidents on Kaaj Educational Academy in western Kabul, a predominantly Hazara minority neighbourhood, at least 50 people were killed and wounded over 100 others. The majority of victims were girls taking a practice university entrance exam. Burning girls’ schools and poisoning girls are some of the other tactics that the Taliban used to terrorize people. Hazara rights, like those of Hindus and Sikhs, are likewise violated with impunity.   In the aftermath of their transition to power, the Taliban briefly allowed women to attend universities, but later reversed this allowance. The international community’s failure to exert enough pressure to address this issue contributes to an ongoing educational crisis for Afghan girls and women. Afghanistan’s education crisis takes away the fundamental tool for the empowerment of every human being, particularly to the female population of a country. As a result, it contributes to discrimination and to widening the equality gap between men and women. There is an inverse relationship between education, child and maternal health care, and levels of poverty: access to education improves health and reduces poverty.[9] Banning the education of girls and women is not required by Islam; it is a political agenda to control half of the population in Afghanistan without any resistance.   Limitations on access to healthcare   Access to quality education and the right to health are closely connected. Educated women marry later, which itself reduces their childbearing years and allows them to choose the number of their children. Fewer children are also a tool for reduction of poverty and the empowerment of mothers.   Afghan women have been disproportionately affected by the lack of access to adequate medical services as a result of limited resources, inadequate infrastructure, and a shortage of trained female medical personnel. Women and girls are finding it extremely difficult to access healthcare; the situation is even worse for women in rural areas where clinics have been closed or women are not allowed to be treated by male doctors. Pregnancy-related complications and maternal mortality rates, which reduced between 2001 and 2022, have become alarmingly high in Afghanistan under the Taliban. The Taliban has now instructed pharmacies not to sell contraception. Limitations on accessing contraception and reproductive health care leads to more premature deliveries and an increase in the population, which in turn contributes to increase of poverty, domestic violence, child marriage, and forced marriages. Female children are sold to feed the rest of the family and all the protection mechanisms which were in place have been abolished.   Lack of educated young women will further reduce the female health providers in the country which is already low compared to the need and populations. Increases in the number of uneducated, unemployed, and frustrated young men will create an environment for terrorist and gang groups, including the drug smugglers and armed trades to recruit these men and have more soldiers. Afghanistan has witnessed an increase in child soldiers in some of its regions.   With the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the country is witnessing an empowerment of patriarchy in the region and beyond. A culture of impunity reigns, as violations of the human rights of women are ignored by the international community under the excuse of respect for religion and culture.   Conclusion   To destroy a nation, those in power can take three actions. First, they destroy and undermine quality education. Second, they support patriarchy inside and outside of the family, reducing women to an inferior role. This inequality in the family replicates itself in society. The oppression of women is a source of conflict and violence in the family and country as a whole. Third, they undermine the values of human rights, which has led Afghanistan to its present situation: an exclusive dictatorship comprised of a single gender and single ethnic group. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan is the only country without a constitution and is run based on the mentality of a few people who took power by force.   The current situation in Afghanistan underscores the profound interconnectedness of basic human rights. Without the right to healthcare and education, the empowerment of women is not possible. These elements are all integral pieces of the same puzzle, and the puzzle remains incomplete if any one of the pieces is missing. The ongoing culture of impunity surrounding these issues must be addressed through a coordinated effort involving Afghan women, international organizations, and community. Only by holding those responsible accountable and working toward the empowerment of Afghan women a sustainable peace will be possible.   The silence of the gun is not peace or security. Security and peace should be defined by the security of women from violence and freedom from discrimination. Women should be allowed to live with equal rights and dignity. The violation of women’s human rights in Afghanistan is not the problem of Afghan women only, but a problem of humanity. The lack of accountability and justice for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and gender apartheid currently occurring in Afghanistan fuels the culture of impunity. Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Access to justice is not just a luxury that Afghan women cannot afford, it is a basic human right and central to life with dignity and peace.   The current condition of Afghanistan is a collective failure of the Afghan people, Afghan government, international community, and UN. It requires a collective approach based on human rights principles to solve the problem. As history has shown, the issue won’t remain confined within Afghanistan’s borders; it will inevitably extend to other regions. Sima Samar Sima Samar is a Hazara human rights advocate, activist and medical doctor within national and international forums, who served as Minister of Women's Affairs of Afghanistan from December 2001 to 2003. She is the founder of Shuhada Organization and in December 2019 was appointed as a member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement. She is also a member of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation. [1] Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) < https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights > accessed 1 August 2024. [2] See Mary K Burguieres, ‘Feminist Approaches to Peace: Another Step for Peace Studies’ (2014) 19(1) Millennium: Journal of International Studies 2. [3] See ‘Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ (21 October 2015) < https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n15/291/89/pdf/n1529189.pdf?OpenElement > accessed 1 August 2024. [4] Ayaz Gul, ‘Taliban PM: Government, Nor Anyone Can Dare Amend Human Rights Set by God’ ( Voice of America , 9 July 2022) < https://www.voanews.com/a/6652117.html > accessed 1 August 2024. [5] Voice Amplified, ‘Taliban Policies Restricting Women’s Rights since August 2021’ (9 August 2022) < https://voiceamplified.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Talibans-restrictions-on-womens-rights-since-August-2021-updated-0822.pdf > accessed 1 August 2024. [6] Afghanistan Constitution (1964), art. 34. [7] Afghanistan Constitution (2004), art 43-4. [8] International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) Part III, art. 13 < https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-economic-social-and-cultural-rights > accessed 1 October 2024. [9] Nadine Sika, ‘The Millennium Development Goals: Prospects for Gender Equality in the Arab World’ (2011) 12(3) Journal of International Women’s Studies 28.

We are all responsible for what happens in our world.  ​ In the intricate tapestry of global affairs, we face a stark reality: amidst a global crisis, fundamental human rights are besieged, as the gravest international crimes are perpetrated by both state and non-state actors. In this tumult, what can be done?   The development of international law (including in public international law, international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law) since World War II has been fundamental for averting another world war. It constitutes the universal framework safeguarding individual rights and establishing a rules-based international order (RBIO) that mandates states to uphold principles such as territorial integrity and peaceful conflict resolution.   Yet, despite the promise and hope imbued by the post-World War II or ‘never again’ generation, international law is increasingly branded as too weak or even a failure altogether. Many are of the impression that international law is ‘regularly side-lined’ and ‘ignored or depreciated’ when matters of great political and economic importance arise.[1] Whilst most states abide by international law most of the time, outrageous violations by powerful states create the perception that the law lacks ‘compliance pull’, fostering an expectation that states will not abide by their international obligations and an environment where international law is likely to deteriorate.[2]   Whilst not unjustified , such a wholly negative narrative f ails to capture the full breadth and complexity of international law’s role in shaping global affairs. Beyond the realm of visible failures and shortcomings, there exists a vast network of customary international norms and treaty obligations that underpin the fabric of our RBIO. The invisible but present day-to-day functioning of customary international law and the international treaties that drive global political and diplomatic relationships is too often disregarded. Thanks to the ​Convention on International Civil Aviation, you can enjoy air travel; thanks to international agreements through the WTO, you could enjoy your orange juice this morning; thanks to territorial sovereignty, many of you likely did not wake up in an armed conflict. Further, the language of the law enables leaders to speak of the ‘enemy’ not just as barbarians and killers but as criminals, transgressors of established international standards of conduct.[3] This consensus is paramount not only for establishing liability but also for deterring future violations. Finally, the law’s universality creates ‘the expectation of expectation’ that builds and maintains society. The regularity of state behaviour is what consequently creates stability, makes planning possible, enhances security, spreads the cost of enforcement, and regulates conflict.[4]   We must be assiduous in upholding and enforcing these rules. Undermining the value of international law in our RBIO has the dangerous consequence of establishing a world that is too forgiving, one becoming gradually indifferent to gross human rights violations and international conflicts. Otherwise, the direction we are heading will be unimaginably grave: an RBIO driven and enhanced by emotions, military power, inhumanity, and violence without restraint. This is a moment of truth for the integrity of our RBIO.   We therefore have an opportunity and a duty  to reshape our understanding of our relationship to international law, in order to continue to strengthen its frameworks and address its shortcomings. All states have a legal (and moral) duty to address human rights violations and international crimes, to seek accountability, and to serve justice for victims. This duty, however, does not solely rest with the decision makers. The most powerful catalyst to inspire change is one who is able to draw attention to conflicts and violations, and influence and pressure decision makers to act: the everyday civilian. The civilian that can provoke discussion in their community, the civilian that can vote, the civilian that can protest against non-human rights-abiding corporations and controversial government policies, the civilian that can help refugees coming into their country, the civilian that can support the legitimacy of international courts, the civilian that can support institutions and NGOs exposing the violations and can help spread awareness. That civilian is You .    In this spirit, I am pleased to present the forthcoming volume, ‘The Human Agenda’. Through an interdisciplinary lens taking in Law, Politics, and Art, this volume draws upon the insights of leading practitioners, judges, politicians, scholars, and artists. It aims to spread awareness and to deepen our understanding of the root causes of conflict and injustice, while also exploring potential pathways towards lasting peace and reconciliation. It further collects interviews and artwork from heroic survivors of human rights abuses, to share their stories and provide a personal understanding of what is at stake for humanity.    Ignorance is a perilous refuge. By awakening to the realities of our world and assuming our role as conscientious stewards, we can compel decision-makers to honour their obligations under international law, safeguarding the promises of peace forged in the aftermath of World War II.   It is my hope that, in reading this volume, you not only are able to enhance your understanding of the current imminent threats to our RBIO, but also understand your role in it.   We are all responsible for what happens in our world.   Nadia Jahnecke Legal Editor and Founder of ‘The Human Agenda’   Acknowledgements: I wish to express my sincere gratitude to our Editor-in-Chief, Alexander Kardos-Nyheim,  whose   belief in my vision and steadfast support was instrumental in bringing to life CJLPA ’s Special Edition on human rights. A very special recognition is owed to our Managing Editor, Jack Graveney , without whom this volume would not have become a reality if it were not for his endless devotion in helping me manage the team and getting over 100 articles and interviews across the finish line, both online and in print. Thank you to our exceptional Legal Researchers, whose passion and commitment to human rights shine through every page of this volume: Nour Kachi, Shahad Alkamas, Aidan Johnson, Anaëlle Drut-Desombre, Solomon Njombai, Sarthak Gupta, Angelina Spilnyk, Abigail Dore, Eleanor Taylor, Kenan Korn, and Alexandra Marcy Hall . Finally, I want to express my deepest gratitude to all our contributors . Your belief in this mission and your willingness to share invaluable insights, knowledge, and perspectives have made this volume a profound contribution to the discourse on human rights. [1] Gerry Simpson, ‘International Law in Diplomatic History’ in James Crawford and Martti Koskenniemi   (eds), The Cambridge Companion to International Law (CUP 2015) 26. [2] Thomas Franck, Fairness in International Law and Institutions  (Clarendon Press 1995) 99. [3] Vivek Bhatt, ‘A Visible College: Pub lic Engagement with International Law(yers) During the Ukraine Invasion’ ( OpinioJuris , 8 March 2022) < https://opiniojuris.org/2022/03/08/a-visible-college-public-engagement-with-international-lawyers-during-the-ukraine-invasion/ > accessed 10 April 2024. [4]   Isabel Hull, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War  (Cornell University Press 2014).

