Alumna Connie Chung

EJF stipends helped Georgetown Law alumna Connie Chung pursue a career in public interest law in law school and beyond. Here she shares her experiences:

When I started law school, I was interested in international human rights work. So for my 1L summer, I received an EJF grant to work in Durban, South Africa, at the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD). ACCORD is a human rights NGO promoting peace and sustainability throughout the African continent through dispute resolution and peacekeeping methods. I studied about the various conflicts in Africa and published an article on the civil war in Sierra Leone. I also attended a peacekeeping conference in Harare, Zimbabwe, with mid-level UN officers and other human rights workers. Not only did I learn a great deal about the civil conflicts in Africa, but I got to travel around Africa for two months.


Above- Connie working at ACCORD in South Africa

The next year, I wanted to try my hand at civil rights and impact litigation. Through my 2L EJF grant, I got to work on employment discrimination cases at the Employment Law Center (ELC) in San Francisco. Two of ELC’s cases were coming before the US Supreme Court that fall, so I spent much of the summer working on the oral arguments. In addition, I successfully represented a client—a single father with two children—in his unemployment insurance hearing.

These summer internships helped me land a permanent position after law school at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, where I worked on cases involving post-9/11 religious and racial profiling, police accountability, reproductive rights, and the First Amendment. I then moved to Los Angeles where I worked on housing discrimination cases at the Housing Rights Center (HRC). At HRC, I first-chaired my own cases in state and federal court, and argued my first case before the Ninth Circuit.

There were times in law school when I doubted whether I’d made the right decision to pursue public interest law, but my EJF summers reminded me why this was the right career path for me. Now I’m looking at changing jobs again, but I know the experiences I had during my EJF summers will help me land a new job, just like they’ve done so far.

Les Mêmes Droits Pour Tous

Ioana Rusu writes from West Africa:

I first met Mamadou Alpha Barry during a routine visit to La Surêté, the largest prison facility in Guinea, West Africa. A young man of only 23, he had been placed in pre-trial detention since 2004. His family could not afford a lawyer, so he asked our organization to take his case. Several weeks later, we finally located his file and were shocked to discover that all charges against Mamadou had already been dropped--in November 2004. He should have been set free, but someone neglected to convey this information to the prison. Mamadou Alpha Barry walked out of prison a free man on July 7th, 2008, after over 3 years and 7 months of illegal detention.

Mamadou’s case is shocking, but sadly far from unique. The disorganization and corruption endemic in Guinea’s judicial system have given rise to grave and pervasive human rights abuses. I have spent the past 10 weeks working with Les Mêmes Droits Pour Tous – MDT (Equal Rights for All), the only non-governmental organization in Guinea currently providing free legal assistance to adult detainees.
The work is challenging and often extremely frustrating. Some of our clients have already finished their sentences, but have not yet been set free. Others have been in pre-trial detention for many years. Yet others have confessed to crimes they did not commit after having been severely tortured by the police.
During my ten weeks with the organization, I have attended trials and hearings, met with clients, followed-up with cases of illegal detention, and helped raise awareness about police brutality. For more information about MDT’s work and my experience working in the Guinean judicial system, please email me at Ioana.C.Rusu@gmail.com.

South African Human Rights Commission

Christina Calce shares her experiences in South Africa:

Not that long ago, my supervisor asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I replied, only half jokingly, "save the world." I realize that that is a rather ambitious plan, but I feel like I am at least doing a bit to help the people of South Africa in my position at the South
African Human Rights Commission.


I am here with two other Georgetown students, Danielle Petrilli and
Nyasha Griffith, and the Commission has divided us between three of
its departments: Appeals, Gauteng Province ("GP"), and Legal Services.
I started in appeals, rotated to the GP floor about a week ago, and
will head to Legal Services next week.

As an appeals intern, I dealt primarily with research and analysis related to government legislation on hate speech. One of the most interesting things about S.A. is that its constitution is only 14 years old: it was established after the fall of apartheid in 1994. Most legislative acts enforcing constitutional provisions are even younger than that. Consequently, there is limited jurisprudence on most topics and a wide range of debate on issues such as, "Where does the right to free expression stop and the right to protect human dignity through measures prohibiting hate speech begin?" My particular research was related to situation wherein the Commission found that a prominent union leader did not commit hate speech when he made certain anti-farmer statements following allegations that white farmers had attacked a black farm worker. The farmers' trade union filed an appeal disagreeing with the Commission's finding, and my supervisor asked me to research all possible interpretations of the hate speech legislative provisions. In my memo, I argued that the Commission had been correct in its initial finding, and that in this case, freedom of expression and free political discourse were the most important rights
at stake.

Now I am in the GP division where I deal primarily with complaint intake, but also have the opportunity to investigate allegations of human rights abuses. Yesterday, we drove to a shantytown about an hour outside the city. The place was wreaked with poverty: most buildings were little more than shacks of scrap metal and corrugated steel, children played with toys made from wire scraps, and the "road" was a dirt path interrupted at points by mini-rivers of water, waste and motor oil. The government is threatening to bulldoze most of the town in order to lay water and sewage pipes which would run to another nearby community. While clean water and proper sewage are certainly desirable, the government had not considered what would happen to the people whose homes were destroyed in the process. Adding to the issue
were three individuals who had obtained permits from the municipality to construct "proper homes." They built and paid for these homes themselves, using concrete and cinderblocks to create permanent dwellings. The government threatened to bulldoze these homes as well, even though the people had devoted their limited resources to
purchasing the cement and cinderblock supplies. The demolition has ceased for now, and we are working to have either the municipality reroute the pipes or to have the department of housing provide alternate homes.

Next week I head to the legal services department, which may more aptly be referred to as "litigation." Cases that we can't resolve through mediation at the provincial level are sent to the Equality Court, and I will be assisting Commission advocates in preparing their cases.

Needless to say, I couldn't be in South Africa without the Equal Justice Foundation's help. Thanks to the Equal Justice Foundation, I have gained a great deal of legal experience, and I have also given back to the South African people. I might not be saving the world, but if we can at least save the shantytown shacks from being demolished, then my work here will have been worthwhile.

South African Human Rights Commission

Danielle Petrilli writes from South Africa

This summer I am interning with the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Commission was established to investigate the prima facie violations of human rights as contained within the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.

In my first week with the Commission I assisted in the inspection of a displaced person camp for the victims of xenophobic attacks in the Gauteng Province. The attacks were largely a result of