The three broad categories of the title express overlapping perspectives of human difference. Read together they comprise the topic of Human Rights which is the focus of this volume. It exemplifies Lady Arden’s appreciation that The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art is likely to expand our horizons by bringing together subjects which often sit in splendid isolation from each other. The premature loss of Michael Taggart leaves to others his insight that Norman Birkett’s judgment in the case of the slave’s grandson and peer Leary Constantine against Imperial Hotels in 1944[1] for not accommodating him because of his colour,[2] could and should have evolved into an overarching human rights principle of entitlement to equal treatment. The point was taken up by Lord Bingham in A(FC) v Secretary of State for the Home Department  (2004),[3] where he held disproportionate and unlawful the detention of non-UK suspected terrorists, when UK terrorist suspects were exempt from such arrest. In the first Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence ,   Professor Donald Harris QC (Hon) endorsed the opinions of Jeremy Bentham and Herbert (HLA) Hart that there is no concept of law beyond what is humanly created, to which in a New Zealand Privy Council appeal Lord Hoffmann added Kant’s similar conclusion: there is no law an sich . Harris responded to my initial Oxford tutorial essay about a political philosopher, reproducing what had been written about him by others, with the real point—‘yes, but what do you  think?’ That for me gave Law’s answer to its own question of source, which in physics is ‘where does the universe come from?’—namely, by simply creating it. In numerous contexts,[4] the Court’s law-making role is described as ‘incremental’, which mathematicians define as ‘denoting a small positive or negative change’. But while using that term, dissenting, in JD (FC) v East Berkshire Community Health NHS Trust ,[5] the next year in, Barclays Bank , Lord Bingham wrote: I incline to agree with the view…that the incremental test is of little value as a test in itself, and is only helpful when used in combination with a test of principle which identifies the legally significant feature of a situation.[6] In the same case Lord Mance, reviewing prior authority, considered: ‘Incrementalism’ was…viewed as a corollary of the rejection, now uncontroversial, of any generalised liability for negligently caused economic loss, rather than as necessarily inconsistent with the development of novel categories of negligence. Having said that, caution and analogical reasoning are generally valuable accompaniments to judicial activity, and that is particularly to in the present area. Lord Mance’s ‘caution’, read with Lord Bingham’s rejection of ‘incremental’ as a definitive limit to judicial law-making, recalls Chief Justice Corstens’ criteria, using French in his final speech in The Netherlands: ‘la prudence et l’audace’. The Corstens / Bingham / Mance policy, of adopting an approach sensitive and appropriate to context, promotes optimum law, with legislative and judicial contributions forming a seamless whole, the judges discharging their duty to ‘do right’ by developing the common law ‘after the laws and usages of the realm’, especially when those are evidenced by recent legislation. Anthea Roberts’ best-seller Is International Law International? ,   sees the Australian scholar, experienced also in England and the USA, describe the range of senses in which ‘international law’ is employed; as is sharply evidenced by the law of England, which in some spheres regards international law as binding, in others as optional.[7] In Keyu v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs , Lord Mance wrote: Speaking generally, in my opinion, the presumption when considering any such policy issue is that [Customary International Law], once established, can and should shape the common law, whenever it can do so consistently with domestic constitutional principles, statutory law and common law rules which the courts can themselves sensibly adapt without it being, for example, necessary to invite Parliamentary intervention or consideration.[8] He later added: The role of domestic courts in developing (or…even establishing) a rule of customary international law should not be undervalued. [T]he intermeshing of domestic and international law issues and law has been increasingly evident in recent years…The underlying thinking is that domestic courts have a certain competence and role in identifying, developing and expressing principles of customary international law. [9] In summary, Law concerns the rules needed to manage human difference; Politics their creation and change; and Art connotes the cultures that contribute to and illuminate each. The categories are not discrete. The first category—decent Law—reflects the elements of the judges’ treble undertaking under the Promissory Oaths Act 1868: [1] I will do right to all manner of people; [2] after the laws and usages of this realm; [3] without fear or favour, affection or ill will. In the United Kingdom, as to the second category—Politics including rule-making—Parliament has and executes plenary authority. Yet the judges’ role of making, applying, and where necessary updating the common law is a major feature. Its functions include the assertion of Parliament’s role, and adjudication of disputes in accordance with the values of the rule of law. These include principles of international law which in practice largely requires enforcement by the domestic laws of individual states. Fundamental to both first and second categories is the third—the Art of understanding the evolving cultures of society, which is also essential to political success. This special edition of the Journal  addresses current profoundly troubling situations of human difference, each engaging Law, Politics, and relevant Art. Overarching all of them is the crucial need to achieve Reconciliation of difference, the capital denoting its importance. Each of the situations discussed entails competing claims for inconsistent rights, which may be procedural or substantive. Lord Mansfield’s celebrated procedural conclusion in Somerset v Stewart  (1772),[10] that alien status was no bar to habeas corpus for a slave held in custody on the Thames, was endorsed by the US Supreme Court in the Guantanamo Bay case Boumediene v Bush .[11]   There has been procedural delay of international Law and Politics since the end of WWI in finding Art to protect former Palestinian residents of the Ottoman Empire   There is then the substantive inability of the law to date to respond to aggression—allegedly committed in Ukraine by the then chair of the Security Council—which, though in Nuremberg singled out for response, awaits answer.   That our generation has been slow to respond to the ultimate challenge of global warming is of a piece with the appalling human rights statistics, including 108.4 million people around the world who are forcibly displaced; failures since 1937 to implement the Terrorism Report for the League of Nations, and more generally to grip the death toll in international migration; the disgrace of modern slavery; the division in the General Assembly between North (or West) and South; and the continued abuse of civil rights of women and children.   The tragedies of Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine recall, in the case of the Russian Federation, its obligations, as Permanent Member and in February 2002 Chair of the Security Council with primary responsibility under Article 24 of the UN Charter, to use Chapter VII powers to enforce Article 2’s prohibition of the use of force against any state; in the case of Israel the country readings from whose Old Testament inspire decency throughout the world; and, in the case of Palestine, the Prophet whose advocacy of non-violent means to resolve disputes exemplified the rule of law. The Swiss theologian Hans Küng’s writings on the close relationships among the three monotheistic religions point to the Art of Reconciliation among them. Each society, and the other members of the world community, well know that the promotion of peace by human creativity and achievement is essential to answering the greatest challenges their peoples face.   That is the context of the following essays identifying urgent problems of Human Rights, and potential responses by Law, Politics, and Art, which contribute to the classic University function as critic and conscience of society. Sir David William Baragwanath KNZM KC Sir David William Baragwanath KNZM KC is a retired New Zealand judge. He was a member of the Appeals Chamber of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon at the Hague, serving for a term as President. [1] [1944] KB 693. [2] In New Zealand, a deserved response to description by a pompous speaker as being among ‘coloured brethren’ was ‘I reply to my colourless brother’. [3] [2004] UKHL 56, [2005] 2 AC 68. [4] As by Lord Steyn in his much-cited opinion in Marc Rich & Co. A.G.   v Bishop Rock Marine Co. Ltd [1996] AC 211, 234 B-C. [5] [2005] UKHL 23, [2005] 2 AC 273 para 50. [6]  Her Majesty’s Commissioner of Customs and Excise v Barclays Bank plc [2006] UKHL 28, [2007] 1 AC 181. [7] Anthea Roberts, Is International Law International?  (OUP 2017). [8] [2015] UKSC 69, [2016] 1355. [9]  Al-Waheed v Ministry of Defence [2017] UKSC 2, [2017] AC 821 . [10] Lofft 1. [11] 553 US 723 (2008).

Marcus did not know what to expect. The man with whom he had spoken on the phone made little sense. A number of names had been mentioned, people he had never heard of, and at times Marcus thought the voice on the other end of the line must have been speaking in a foreign language, unfamiliar noises which were sometimes guttural and heavy and sometimes airborne and breathy, and sometimes somewhere in the middle. All he had been able to make out was a time and address, which he scribbled down in his pocket notebook, a present from his mother. He mentioned the phone call to his colleagues at the firm afterwards and they had laughed and told him to ignore it. Marcus got the impression that they knew the precise identity of the caller; they cast each other and him a withering glance, one of exhaustion with acts of naïve moral charity. This glance and all it contained failed to dissuade Marcus. It was his first year working as a tree surgeon, a job he had obtained thanks to no small hardship on the part of his mother. School had not been for him, and he had left glad to see the back of the place but with the impression of stepping out into a great black void, a world which held precious little for him. He enjoyed being at home with his mother, helping around the house, tending the allotment down the road. Whilst he worked the family’s small plot, the world came alive and spoke to him in a voice he could understand. It radiated an energy which he greedily harvested, inhaling dirty gulps of wisdom. When rain fell, he lay there and felt dirt turn to mud underneath his skin, droplets pitter-pattering against one cheek as the other pressed down into the soil. In the corner of the allotment stood the carapace of an old oak tree. From time to time, Marcus would crawl into its cyclopic orifice, mummified in a cocoon of bark, and summon thoughts of regrowth. After a while, the tree would be whole again, his twisted legs rooted deep and gorging themselves on water, his rigid torso elephantine and stark upright, his fractal of arms and digits craning outwards to a thousand ripe eyes enthralled by a feast of light. Each time, Marcus murdered this resplendence. He had no choice. When the hollow birthed him into the sunken night, he would feel a death within him and hear a groan of ancient mortality reverberate between his bones. He could sustain but one being at a time. Marcus found himself winding his way along a country lane, towards the address he had been given on the phone. Bordering the lane was a ribbon of deep-set and seemingly impenetrable hedgerow, adorned with protuberant knuckles of red. Tarmac soon gave way to gravel, gravel to agitable dust, and a thatched cottage came into view. Densely packed behind strabismic windows Marcus could make out piles upon piles of books, blotchy embossed spines of deep burgundy and myrtle. Reading had always been a struggle for him; his aptitude for languages extended only to those of nature, of incremental growth and seasonal change. Words on the page seemed too deeply engraved, too inarguably fixed and unamenable to care. In the instant between Marcus opening his van’s door and stepping out onto the shoddy earth, the cottage’s occupant had appeared outside and was waiting expectantly for him. This transition was noiseless. It was as if the occupant, a bald and elderly man of slender proportions but penetrating gaze, had intangibly passed through his wooden door. Marcus hollered an abrupt greeting and gestured to the logo glaringly emblazoned on the van behind, as if to assure him that the visit was legitimate and well-meant. The man, whose name he would later discover was Reginald, remained silent until Marcus had almost reached him. Then, softly, he spoke: ‘Would you show me your hands?’ The request’s ambivalent innocence captivated Marcus. Its tone was that of an infant, yet it lacked any hesitation. It was conscious of its own importance but would not deign to insist. Marcus’s hands rose and presented themselves, palms up, to Reginald, who fixated upon them as on a ritual totem or unearthed relic. His mien was that of a primitivist artist stopped dead, undone in all pretensions by a deep-set nobility tantalizing close and yet utterly alien. Darting eyes inventoried their particularities, caressing each crease, mentally untangling the knot of palm lines. Each grope for understanding teetered on wonder’s precipice. The older man’s eyes widened, and his breathing deepened. After a time, Reginald took Marcus’s hands in his. These were immaculate, as if smoothed to marble over decades by the desert’s swirling sands. They were luxuriously, almost grotesquely unblemished. Conjoined with Marcus’s torn and callused digits, they evoked a coupling of the sacred with the profane. Suddenly, the old man broke off and, in a manner now sprightly and invigorated, pulling books from shelves, grandly gesticulating at framed images, almost dancing now upon his feet, indicated for Marcus to follow him inside. Marcus understood little of what was said, but he picked out names, names which evidently bore weight and yet floated, floated daintily through the room, weaving and darting between the stacks of books as if making for the exit, as if possessed of a life of their own, yet dragged inexorably back in by Reginald’s orbit, by his intimate need for them and them for him. Names like Calvino, like Petrarch, like Havemann, Joyce, Gass, like Améry or Handke, Swinburne, Enzensberger, or De Quincey, names which meant nothing to Marcus, nothing at all, yet whose pace and structure and rhythm, whose atmosphere, entranced him. Behind this cosmos of names hung a painting, a painting of a large room, large and empty, devoid of furniture, chopped in half at the waist as if looked down upon, empty that is save for three men, prostrate on their knees with their arms extended before them, their heads bowed and tilted, their hands hard at work, for they are scraping the floor, hard at work scraping the floor, and the product of their labour is curled around them in ringlets like snakeskin. Reginald finally halted and drew breath, but the atmosphere which now thronged throughout the room survived his voice. It seemed to take on mass and effervescent direction, carrying the two men out of the backdoor and into the garden. Here Marcus set about to work, unbidden, unable to hold himself back. His hands grew into tools, his fingers became sharp and incisive, tweaking and upending, his palms moulding and sifting through material. He held nothing, it was part of him, it was all part of him. And as he worked Reginald read, perched in a rocking chair which tumbled gently back and forth, his fingertips resting against the delicate gold lettering of the work’s spine, his thumb and forefinger darting forward to turn each page, his voice – his voice breathing magic into every word, magic which poured into Marcus’s ears as he worked. The young man bathed in these words, they supported him like a hammock tied between two trees, and though still he could make neither head nor tail of most sentences they upended him all the same. The saplings tilted their nascent trunks in hope of finding the voice, and the sun itself leaned back and listened as it sliced its way through the sky. In this ecstasy, this synaesthetic rapture, Marcus laboured deeper into the garden. Beyond the saplings, the hedgerows, the beds of flowers, he emerged into a glade. At the centre of this clearing stood – and here his spine tingled with sublime excitement – the carapace of an old oak tree. It could not be the same as that in the allotment, but to Marcus it seemed a homecoming nonetheless. Down on hands and knees he went, pulling himself inside, the dead and dying wood coyly scratching his skin, until he was sealed within, his thoughts focused on one end: resurrection. Spurred on by the undulation of Reginald’s voice, its variant speed and rhythm, as if he were a shaman summoning up some forest sprite or more ancient chthonic brute, this came quickly. In what felt like a matter of instants, this symbiosis of word and plant and man was complete. From his sumptuous vantage point, Marcus surveyed the garden, the house, the small smooth figure of Reginald, a smile woven across his face, his hands still clasped around the book from which he was reading. The sun was setting by now, leaving him alone in the sky. When night fell, he saw the old man rise from his rocking chair and re-enter the cottage, which also settled into sleep. The idea of returning to his prior state, of slaughtering what he and Reginald had wrought, was a sin too great for Marcus to consider. The intermingling was too narrow, the metamorphosis irreversible. He was a stylite and this tree his pillar. It was with the contentment of radical and unremitting self-sacrifice that he finally rested. The next morning, he awoke to music. Raindrops dabbled against his branches. Reginald’s words rang loud and clear. Their harmony left nothing to be desired. Jack Graveney Jack Graveney graduated 2022 with a Starred First in History and German from the University of Cambridge, and will soon be heading to Oxford for a Masters, writing his thesis on labour, happiness, and community in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. His work has been published in German Life and Letters , The Oxonian Review , The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art , and the Cambridge Review of Books . Jack is the Managing Editor of CJLPA .

Issa Amro is a Palestinian human rights defender who has lived in Hebron (West Bank) since his birth. For over two decades, he has been advocating for Palestinian rights, with his unwavering dedication earning him international recognition by the European Union, the United Nations, Amnesty International, and US Senator Bernie Sanders. He founded Youth Against Settlements, an organisation advocating for resisting the occupation through peaceful means and through empowering the Palestinian community. Issa is also involved in several other non-violent movements, such as the Hebron branch of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the Arab Non-Violence Network, and the Hebron Defenders. He is involved in monitoring the application of international human rights and humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. CJLPA : Good morning, Mr Issa Amro. On behalf of The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art , we would like to thank you for your time today to provide valuable insight on your experience as one of Palestine’s most highly prominent activists. You were named Human Rights Defender of the Year by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the European Union. Your work has made a real meaningful impact on the decades-long Israel-Palestine situation, and we look forward to further learning about it in order to engage the wider international community and fight against the ongoing human rights violations. We would like to begin by asking how your early years such as your childhood or your teenage years in Hebron have inspired you to choose the activist path? Issa Amro : I am happy to contribute and thank you very much for interviewing me. I hope that this interview will enrich people’s awareness and knowledge about the reality of the situation on the ground. I am a Palestinian who was born in Hebron City. I was born very close to an Israeli illegal settlement in the old city of Hebron. I suffered from the presence of the settlers, and I suffered from the presence of the Israeli soldiers. A main memory for me was the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre, which happened in 1994, when Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli retired army doctor, broke into the Ibrahimi Mosque and killed 29 Palestinian worshippers in the early morning who were praying. That was the main shock for me—to see that someone can just kill innocent people in the mosque. The consequences of the massacre affected me. I did not attend school for four months. It was really difficult for me as a child, that time. We lost one student who played football with us every morning at school. The streets were closed, segregated, and shops were closed. So, we were the victims of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, and we were punished under the hands of the Israeli military operation because we are ‘weak’ and they are the main power. Nonetheless, I continued my education at high school, then I graduated from high school, and I went to university to study engineering. My dream was to become an engineering professor. I was doing very well in school and at my university, and I continued to pursue academic achievement to fulfil my dream to become a professor. Unfortunately, in the last year of my degree, Bachelor’s Degree, the Israeli military closed my university. I went to the university in the morning, I found the campus sealed, the doors were welded by the Israeli military and the porter paper said that the university is closed indefinitely, without giving any explanation. I became very disappointed, very angry. I wanted to get my degree by any means. It was about education for me, not about occupation. So, I went home, broken, disappointed, and very angry. I searched ‘how to create a revolution’ on Yahoo’s search engine. I wanted to create a revolution. Luckily, I firstly came across Martin Luther King, involved in the civil rights movement in the United States, Gandhi, and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. I studied these non-violence campaigns and I started a campaign with other students to reopen the university to get our degree. It was about education, because Palestinians on the daily, all over Palestine, fight to get to their schools, fight to get to their universities. We believe that education will empower us to make us stronger, to resist the Israeli occupation and to be able to keep our identity and keep our steadfastness as Palestinians who are living under Israeli military, apartheid, and oppression. And from that point, I graduated from the university as an engineer, but also as an activist. From there, I started campaigning, creating non-violent committees, organisations, movements, up to the point where I am now. CJLPA : We are inspired to hear that through your passion, you wanted to emphasise the importance of education. You have lived in Palestine all your life and your work is in the heart of the occupied city of Hebron. How would you say the situation has changed since you started your career? IA : I started my activism 20 years ago, and as time passes, it is getting much worse. There is a war against our rights as Palestinians. We live under Israeli military law without any basic rights. Imagine that non-violent resistance, according to the Israeli military law, is not allowed, and it is illegal. Personally, I was indicted, and I was convicted in the military court, arrested for practicing non-violent resistance. By the Israeli military law, we are guilty until we are proven innocent. It is the opposite of the civilian law. So, whenever I am arrested without evidence held against me, I have to prove to the judge, to the court, that I am innocent. This can be really difficult. So, it is not easy to see that in my 20 years as an activist, to control Palestinians, there are more checkpoints, more restrictions, advanced technology to track them, spy on them, to violate our privacy, and to intimidate us. I feel and see that every day, we face further challenges. Their policy is that they do not evict you directly from your home, but they make it impossible for you to remain in your home. How do they make it impossible for you to remain in your home? By making you not feel safe. At any given point, I know that the settlers and soldiers may break into my home and arrest me, attack me, or shoot me. I do not feel safe in my house now. I do not have access to any protection. I am afraid for my safety, I am afraid for my neighbours’ safety, and I am afraid for my friends’ safety. We live in fear all the time. Secondly, there are no services—electricity, plumbing, or even ambulance services! If I were to require access to an ambulance now, I would need coordination for the ambulance to come in and assist me. So, you skip all the emergency cases, the doctors because there are no services at all. From checkpoint to checkpoint. Thirdly, there is no social life. Part of our culture is the social life. How is it that there is no social life? Public events are not allowed. Visitors from outside the area are not allowed. We have 22 checkpoints within less than one square kilometre. It is up to the soldiers to decide who gets into the area. Imagine that the soldiers decide if you may bring friends into your home or not. The soldiers decide if you may throw a birthday party or not. So, there is no social life, there are no services, and there is no safety. This is the situation. And it is getting much worse. There are more restrictions. There is more ‘blue and white’, they call it. They are building more and more settlements; they are closing more and more streets, they are closing the markets, etc. They are working to displace the Palestinians and to make them lose their homes, they make them not think about freedom. Instead, they keep us busy struggling for basic rights, in order for us not to call for freedom. We do not ask for equality. We do not ask for justice. Freedom is a dream for us. Justice is a dream for us. Equality is a dream for us. But we do not have any of that. CJLPA : I was particularly interested to hear that the Israeli authorities track Palestinians, and I have not heard of this before. So how does that work? Do they just track where Palestinians are going or what kind of technology is being used? IA : The whole world is utilising artificial intelligence to make human being lives’ easier, but unfortunately, in Israel, the Israeli occupation is using artificial intelligence and advanced CCTV cameras with facial recognition, eye recognition, and body recognition in order to track and spy on Palestinians. I have no privacy. They know everything about my life. This interview, it is recorded by the Israeli authorities. When I talk to my friends, it is recorded. They track us on social media on our daily lives on social media—they know who gets into my house, who comes to visit me, what is going on around me, my location wherever I go. They then create a profile of me holding information without my consent – they have all my history of activism, my personal status, my personal needs, they have it on their profile without my consent. I cannot say ‘no, do not do such research on me’. They use two types of technologies now. One is called Blue Wolf. Blue Wolf is a mobile application whereby Israeli soldiers approaching you with a phone and taking a photograph of your face, can access all the information about you. Imagine, 19 or 20 year old soldiers, with a military system that provides them the ample space to act according to their ideology, come to you and know that you are a human rights defender and you are against the occupation, even if it was in the form of peaceful resistance. This happened to me a few times this year. I was detained and ill-treated by the Israeli soldiers because they dealt with me as per their ideology. Additionally, settlers may access this app as well, because there is no difference between Israeli settlers and Israeli soldiers. The other application is Red Wolf. For the Red Wolf app, the Israeli military have installed CCTV cameras everywhere. In my house, from one direction, there are three CCTV cameras. From the other direction, there are two more. So, the families feel monitored inside their homes. The women in our community, when they are in their homes—considering that it is a conservative culture—they do not want others to be able to see them, especially a stranger being able to see their hair and their body. They close the curtains when they are in their homes. Some women have asked me, ‘Issa, can these cameras see us inside our bedrooms?’ That is the fear, that intimidation, so this is the technology that they use. The Red Wolf is to do with CCTV cameras and computers in order to track Palestinians. However, a very important point is that these cameras are not used to track Israeli settler violence. So, whenever the Israeli settlers attack us, attack our homes, they do not use their footage to prove that settlers attack Palestinians. It is only used against Palestinians. And we do not know what they do with it. Perhaps, they do medical research, or other kinds of research into our bodies or behaviour in order to then sell this data to big companies. There is Smart Shooter at the main checkpoint— a private company from Tel Aviv. They came to install the security Smart Shooter in Hebron by the checkpoint: first, to intimidate me and then to be used us as a simulation object. They do simulations on us for their technology. So, they are misusing the artificial intelligence against the Palestinians to withhold our right to privacy and our right to live equally without fear. CJLPA : It is shocking to see that such basic rights to privacy can be violated, leaving Palestinians live in this state of paranoia. With regards to the settlements, how does the process work with regards to the expanding illegal settlements over time? IA : Unfortunately, Israel is building more and more settlements every day and building infrastructure for these settlements all over West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Hebron—bypass roads, industrial zones, agricultural zones. On the one hand, they fight the Palestinian presence through the idea of not evicting Palestinians directly, but by making it impossible for them to stay—by cutting off water, electricity, etc. On the other hand, they encourage Israeli settlers to build commercial centres, educational centres, universities, bypass roads and infrastructure to annex the West Bank without the Palestinians. High Israeli officials say ‘we should remove that city’ or, ‘we should remove and burn that community’. There are many Palestinian communities now in areas where they are facing eviction and the lack of water. The Israeli army just last week put cement in water wells in order to cut off Palestinians’ access to drinking water. Imagine that in some areas the agriculture is restricted, because they don't want us to have any infrastructure for basic rights in certain areas. This is happening in H2 in Hebron, in East Jerusalem, and in Area C, in general, in Palestine, to displace the Palestinians. And the over-turning of the Israeli judicial system is a tool to legitimise and to get legal approval for all their actions against the Palestinians because we are the ‘weakest’ group in this situation, it is not easy for us at all. We are fighting for our existence; we are fighting for basic rights. We do not talk about more than basic rights these days. But, even with basic rights, we do not have access and our existence is in danger. There are hundreds of new settlements every month; thousands this year, which is the highest it has been in a long time. Settler violence is the worst it has been in the last, maybe, 20 years, and without any accountability. Something that is very important about settler violence: they steal your property, they attack your house, they attack you physically, and all without any kind of accountability, with full impunity. There are organised programmes against Palestinians by Israeli settlers’ militia, and they are now getting more guns, more weapons from the Israeli government. I see settlers in the neighbourhood here, they never have machine guns, automatic machine guns or semi-automatic machine guns. That is an indicator that we are facing a very dark future and that maybe, we are facing massacres in certain areas to force the Palestinians to leave so to take over their land. I can see that what happened 75 years ago at the time of the Palestinian Nakba, it will be repeated if we do not stop these current extremists who now are the government as well. What the Israeli army cannot do legally, the Israeli settlers’ militia do it by themselves with the protection and escort from the Israeli military, the Israeli government, and the Israeli media. I was attacked last February by an Israeli soldier when I was working with a famous American writer. And I was attacked. I was the victim of that soldier. Meanwhile, the Israeli military accused me of being in an illegal area. The army and the Israeli army spokesperson said that I am the problem. Then, the Israeli media accused me of being a provocateur, and said that I deserve what happened to me. The Israeli National Security Minister also tweeted that I deserve what happened to me and that the soldier should be backed up. So, the Israeli government did nothing to make this soldier accountable, and the Israeli public treated the soldier as a hero. This is a small example of the atmosphere of the Israeli soldiers’ and settlers’ violence. CJLPA : It is truly unbelievable to hear about the type of propaganda that is being spread and the support for these violations. With regards to other activists in Hebron, is it also common for them to be attacked by or harassed by the authorities? IA : I am not an extraordinary human rights defender. I am a Palestinian and the majority of Palestinians face harassment and ill-treatment from the Israeli military, the Israeli government, and the Israeli settlers. So, it is a phenomenon—using this level of oppression against Palestinian women, Palestinian children, and Palestinian human beings, this is a phenomenon. If you are a human rights defender, or a journalist, you are further targeted because they want to silence the voices of those who are trying to expose the Israeli oppression, the Israeli occupation, and the Israeli apartheid. So, we became the target as a means to silence our voices. For example, Shareen Abu Akhleh was assassinated. She was a famous Palestinian journalist who was assassinated by the Israeli military. She was shot, killed, and the killing was confirmed by the Israeli army, without any accountability for who killed her. So, it's a common phenomenon to target journalists and human rights defenders, so as to not allow us to tell the story of what is going on the ground. Mainly, what's happening to me is because I tell the truth, because I document the truth, because I give a first-hand testimony to the international community about what Israel is doing. When we say Israel is not defending itself, it is because Israel is defending its occupation, its apartheid and its settlements. When we say that Israel is not a democracy, it is because I live under the Israeli military law without any basic rights while Israeli settlers live under the Israeli civilian law. So, when there are two sets of law, for different people, we say it is an apartheid, it is not a democracy. It is a democracy for its own people. I do not choose or vote for the authorities who are controlling me. Israel does not want that. Israel wants to play the western country, which respects human rights, which respects democracy, but that is not the truth, it is fake. It is so obvious that it is fake when I tell my story as a Palestinian human rights defender who believes in non-violent resistance as the best method to obtain our rights. This is about our rights as Palestinians who are calling for freedom, justice, and equality. Israelis do not want that—they are not ready to give us our rights or to be equal with them. They do not want us to hold them accountable for their violations of international law and for their violations of our basic rights. CJLPA : It is almost as if Palestinians and Israelis live in completely two different countries, despite living on same land. Can you please share some details of how Palestinians are attacked, tortured, and killed specifically by those authorities? IA : If you are passing a checkpoint or in a certain area, you may be shot and killed. Or you may be arrested. I was arrested many times without any reason. They detain me between four to eight days in a military detention centre without me seeing a charge. This has happened to me many times and to many other Palestinians. There are now 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in ‘administrative detention’, also known for us as jail. You do not know why. Your lawyer does not know why. The judge sometimes does not know why. Imagine that there are 1,000 Palestinians—among them children and women—in administrative detention, without trial where they may intimidate you and beat you. That is against international law. They can also make your day really hard and impossible to get through: they can close the streets, close the cities, or impose collective punishment. It is truly not easy for us. A further very important note is that we feel the supremacy of the Israeli soldiers over us. The way they treat us—they dehumanise us at the checkpoints by treating us less than they would treat animals. They see us as suspect and treat us like extremists all the time, despite the fact that we all are civilians and it is the soldiers who are the extremists violating international law. And they are the violence machine. This is the worst feeling for me, that they dehumanise me. Imagine at the checkpoint, there is the layer of advanced security artificial intelligence, and there is another human layer to provoke you, to dehumanise you, and to really intimidate you. In winter, they force you to take off your shoes on muddy ground. When it is very sunny, they close a checkpoint and make you wait. They say bad things to you, they harass the women when they pass the checkpoint, without any accountability and without any kind of mechanism to address complaints, or even to bring awareness of what is happening to us. It is not reported on in mainstream media, and our content is highly restricted on social media these days. So, we escaped from the mainstream, biased media to the social media. They followed us to the companies, to the social media companies, to restrict our content. Imagine that I posted Shireen Abu Akleh’s photo on social media and my account was then restricted. Shireen Abu Akleh was an American, Christian and a very famous journalist, assassinated by the Israeli military and almost everybody around the world showed sympathy with what happened to her. I posted Shireen Abu Akleh’s photo on social media and social media deleted my post and restricted my account for posting her photo. This is the life we live under as Palestinians. CJLPA : The international community is beyond disheartened with the attack on the Jenine refugee camp last month. Do you have comments on the situation and how Palestinian refugees are affected by such attacks? IA : When the international community talks about Jenine, they forget that those camps were created 75 years ago, that those people who are living there were evicted from their cities, from their communities, and from their properties. They are refugees, and they are the victims of Israel. They are the victims of the international community’s double standards. How is it that for so long, for 70 years, those people are unable to travel a few kilometres back to their homes, to their villages, and to their land? And for 75 years, these camps have been in a very bad condition. They do not have well-built roads, they do not have sewage systems, they do not have enough water, they do not have enough electricity. It is so tense to live there—the density of people is so high, it is house to house, and they spent all their money to build small houses to live there with basic rights. Then, the Israeli bulldozers, the Israeli advanced army, go in, destroy everything, and kill nearly anybody who was in their way. A Palestinian was merely running, and he was killed. A young girl was filming Israeli soldiers raid the camp, she was also killed. We say the Palestinian Nakba is continuous, it is being repeated every day. It is not easy to describe the situation in the camp. You are a refugee, and the Israelis are working to make you a refugee again. It is not acceptable whatsoever that those refugees are targeted by the same offenders who made them refugees in the first place and that the international community blames the refugees for what is happening to them. The international community is not holding Israel accountable for its violence, for its occupation, for its apartheid and for its eviction of the Palestinians 75 years ago. CJLPA : Moving on to your organisation, Youth Against Settlements, which works to strengthen the community of Hebron against the illegal expansion of settlements and to document human rights violations. What are some memorable achievements of your organisation and other organisations you are involved in, such as the human rights solidarity movement, or Non-violence Network and Hebron defenders? Additionally, what are the challenges faced by such organisations? IA : Our centre was raided many times by Israeli soldiers and settlers. The soldiers confiscated all our belongings a few times, while the Israeli settlers attacked our centre and destroyed our property, such as the water pipes, fences, etc and stole our CCTV cameras. We are under continuous pressure. The organisation has different focuses. Firstly, we conduct direct action through rallies in order to increase awareness about what is happening. We document the human rights violations that occur and also train families to document such violations using video cameras. We also undertake legal work and organise a lot of campaigns, such as the Open Shuhadah campaign. To bring back Palestinian families to the community, we work to help them feel more safe by making patrols on the streets, walking the children to the school, or teaching women to speak English and Hebrew. Another very important point is to keep our narrative alive, to protect the identity of the Palestinians. It is Free Palestine. The Palestinian flag is everywhere here, even in the middle of an area which is targeted by the Israeli occupation. So, we do not say that we are merely victims, but we are fighters using non-violent resistance to make the occupation costly and this is my message to everybody. Make fighting the occupation part of your daily routine. Think and be creative as to how the occupation can be made costly to the media and the economy. And a very important work is to level up Palestinian voices by boosting Palestinian culture, education, sports, economy. This is very important to do—along with making Israel accountable for its occupation and apartheid and telling the truth to the world. I would like for the international community and the international people to act according to their principles, according to their morals. This is something very important because it is about equality. It is about justice. It is about freedom. How can we live as slaves in our own communities, without basic rights? Do the international people accept to live as slaves in their own land, in their own homes, without security, without social life and without any form of services? We are not asking for much, we are asking for equality, justice, and freedom as Palestinians. We practice non-violent resistance on the ground to act and we have many achievements. The house I live in was a military base, and I took the soldiers out of it. We established a kindergarten, we established a women's centre, we are now establishing a cinema public space, to show that the land is Palestinian it. It is Palestinians’ land, but we really want to affirm it and still stand strong in front of the soldiers and the settlers without fear and without giving up. We do not want to give up our rights and in no way do we want to become refugees again. This is what we tell the families—we pick them up, we stay with them, we support them, and we will continue to do so in spite of the challenges we face. Challenges such as violence, smear campaigns, the false rumours about us, the propaganda, and the attack our social media. We struggle for donations to survive as activists, and we do our best to fundraise, but it is not easy. It's almost impossible with the attacks and the restrictions imposed on us. CJLPA : We truly commend your efforts through your organisation. In addition to bringing awareness to the violations, you empower the community and foster a mindset of resilience, despite the struggles. We are aware that Open Shuhadah Street project is a big project part of the Youth Against settlement. We wanted to know more about this and what does Shuhadah Street mean for the Palestinians? Why is it so significant? IA : Shuhadah Street is the main street in Hebron, similar to Oxford Street in London and Times Square in New York. It is the main street, the historical area, it has the most markets, the symmetry, so it is really the main street of the city. So, we chose the campaign, Open Shuhadah Street campaign, to increase awareness as to how is it that we are segregated in our own streets. How is it that I am not allowed to walk in my own street because of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in 1994? How is it that we were the victims of the Israeli terrorists who went into the mosque and killed 29 Palestinians, and we were the ones punished, even though we were the victims? Open Shuhadah Street campaign means no to the occupation, no to the Israeli apartheid, no to the Israeli segregation. Palestinians are bringing awareness to the situation, by fighting and resisting peacefully and commemorating the Palestinian massacres. We will not forget and we will not forgive, until we get our rights, until we make Israel accountable for its occupation and apartheid, according to international standards. It is a symbolic campaign to inform the international community about who the Palestinians are. I want the world to understand that we are human beings and that we have our own characters, our own education, our own culture, our own habits. This is part of what we do to show the human side of Palestinians and that we are just like any other nation. We want to be treated as a nation who has freedom and justice. We don't want to be treated as animals who are seeking shelter. CJLPA : We want to touch on the point you said earlier about the administrative detention. You said that sometimes, the soldiers, the lawyers, the judges are not even aware of the reason a detainee is in detention. So, in that case, what happens to these people in detention? How long are they kept for and what is the procedure, or challenges in this procedure? IA : They come to your house, they arrest you, they tell you that you are under administrative detention. That is the end. You will be in jail until they decide when you may leave—it could be four months, six months, one year, two years, or ten years. This is administrative detention. When you go to court, the judge does not open the file, there is no trial, and your lawyer does not know why. This is the reality—only Israeli intelligence decides how long you stay. And a further very important point is that your family does not know the end of it, does not know what you are charged for, and will be continuously waiting for you. CJLPA : With regards to children, what are the prison conditions like for children and other Palestinians? IA : The worst experience for me when I was arrested was to be arrested with children. I was arrested one time, and I found children in the detention centre handcuffed, blindfolded, intimidated, and harassed, left without water or being able to go to the restroom. They were crying, they were ten or eleven-year-old children. My heart was broken, how were they able to treat them this way? How could they make them confess to throwing stones when they did not do so? How can they refuse to give them their legal rights, intimidate them, try to destroy their dignity, as young children? The children are a target for the Israeli military, they try to make people afraid for their children. They target the community by targeting the children. My child, two weeks ago, was detained at the checkpoint to target me. My neighbour's children were also arrested to intimidate me as a human rights defender, thinking they were my children. When I went to the soldier, I told him they are not my children, they are my neighbour’s, but they were kept for two hours, detained and beaten by Israeli soldiers. CJLPA : This is all very valuable information to know, and it is important that the wider international community be aware. Before bringing the interview to an end, what do you think the international community can do in order to place pressure and to make Israeli authorities accountable for their violations? IA : I want the international community to see Palestinians as a nation who deserve full equal rights, not just to try and give us shelter. We do not want shelter, we want to be treated as a nation, as every nation on earth, which is very important. On the other hand, to do everything possible to make the Israeli occupation and apartheid costly— to use Parliaments, to not import Israeli settlement products, to use the media to further increase awareness, to support Palestinians economically and politically, to make Israel accountable before the International Criminal Court. and to use all the international mechanisms available to make Israel accountable. Without making the occupation costly, nothing will change. Without doing concrete actions, nothing will change. I want them to understand the Palestinians’ need freedom, justice, and equality. I plead with the world to support the Palestinians by supporting their economy, education, and voices, fostering friendships with Palestinians, being more engaged with pro-Palestinian organisations, pro-Palestinian groups, and to not fall for the trap of the fake anti-Semitism accusations because Israel is politicising the term anti-Semitism. We, Palestinians, are against all kinds of racism and support all kinds of free speech. Anti-Semitism is not part of our cause, neither is islamophobia, homophobia, or any other discrimination. We, Palestinians, believe that all human beings are equal and deserve full equal rights. This is what we want we will continue to fight for the name of our rights and for everybody's rights. CJLPA : Definitely, as you mentioned, it is very important for the wider community to bring awareness and hear the voices of the Palestinian people and use all the international mechanisms available and work with all types of organisations. Mr Amro, thank you very much for your time today, it has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. We thank you once again, for allowing us to obtain valuable insights from the brave work that you and your organisation do. And we wish you all the best with your endeavours to create a better future for your people. And we hope to see that the occupation comes to an end at some point. IA : Yes, I agree that the occupation will end. I am very optimistic, and we are almost there, but we need to work harder. This interview was conducted by Shahad Alkamas, who graduated in 2021 from Middlesex University and obtained her LPC the following year at the University of Law. In addition to her Legal Researcher role at CJLPA, Shahad is currently working as an in-house litigation paralegal, with previous experience in various legal fields such as personal injury, immigration, and civil litigation.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi was detained at the inhumane Guantanamo Bay 'Detention Camp' for 14 years without charge. For 14 years, Mohamedou was tortured by the US military: he was severely beaten, sexually assaulted, water boarded, threatened, sleep deprived, and isolated. His lawyer, Nancy Hollander, helped him expose these crimes against humanity committed by the US and tell the world the truth about what was happening. Mohamedou was freed in 2016 and has since dedicated his life to human rights activism. Guantanamo Bay remains open to this day where detainees are still held without charge and tortured by the US. CJLPA : Welcome today, Mohamedou Ould Slahi. I’d like to begin by thanking you for taking the time to come and interview with The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art to expose the crimes you endured in Guantanamo Bay. As a brief introduction, it began when you were brought in for questioning by the Mauritanian authorities on 20 November 2001, after which you were detained and eventually transported to US military custody, in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, on 4 August 2002. After being arrested without charges brought against you, you then endured for the next fourteen years at Guantanamo Bay the cruellest crimes against humanity, as you were isolated and subjected to the most degrading, inhumane, and painful acts of torture. You were only finally released in October 2016. Whilst in prison you wrote a memoir in 2005 which the US government declassified in 2012, with numerous redactions. The memoir was published as Guantanamo Diary . The film made in your honour, The Mauritanian , depicts the experience at Guantanamo Bay based on your book Guantanamo Diary and provides an overview of Nancy Hollander as she took your case pro bono to defend you. You are now a survivor of Guantanamo Bay and continue to live life to the fullest despite the years taken away from you. So it’s an honour to have you here today, and we will discuss this experience to continue spreading awareness of human rights. To begin, could you share the experience you had when you first arrived at Guantanamo Bay? What did the authorities tell you during your initial arrival? Mohamedou Ould Slahi : Thank you so much, Nadia Jahnecke, for having me. I vividly remember, as if it were yesterday, when those two cops came to my home. It was Ramadan. To be precise, it was the fourth of Ramadan, and I was really tired. It was around 4pm and I had just come back from work. It was only me and my mother; no one else was at home. I was getting ready to take a shower and just get some sleep because we stayed up until very late in Ramadan. We use Ramadan as a season to eat more than we usually eat, to be honest, and to have more entertainment, which very much defeats the purpose of Ramadan [laughs]. So, two cops in plain civilian clothes, ‘Mukhabarat’, asked me to come with them. This is not a country ruled by law; it is a country ruled by the military. They did not show me cause, and they did not show me an arrest warrant. I could see the fear in my mother’s eyes, but I didn’t fully understand it. I was really afraid, but I didn’t think it was going to be really that bad because it was not my first time being arrested. So, I went with them, and then one of them drove with me, and the other one followed us or drove in front of us. I don’t remember, but I could see my mother in the rearview mirror as she disappeared. It was I think after about 200m when we turned right. I always forget whether we turned right or left, but we turned right and then we turned left. That’s why I forgot. And that was the last time I saw my mom, the very last time. I never thought that this would be the last time I saw her. She was really very sick; it took her years to go to the hospital. Many years, after many years in prison, they came to me and told me that she died and she passed away. They came back again and told me my brother, by the way, passed on too. I cannot describe to you the pain. The pain that I experienced, I remember it was so, so bad; I couldn’t hear anymore. The guys who came to me to tell me the news were in these military-like very special clothes and very well-maintained. They had a priest with them because we are not allowed to have Imams, and the priest was from Sudan, I think they took him because he spoke Arabic. He started to talk to me about it. I don’t know what he was talking about, honestly, because I just wanted them to go away and leave me alone. I remember I was in so much pain I needed to punish my body. Then I started to sing the Quran, I think for about 12 hours straight. I took one break until I completely collapsed. What was in between was a lot of pain. I was first taken to Jordan for eight months incommunicado, where I was not allowed to see anyone or talk to anyone. This is so shameful, as this is like humiliation upon humiliation, that you are being tortured and humiliated by your own people. This is more than anything; we say in Arabic [speaking Arabic], ‘When injustice comes from your next of kin, it’s worse than being cut into pieces by a sword’. Then I was taken to Afghanistan; they tried to take people to free Afghanistan from so-called terrorists, but I was taken to Afghanistan by force. From Afghanistan, I was taken to Guantanamo Bay, and I was the first candidate for capital murder, the first ever. I remember, after so many months of torture and forced confession, one staff, First Sergeant Shirley, came to me and told me that I was being chosen for the death penalty. You may ask me, ‘Was I afraid? How was my feeling?’—I tell you, I didn’t have any feelings. I was numb. I was just listening to him, looking at his lips moving, and I just wanted the session with him to end so I could go back and live in my head, in myself. All of this happened, in all those 15 years, completely outside the rule of law, completely free of any judicial oversight, meaningful judicial oversight. I was never charged with a crime, ever. When I finally got to see my case for the first time in front of an independent person, a judge, who could see all the evidence, even the classified evidence, he ordered my release. Those are the facts of the case. I was the only detainee who was ordered to be released. He was tough; he saw the case for what it was, a complete hoax. CJLPA : Wow, there is a lot to unpack from that, so thank you. Before we delve into your experience in Guantanamo Bay specifically, I found it quite interesting how you mentioned that your own people, your own kin, left you and abandoned you. Jordan assisted the US in detaining you and sending you to Afghanistan, which ultimately led to your transfer to Guantanamo Bay. Why do you think they helped with this or contributed to this? Do you believe it’s a result of the fear of other international countries, particularly the US as the world superpower, and their influence? MOS : One of the bitterest experiences I faced is that in my part of the world, we have real problems. The absence of democracy, the absence of the rule of law—we know this; it’s like an open secret. This problem is exacerbated by them being in bed with very powerful countries like the United States of America. For better or worse, the United States of America is the leader of the free world, and their association with the most distasteful—I don’t want to say dictators, just authoritarian regimes, to be on the safe side—is completely hurting the local people. Because this so-called war on terrorism is used, at least in my part of the world, to crush political dissent. People who peacefully want democratic change, who want to have their votes counted, and who want to limit the power of the military general, the king, or the president, are labelled as Islamic extremists or terrorists and are being crushed. When I was arrested, there was no Guantanamo Bay because the United States was discussing with other countries—they were discussing with the government executive branch the power of places to put the people they capture in a place that is not subject to the rule of law. That was the whole idea. While waiting at that place, they already had places where they worked, like in Arabic countries. We know Jordan is part of them, my country and Morocco are part of them, even Syria was part of them, Egypt, and Pakistan, of course, and so on. There are people who I met and who were delivered to those countries, and this is really shameful. The point is if they couldn’t take me to the US because the government, the FBI, and the CIA knew that there was no evidence—I didn’t do anything—but, you would ask, why then did they capture me? Because they want information; they want to ask me if my cousin is friends with Osama Bin Laden. I don’t need to have rights; I’m from Mauritania, and no one is defending me. My country certainly is not defending me. CJLPA : When you first arrived at Guantanamo Bay, a detention site where, as you mentioned, the rule of law doesn’t exist, what were the prison conditions like? Can you describe what it was like when you first entered there? MOS : So, when I was interrogated in Bagram, I didn’t speak English, so my English was very limited, and I didn’t understand. When they asked me if I needed to use the bathroom, I spoke German, and ‘bathroom’ in German is very close to ‘Badezimmer’, where we take a shower. I thought, ‘Wow, Americans are good people; they want to allow me to take a shower’. I said yes, and they took me to a barrel full of human faeces, an open barrel, and told me, ‘Yeah, you can use the bathroom’. I said, ‘Ah, okay, this is the bathroom in English. Okay, now I understand’. We didn’t have toilets; we only had very big barrels brought in as toilets for the detainees. They brought in an Arabic interpreter who asked me what languages I spoke, and I told them I spoke Arabic, French, and German. They said, ‘What? You speak German?’. I said, ‘Yes’. Then they brought a CIA agent who spoke German, and he was the one who interrogated me. He felt a kind of relationship with me because he was German, and we were the only two people who spoke German. He told me, ‘You are screwed either way. I’m just going to be honest with you because even if you are innocent, you are not getting out of this’. He told me, ‘I don’t know whether you’re innocent or not. Maybe you’re innocent, maybe you’re not. But either way, you are not getting out of this’. I think he told me, or it was already decided, that I would be sent to Guantanamo Bay. I was really happy after 8 months in Jordan and the pain I saw in Bagram. In Bagram, I was in shackles for 24 hours, I peed in my cell on the carpet because there was no toilet. Because they had to take me to another place, and because I was in isolation, there was no toilet, so I peed everywhere, and my room reeked of urine. But I was just happy because he explained to me that Guantanamo Bay is under the full control of the US. I told myself, ‘This is the US, so they cannot harm me because now I am under US custody. Not anymore; they won’t blame it anymore on Jordanians and the Afghanis’. But I was in for a very big surprise. The trip was torturous, full of beating and humiliation. When we arrived, the sun of Guantanamo hit me, and it felt really good. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel the sun on me. Then they took me to interrogation, and in the beginning, it was really normal, almost 24-hour interrogation. After about five months, they turned the heat up and brought a special FBI team who interrogated me for four months. Then they told me, ‘Mohamedou, we are not getting anything out’. They told me if I didn’t cooperate with them, they would torture me. I said, ‘The sooner, the better’. I knew what ‘The sooner, the better’ meant because, by that time, I had picked up a lot of the English language. The decision to torture me was a foregone conclusion anyway. They took me to a place where they brought a special team, the torture team. They took me to India Block, emptied it from all detainees, so it was only me. 70 first days: no sleep, 24 hours. Sexual assault, stripping you naked, and beatings so bad, I thought I was going to die. After 70 days, they took me on a boat ride and brought another team, an Arabic-speaking team. One guy had an Egyptian accent, and another guy had a Jordanian accent. The guy with an Egyptian accent said he was Egyptian, and the other guy said he was Jordanian. They threatened to take me back to Egypt and Jordan, but they didn’t know I had already taken that path, and there were no miracles. Richard Zuley, a Police lieutenant from Chicago, came to me and told me he was going to kidnap my mother and take her to Guantanamo Bay. He also insinuated that he could not secure her safety in an only male prison. I completely unravelled and told him I would tell him anything he wanted. That’s when I gave them the false confession. First Sergeant Shirley helped me write it. This false confession was the biggest challenge for them because, in dissemination, they sent the information to different agencies like the FBI, CIA, and others. They were all saying ‘no, he didn’t do this, we know he didn’t do it’. Richard Zuley was so angry because they said, ‘You want to convict him, you want the death penalty, this secures the death penalty, why are you asking questions?’ They all asked for a lie detector test. I took the polygraph twice and told him I didn’t do anything. Zero. Zilch. Nothing. Nada. I passed the test twice, and after the test, there was a complete change in my situation. They started to drive down the torture and decided that I could not be released ever because of what I saw and experienced. In 2012, the Mauritanian government asked for my release, and they were told, ‘He is un-releasable’. CJLPA : Because, as you said, at that point, you had become a witness to all the crimes against humanity and what was happening in Guantanamo Bay. So once they released you, the whole world would know what was occurring there. MOS : Yes, that would be a challenge to the narrative, to their narrative, yes, propaganda. CJLPA : It’s beyond the international community, the crimes that they committed, and how they tortured you while you were there. What do you think they were told in order to commit these barbaric and inhumane torture crimes? To conduct them and still be able to sleep at night? Do you think it was brainwashing? Do you think they truly believed you were involved, or do you think it is just pure hatred towards a certain religious group and certain countries? How do you think they could do this? MOS : Let’s be cold and scientific about this. This is humanity, just human beings. This is not because they’re Americans or they’re French. When you start dehumanizing a group of people, there is nothing you can’t do to them. And this started with our faces being put out; they took very ugly pictures of us and put them out there. When I saw my picture, I said to myself, ‘This guy is a bad guy’ [laughs]. I don’t remember when they took this picture because I was held, and my face was swollen because of the beating. This picture is actually on the internet; they put it on the internet. And this is the person we are holding here, so those are evil people. Just the soldiers, the people who participate in the torture, and the people who ordered them are evil people. They would kill you in a heartbeat if they had a chance. So when you start with sleep deprivation, then sexual assault, then beating, they would always tell me, ‘We want to save lives’, but what they didn’t know is that I couldn’t save any lives. I didn’t do anything; I didn’t know people who are holding a bomb to kill anyone. And this goes on and on, and they are not doctors, and they don’t know. That’s why Abdul-Gul-Gul died from torture in the same room, in the cold room they put me in. It’s very cold; you could die. Because I was in this room, and they told me they would not stop pouring cold water on me until I talked. What they didn’t know was that I couldn’t talk because I was so cold; I couldn’t move my tongue. This is probably how they killed Gul Rahman, and in the same prison where I was in Bagram, they beat Dilawar to death; he was beaten to death. And other people we don’t know about, because according to classified documents, or at least some reporting, 20 people were never brought back; they were kidnapped and just disappeared. The people we know on record, about five people, we know died under the program of torture that I was subjected to. So, democracy is here for a reason. The rule of law is here for a reason. The reason is that we can never trust the government. We can never trust the government to do the right thing. The government always needs someone to control them: the judiciary. We know that this good, beautiful thing that we have now, that is democracy, protects me and protects you. We know that it has shortcomings; we know especially that it’s designed so that the judiciary has so much power over the judge, because when the judge said I could go home I was kept for six more years. The judge does not have the police and does not have the military. We can only hope that the government, the judiciary would respect the other branches of the government. In this case, the judiciary and the executive branch did not respect the rule of law, and in our country it’s the same situation. We know this game because we grew up in an undemocratic regime. CJLPA : While you were in prison, did you have contact with the other prisoners? Did you get to know anyone? Did you hear much about how they were detained and if they ever found out if they had charges brought against them? MOS : Very few contacts, because 90% of my time I was in total isolation. I met the general population for the first after ten months, but we were always in the cells all the time, so we didn’t get to meet or talk much. Of course, we shouted, we talked, and this was during all the interrogations. And of course, we talked about interrogations, and we were afraid. I didn’t know them, and they didn’t know me either. Then I was completely taken away from the general population. The only things I could read or had access to were the statements given to me by my lawyers, and the statements of other detainees that relate to my case. For example, there is a well-known detainee, Ramzi Shibh. Shibh was heavily tortured until he lost his mind. I know about his case because he made a statement, and my understanding, though I wasn’t allowed to see the statement due to blackout, is that he knows me, and we spoke about something like that. So I know about this kind of statement, and I know he was tortured because that’s what my lawyer told me. He was subjected to heavy torture. But I don’t know about other detainees who were tortured and talked about me. CJLPA : And it was only in 2005 that you got a lawyer, and this was Nancy Hollander, whom we also had the pleasure to interview, an international defence lawyer, and she took your case. Can you tell us a bit about what it was like when you first met her? MOS : Yeah. So, when they told me that I was allowed to see my lawyer, I was so happy because when I was young, I used to watch Married with Children and a little bit of Law and Order . I had this idea that Americans are humorous and respect the rule of law. So, I thought, ‘Ah, this was only a mistake, and then now they will release me, and then I will go home, and I will get a lot of money, like in the movies’. That didn’t happen, but I started to write to my lawyer, to write to her about my life. In just a few days, I wrote about 163 pages. When I finally met her, I remembered wanting to hug her, but I couldn’t reach her because there was a table between us. She stood there for what felt like an eternity. She didn’t know that I was shackled, bolted to the ground and unable to move because it was under the table, and she couldn’t see it. Then she brought another lawyer who spoke French, but I told her I didn’t need anyone to speak French. I can speak English. So, we started, and she asked me to continue writing. In two and a half months, about ten weeks, I wrote everything you see in my Guantanamo diary. When I sent it to her, she tried to publish it, but they told her, ‘You ain’t gonna publish this’. It took about eight years of fighting, and this is in a country that positions itself as the defender of freedom of speech. You can say anything, you can talk about violence, you can talk about killing the president—anything. But just my story, that I was kidnapped from home and taken to Guantanamo Bay and tortured, was not allowed to be told. I think that the American people deserve better than this, and I grew to know American people who are, by and large, fairly decent people and very good human beings. CJLPA : With your Guantanamo Bay diaries, what, in particular, did you find that they redacted? What were some key points that they chose to take out that you think should have been kept in, and that people should know about? Essentially, what were the main things that they were trying to hide from the world, do you think? MOS : So, there are things like the dates and the places they redacted. It made sense in a military context; they don’t want people to know when they kidnap you or where they take you, the timeline. However, some things didn’t make sense. For instance, that it was so bad that I cried, or that I brought some poems, and they took the poems out. They also removed personal pronouns, and if you referred to a man or woman, they took that out. There was a very long portion, I don’t even remember anymore, but a very long story that they removed. Many years later, when I tried to restore the damage, I didn’t know all of this; I forgot a lot. CJLPA : When you first had Nancy Hollander take your case, did you face any challenges in trusting her based on your previous experiences in prison with the US government? Or was there an instant connection when you saw her, and you knew she was on your side, ready to help you? MOS : After 4 years of torture, pain, and suffering, you have nothing to lose. I trusted Nancy from the first day, along with her colleagues—Nancy was with a team, so I will always give all of them credit. However, Nancy, by nature, is a mistrusting person. So, logically, she looked at me and said it was impossible that they kidnapped him, tortured him, and spent so much money hiding him in different countries if he didn’t do anything. Then I kept telling her I didn’t do anything, not even like, ‘Oh, it was a mistake’, or ‘It was the wrong place at the wrong time’, nothing. This was very hard to digest. But I told her you will know this when you know my case. When she saw the investigation, and I think there was an investigation, and when she saw the torture that I was exposed to and the resignation of the prosecutor who was supposed to put me to death, then she knew. He was a prosecutor, a marine, and there was no reason for him to side with me unless he believed in the truth. That was a significant factor, among many others, in understanding the facts of the case that kept trickling in, I would say. CJLPA : Concerning the film The Mauritanian , it would be interesting to get your perspective on how you think the portrayal of Tahar Rahim was of you. Was it an accurate representation? What was it like seeing him in this film, and enduring what you endured at Guantanamo Bay? MOS : It’s a very good way, to brag and tell people, ‘Look how I look’, and then, maybe even very tempting to take his photo and put it as my profile picture. And it’s another way to tell my story. We are completely vilified in this part of the world, and it’s not very common that you see anything positive about us in Hollywood. Seeing Tahar Rahim and Jodie Foster portraying someone who did not hurt anyone is something I want to convey—that my family and I did not grow up to hate anyone. We grew up to love people, love life, and live peacefully. Of course, I was a young man, and I wanted to help Palestine and Afghanistan, with everything. But doing that, I never killed anyone, never did anything to anyone. Of course, I wasn’t always very careful about what I said, but that’s okay. Why is it okay for young French people and young American people to be stupid and say stupid things, but it’s not okay for Saudi people or Moroccan or Mauritanian people? I don’t accept that. CJLPA : And specifically, going back to the film, naturally Hollywood films can’t depict everything. What do you think is something important that could have been included in the film, something from your diary that wasn’t shown? Something crucial that people need to know about is what happens in these camps. MOS : You can’t depict 70 days of sleeplessness in a movie; that would be too long. And I was in prison for 15 years. 15 years. I think Kevin, my good friend, did a very good job. They asked me a lot because I told them I don’t interfere with the work of movies since I’m not a movie maker, but they asked me, and I shared my opinion. They very much considered everything I told them after doing the research, of course, and they talked to the other side a lot. CJLPA : Were you surprised, or did you have hope throughout the case working with Nancy Hollander that you were going to win? Because, of course, you knew you were innocent and you knew they didn’t have evidence. But at that point, it was quite clear that it didn’t matter to the authorities whether there was evidence or not. You’d already seen too much. So throughout the case, were you still hopeful nonetheless that you would have justice? MOS : You know, I learned everything about the American justice system the hard way. In the Western world, there are two philosophies. There is a common law, as it is practised in the United Kingdom, and this is like common sense: what decency dictates. It doesn’t need to be written, but when people think this is bad, it should be bad, hence the jury, because the jury decides the law. Then there is what they call Napoleonic law. Napoleonic law is based on Sharia, but don’t say that in France, because they will hate you for it. Napoleonic law dictates that there cannot be a crime without being defined. America is neither common law nor Napoleonic law; it’s a mixture of both, and that’s why a lot of the crimes that they charge the detainees of Guantanamo Bay with were not defined, like material support of terrorism. That was not defined as a crime. So, when the judge asks you in the US if you are guilty, you have to understand the question, which is not ‘Did you do this or not?’. The question is, ‘Did you commit a sin, or didn’t you commit a sin?’. The commission of a sin could be you feel bad that you didn’t prevent this crime from happening, or it could be that you put the gun to the head of that guy and put 10 bullets in him, but you were defending yourself or your family and you were in the right. In both cases, you say ‘I’m not guilty’, or ‘I’m guilty’, so that’s the first difference, because in most European countries, the countries that practice the Napoleonic law, there is no pleading. They don’t ask you whether you are guilty; they only look at the facts, what happened. That’s it. That was my first shock. Then it came to me testifying. After I finished the summary, I thought ‘I am screwed, this is not going well’. Because he kept asking me, for example, ‘did you watch jihad movies when you were young?’—I said yes. ‘Did you read jihad magazines?’—yes. And then, I was—I wanted to cry because I didn’t want to say yes or no. If you ask someone a line of questioning and you limit them to yes and no, you can make them come to any conclusion, no matter what the conclusion is. And I was not allowed to explain anything; he only asked yes or no. And I think the first thing I would do if I were responsible for the justice system, would be to forbid ‘yes and no’ questions in cross-examination. Later, when the judge interfered, he said, ‘Why did you ask him this question about whether he saw a movie or something, why?’. And then the prosecutor told him, ‘to go for the jugular’. And the judge said, ‘But you ain’t got no jugular, do you?’ And then the prosecutor said, ‘No, I don’t’. That’s when I knew that I was right all along because the Prosecutor admitted in front of the judge that he didn’t have anything on me. CJLPA : This will be the last question before you have to leave. First of all, there are various other detention camps around the world where illegal acts by government authorities are continuing. What comes next? How can the world put an end to this? What actions can people take, and what role can lawyers play? How do individuals become involved, exert pressure on politicians, and bring attention to these crimes to help save lives and support those who have undergone such experiences? MOS : I believe this is a very insightful question, and it encapsulates everything. How can we prevent this? I think the government, as it is currently acting, is not working for us. I am from Mauritania, a very small country. Mauritania lacks values that align with the broader perspectives of the American and UK political systems. As a Mauritanian, it occurred to me that I need to reach out directly to people like you and say: ‘You guys are really hurting me’. What can we do to prevent this hurt that is coming to me and the people here? My philosophy is that we need to undercut the government and build a very broad grassroots movement that is cross-cultural and spans across countries. We should talk to each other, completely ignoring the government, focusing on securing our safety and promoting human rights worldwide. Nowadays, if someone is imprisoned in Mauritania, Morocco, the US, or anywhere else, we need to address it immediately. I wish for a world where we unite as one, even elect someone we trust, without borders. We don’t care about borders, and we discuss how to move forward, combat human rights violations, and address wars. All these things are not good for us. CJLPA : Thank you very much, Mohamedou Slahi. It was an honour to have you here today. Your strength and bravery are truly extraordinary, and survivors like you, sharing your fight and story, will help make a difference in the world. This interview was conducted by Nadia Jahnecke, Legal Editor and Founder of Human Rights Volume of CJLPA 3. In addition to her role at CJLPA, Nadia is currently working as a Trainee Lawyer and will qualify as a lawyer in England and Wales in March 2024.

A case for the enhanced pre-sentence report in England and Wales, exploring how the Canadian approach to racially disproportionate sentencing outcomes could be fashioned in the UK In 2021, I was one of the lead contributors to a guide[1] for lawyers committed to ensuring Black lives matter in the Criminal Justice System. In the guide, I highlighted the case of R. v. Morris [2] as a way in which lawyers could use the law creatively to deal with racially discriminatory outcomes in the Criminal Justice System. I still believe, however, that there are many under-theorised approaches from R v Morris [3] and international human rights laws and principles that can be of real benefit to ensuring that sentencing hearings produce racially equitable outcomes. This piece will explore the ways lawyers can practically use this case and international human rights law and principles to do just that. The case of R. v. Morris [4] sets precedent as to how sentencing judges should account for systemic anti-Black racism when sentencing Black people, including (but not limited to) the use of ‘enhanced pre-sentence reports’ that document the impacts of anti-Black racism . Canada, unlike the UK, has a history of recognising the unique conditions of Black and Indigenous persons in their sentencing processes and decision-making. The criminal law code in Canada has recognised that there are cases where, in order to determine a fit and proportionate sentence, consideration must be given to an individual’s systemic and social circumstances. In particular, in June 1995, Parliament passed Bill C-41, a bill amending the Criminal Code with respect to sentencing. The new law came into force in 1996 and contained Criminal Code Section 718.2(e), which was intended to ameliorate the high rates of incarceration of Indigenous people. Section 718.2 reads: ‘A court that imposes a sentence shall also take into consideration the following principles: (e) all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considered for all offenders, with particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal offenders’. These circumstances often extend beyond the person who is being sentenced to include factors such as systemic discrimination and historical injustice. This has been recognised by the criminal courts[5], particularly in the case of Indigenous offenders who have a distinct history of colonial violence endured by Indigenous peoples and has extended to people of African descent. This reparative approach taken to address the ongoing harms of racism, slavery, and colonisation allows judges to consider social contexts in sentencing decisions. This approach has also allowed for new racial justice mechanisms to be further embedded into the Canadian legal system through the recent advent and use of Impact of Race and Culture Assessments (IRCAs)[6] in sentencing people of African descent. These IRCAs were first introduced in R v ‘X’ .[7] These reports provide the court with a detailed understanding of the effects of systemic anti-Black racism on people of African descent and how the experience of anti-Black racism has informed the circumstances of the offence, the offender, and how it informs the offender’s experience of the criminal justice system. These reports also address, inter alia, anti-Black racism and aim to promote tailored and proportionate sentences for Black people. They strive to construct a sentencing methodology that balances the significance of the twin principles of individual responsibility and proportionality, while incorporating the cultural legacies and historical oppressions and their role in the sentencing of Black people. In the case of R v Morris ,[8] Justice Nakatsuru considered the impact of anti-Black racism on Mr. Morris’s life and his social history. The defence presented an IRCA to the court and requested that the authors of this report outline and analyse the research relating to the existence and impact of anti-Black racism in Canadian society in general and the Toronto region in particular. The facts of the case In 2014, Kevin Morris, a 22-year-old Black man, was detained, chased, and injured by police officers PC Keefer and DC Moorcroft in a parking lot. The police officers did so as part of investigating a nearby home invasion, but neither Mr. Morris nor the three other young Black men Mr. Morris was with were involved in the invasion. In the aftermath, a jury found Mr. Morris guilty of charges relating to the possession of an unauthorised gun. The Outcome At the sentencing hearing, the Crown requested Mr. Morris a sentence of four to four and a half years. Mr. Morris’s defence lawyers requested a sentence of one year. Many of the previous sentences handed down for gun offences relating to criminal activity had usually been at least three years, while other cases for gun offences had been from one to two years. Upon considering the anti-Black racism that applied on a systemic and interpersonal level to Mr. Morris, Justice Nakatsuru sentenced Mr. Morris to 15 months. The sentence was then reduced to one year after taking into account the police officers’ unlawful infringement on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms .[9] In passing down the sentence, the judge noted the following: In the final analysis, what makes this sentencing different from other cases where leniency was not given is that I have been given a wealth of information to sentence you, information that can be used to take further steps to deal with the over-incarceration of Black people in this country. This judgement was recently appealed in February 2021 (judgement handed down in October 2021) by the Crown due to the length of the sentence given by the judge. The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal in order to increase the sentence but stated that the approach from the Judge in factoring anti-blackness was the correct one to take. The decision to increase the sentence has been rightfully condemned by the interveners in the case—The Black Legal Action Centre (BLAC)—[10]who state they are disappointed by the decision in the appeal of R. v. Morris , explaining that the Court failed to take a strong stance to ensure that every sentencing judge across the province meaningfully considers anti-Black racism in a consistent way when sentencing a Black people. Robyn Maynard, in Policing Black Lives , notes that ‘Black existence in public space is itself seen as criminal and thus subject to scrutiny, surveillance, frequent interruption and police intervention’.[11] This is of particular importance as Black communities in the UK remain over-policed through racially disproportionate stop and search,[12] which allows for Black communities to be funnelled through the criminal justice system. Black communities in the UK only make up 3% of the population but represent 13% of the adult prison population.[13] Currently, 59% of children on remand are Black.[14] The Lammy Review as far back 2017 highlighted the anti-Blackness within the judiciary when it comes to the disproportionate sentencing of Black males.[15] International Human Rights Law Overview The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD),[16] ratified by the UK on 7 March 1969, establishes the obligations of State parties to respect and ensure racial equality and the right to be free from racial discrimination. Several other human rights treaties also contain prohibitions on racial discrimination and other forms of discrimination, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),[17] to which the UK acceded in 1976. Under international human rights law, anti-Blackness is an infringement of the rights of people of African descent. Due to this, there must be scope to make arguments based on international human rights law when dealing with anti-Blackness in the courtroom. The ICERD[18] was created to deal specifically with racial discrimination within a specific human rights mechanism. The treaty in and of itself can be relied upon by countries where the ICERD treaty was ratified to make submissions in respect to failures to comply with international human rights obligations. The UK may not invoke ‘the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty’. The UK’s wide ranging international human rights law commitments include an obligation to ensure racial equality and eliminate racial discrimination. This obligation not only arises from its commitments under the ICERD, but also from its other human rights treaty commitments; nearly every human rights treaty contains a provision on non-discrimination. Article 2.1 of the ICCPR makes it clear that the rights recognized in the Covenant are to be recognised without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status.[19] Article 2.2 of the ICESR outlines similar obligations with regard to economic, social, and cultural rights.[20] The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) also produces General Recommendations that offer analysis of relevant provisions and practices of the U.N. treaty bodies. Since 1972, the CERD has issued general recommendations in order to provide guidance to States parties in understanding the provisions of the Convention and thereby assisting them in implementing the Convention fully based on their reporting to the Committee. International Human Rights Law: CERD Recommendation No. 36 General recommendation No. 36 (2020) on preventing and combating racial profiling by law enforcement officials[21] is an extensive document the UK must use to further understand how it can comply with its international human rights obligations. Paragraph 24 of General Recommendation No. 36[22] states that: Under article 6 of the Convention, States parties have an obligation to assure to everyone within their jurisdiction effective protection against any acts of racial discrimination. Accordingly, States parties must take preventive measures in order to ensure that public authorities and public institutions do not engage in practices of racial profiling. Article 6 also requires States parties to ensure to everyone within their jurisdiction effective remedies against any act of racial discrimination. States parties are obliged to ensure that their domestic legal order contains adequate and effective mechanisms through which to assert that racial profiling has taken place and to bring such a practice to an end. States parties must furthermore guarantee the right to seek just and adequate reparation or satisfaction for damage suffered as a result of racial discrimination in the form of racial profiling . The General Recommendation makes plain that racial profiling is in violation of the prohibition of racial discrimination. It also outlines how racial profiling is committed through certain official patterns and activities, such as arbitrary stops, searches, identity checks, investigations, and arrests. General Recommendation No. 36[23] establishes that racial profiling runs contrary to non-discrimination and equality before the law as foundational principles of international human rights law, as well as to the ‘very idea of the Convention’. The UN Special Rapporteur on Racism also notes that several international human rights mechanisms have concluded that racial profiling is both a manifestation of systemic racism and a contributor to the perpetuation of societal racial stereotypes, prejudice, and bias. The CERD’s General Recommendation No. 36[24] conceptualises racial profiling as both an individual and a structural violation. The CERD found that racial profiling and broader societal racism, including hate speech, are closely interrelated, in that stereotyping and hate speech can lead to law enforcement officers engaging in racial profiling and profiling can in turn increase stigmatization and promulgation of ethnic stereotypes. International Human Rights Law: CERD Recommendation No. 34 General recommendation No. 34[25] adopted by the Committee concerns Racial discrimination against people of African descent. It requires that ‘people of African descent shall enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms in accordance with international standards, in conditions of equality and without any discrimination’.[26] Paragraph 15 notes that States should ‘strengthen existing institutions or create specialised institutions to promote respect for the equal human rights of people of African descent’.[27] What could racial justice lawyering look like under current sentencing guidelines in the UK, and how can lawyers use R v Morris to inform mitigation arguments and approaches to Pre-Sentence reports? Within the sentencing principles that currently exist, I believe that there is scope for lawyers to use the law and sentencing guidelines creatively to build a framework of analysis that can begin to address the issue of disproportionate imprisonment within Black communities in the UK. For us to do this, lawyers must understand that the law is not neutral. Critical legal theorists have expanded on this by explaining that the law is the mechanism for legitimising the existing hierarchy of social relations and thus, crystallising existing patterns of domination. Racial justice in the courts, therefore, requires the law to be decentralised, moving away from the perception that all charged persons before the court are white and male. Instead, the courts allow for an equitable approach that ensures fairer outcomes for racialised persons. In the case of R v Jackson 2018 ,[28] the sentencing judge Nakatsuru took such an approach. See paragraph 86: Taking judicial notice of the historical and systemic injustices committed against African Canadians and African Canadian offenders is preferable to a strict adherence to the traditional rules of evidence which will only serve to advantage the status quo. The offender should not be burdened with the requirement to bring such evidence, usually in the form of expert evidence, to their sentencing when these social and historical facts are beyond reasonable dispute. Current sentencing guidelines The sentencing guidelines have sections within them that can be used to expand upon the history and legacies of Anti-Blackness on defendants at sentencing. The Sentencing Council’s Overarching Guideline on Sentencing Children and Young People notes at paragraph 1.18 that Black and minority ethnic children are over-represented in the youth justice system and states that decisions about the welfare of a child must consider the particular factors that arise in the case of Black and minority ethnic children.[29] The Sentencing Council has also taken recent measures in the guidelines for possession of firearms and possession with intent to supply drugs, which can aid in drawing sentencers’ attention to evidence of racialised sentencing disparities. [30] The approaches of the Sentencing Council in actively reminding sentencers during the sentencing exercise to be aware of the racial disparity can be seen as a measure that is aligning with international human rights law. Particularly, in respect to ICERD Article 2, Para 1 that requires States Parties to condemn racial discrimination and to undertake to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms and promoting understanding among all races, and, to this end: 1(a) Each State Party undertakes to engage in no act or practice of racial discrimination against persons, groups of persons or institutions and to ensure that all public authorities and public institutions, national and local, shall act in conformity with this obligation; 1(c) Each State Party shall take effective measures to review governmental, national and local policies, and to amend, rescind or nullify any laws and regulations which have the effect of creating or perpetuating racial discrimination wherever it exists. Lawyers can also remind judges of their role in fighting racial discrimination and disparity with the criminal justice system and their obligations under the Equal Treatment Bench Book, asking the court to take into consideration their client’s personal and cultural experiences as mitigating factors. In the case of R v Jackson , at paragraph 107, the sentencing judge Nakatsuru noted that ‘[o]ne way in which this information (history of anti-Blackness within society) can be used is to ensure that the contextual circumstances regarding the lived experiences of African Canadians are properly taken into account when applying the principles of sentencing’.[31] As judge Louis LeBel said in R v Ipeelee at paragraph 67: [J]udges can ensure that systemic factors do not led inadvertently to discrimination in sentencing. Professor Quigley aptly describes how this occurs: ‘Socioeconomic factors such as employment status, level of education, family situation, etc., appear on the surface as neutral criteria. They are considered as such by the legal system. Yet they can conceal an extremely strong bias in the sentencing process. Convicted persons with steady employment and stability in their lives, or at least prospects of the same, are much less likely to be sent to jail for offences that are borderline imprisonment offences. The unemployed, transients, the poorly educated are all better candidates for imprisonment. When the social, political, and economic aspects of our society place Aboriginal people disproportionately within the ranks of the latter, our society literally sentences more of them to jail. This is systemic discrimination’.[Citation omitted in original.] Sentencing judges, as front-line workers in the criminal justice system, are in the best position to re-evaluate these criteria to ensure that they are not contributing to ongoing systemic racial discrimination.[32] Another way that lawyers can ensure that the history of racial discrimination is highlighted to the court is through preparing a sentencing note that sets out the issues and data on the systemic discrimination experienced by Black people and actively, as the judge in the above case has shown, warning the court of the risks of its decision in contributing to structural and institutional racism. The Lammy Review found a clear and direct association between being Black and the higher likelihood of receiving a custodial sentence, with Black people 53% more likely to be sent to prison for an indictable offence at the Crown Court, even when factoring in higher not-guilty plea rates. I did this in a recent youth court case in which the mandatory minimum sentencing for knife possession applied and my client was spared custody. I also did this for a hearing I had for a young Black defendant who was being sentenced at the Crown Court. I mentioned in both written and oral submissions R v Morris [33] as best international practice and invited the court to use this approach to factor in my client’s experiences of anti-Black racism, which meant he presided more often before the courts. I further included points from the ICERD and its general recommendations mentioned above, The Lammy Review and Baroness Casey Review in this sentencing note. The judge agreed with my approach and took it into account as mitigation to reduce the sentence. Ensuring the Pre-Sentence report covers the personal and cultural history of the Defendant In England and Wales, when a pre-sentence report is provided to the court, only the discussions provided to the probation officer about the defendant are included in the report. an inspection of Race Equality in Probation [34] found that the quality of PSRs prepared in cases of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic service users was ‘insufficient in too many cases’ and that not enough attention was paid to diversity. Inspectors concluded that ‘[p]oorer quality reports that fail to consider all relevant factors run the risk of service users receiving more punitive sentences’.[35] Lawyers must make an effort to ensure their client feels comfortable to discuss any issues of anti-Black racism they have faced with the probation officer so they can include this in the report. Lawyers should have discussions with their clients before sentencing about any experiences of racial injustice, whilst remaining aware that the experiences may be both direct and indirect. In the case of it being indirect, lawyers will need to be well versed in anti-racism research in order to highlight this. Lawyers, after confirming with their client, can also discuss with probation the need to ensure they have taken into account the issues noted in the Lammy Review and the recent Justice report on the overall lived experiences of racialised clients.[37] They should simultaneously highlight the concerns raised in an inspection of Race Equality in Probation HMIP 2021 report on the quality of PSRs prepared in cases of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic service users. This is of particular importance, as the UK’s sentencing Council’s overarching principles notes that it is for the sentencing court to determine how much weight should be assigned to the aggravating and mitigating factors, taking into account all of the circumstances of the offence and the offender . In order for the court to have all information about the offender and offence, the Court should be provided with international human rights documents like General Recommendation 34 of CERD, that will show the legacy of anti-Blackness globally.[37] Advocates should, then, through oral or written submissions, explain how anti-Blackness has shaped the offender’s life experiences and has led to them being in contact with the criminal justice system. Using R v Morris as best international practice when discussing mitigation Lawyers should consider R v Morris [38] alongside international human rights law as a best practice guide when gathering evidence and drafting submissions that can be used to showcase how anti-Blackness and anti-Black racism directly affects their Black clients. R v Morris [39] can be used as a blueprint for ways they can approach bringing this evidence forward to the court during mitigation. They can also present the case directly to the courts as best international practice, noting to judges that that whilst this does not yet have direct precedent in domestic courts, it nonetheless provides the courts with the best practice from an international human rights law approach when dealing with the impact of anti-Black racism on their clients offending, their contact with the criminal justice system and their wider life experiences. Ife Thompson Ife Thompson is a distinguished Movement Lawyer and UN Fellow, specialising in criminal defence, family law, and actions against police misconduct. Her work often intersects with cases involving racial and linguistic injustice, and she employs innovative legal strategies, drawing from UN International Human Rights Law and community-based issues to actively challenge these matters within her criminal defence practice. She has also founded two civil society organisations to further these pursuits. The first is BLAM UK: an award-winning Non-profit that provides educational, advocacy and well-being support for Black people living in Britain. The second is Black Protest Legal Support UK, a hub of UK-based Lawyers willing to provide Pro-bono support and legal observing at BLM and racialised protests. [1] Howard League for Penal Reform, ‘Making Black lives matter in the criminal justice system: A guide for antiracist lawyers’ (2021) < https://howardleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/A-guide-for-antiracist-lawyers-1.pdf > accessed 9 October 2023. [2] R v Morris [2018] ONSC 5186. [3] ibid. [4] ibid. [5] R. v. ‘X’ [2014] NSPC 95. [6] ibid. [7] ibid. [8] ibid. [9] Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Constitution Act 1882. [10] Ammar, ‘BLAC responds to Ontario Court of Appeal decision in R. v. Morris ’ (Black Legal Action Centre, 8 October 2021) < https://www.blacklegalactioncentre.ca/blac-responds-to-court-of-appeal-for-ontarios-decision-in-r-v-morris/ > accessed 9 October 2023. [11] Robyn Maynard, Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada (Fenwood Publishing Co Ltd 2017). [12] Vikram Dodd, ‘Black people nine times more likely to face stop and search than white people’ Guardian (London, 27 October 2020) < https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/27/black-people-nine-times-more-likely-to-face-stop-and-search-than-white-people > accessed 9 October 2023. [13] Georgina Sturge, ‘UK prison population statistics’ ( Commons Library Publications, 8 September 2023). < https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04334/SN04334.pdf > accessed 9 October 2023. [14] Penelope Gibbs, ‘Children imprisoned on remand – the stark reality of racial bias’ ( Transform Justice, 5 November 2021). < https://www.transformjustice.org.uk/news-insight/children-imprisoned-on-remand-the-stark-reality-of-racial-bias/ > accessed 9 October 2023. [15] Lammy Review, ‘The Lammy Review: final report’ ( gov.uk, 8 September 2017) < https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/lammy-review-final-report > accessed 9 October 2023. [16] International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, UN General Assembly resolution 2106 (XX) 21 December 1965. [17] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN General Assembly Resolution 2200A (XXI) 16 December 1966. [18] ibid. [19] ibid Article 2.1. [20] ibid Article 2.2. [21] General Recommendation No. 36 on preventing and combating racial profiling by law enforcement officials (2020). [22] ibid [24]. [23] ibid. [24] ibid. [25] General Recommendation No. 34 adopted by the Committee: Racial discrimination against people of African descent (2011). [26] ibid. [27] ibid [15]. [28] R v Jackson [2018] ONSC 2527 (CanLII) [86]. [29] Sentencing Council, ‘New Sentencing Guidelines’ ( Sentencing Council, 9 December 2020) [1.18]. < https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/news/item/new-sentencing-guidelines-for-firearms-offences-published/ > accessed 9 October 2023. [30] Sentencing Council, ‘New sentencing guidelines for firearms offences published’ ( Sentencing Council, 9 December 2020) < https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/news/item/new-sentencing-guidelines-for-firearms-offences-published/ > accessed 9 October 2023. [31] R v Jackson (n 28) [107]. [32] R v Ipeelee [2012] SCC 13 (CanLII) 1SCR 433 [67]. [33] ibid. [34] HMIP, ‘Race equality in probation: the experiences of black, Asian and minority ethnic probation service users and staff’ ( HMIP, 16 March 2021) < https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/inspections/race-equality-in-probation >accessed 9 October 2023. [35] ibid [29]. [36] JUSTICE, ‘Tackling racial injustice: Children and the youth justice system’ ( JUSTICE, 25 February 2021) < https://justice.org.uk/our-work/criminal-justice-system/current-work-criminal-justice/tackling-racial-injustice/ > accessed 31 October 2023. [37] ibid. [38] ibid. [39] ibid.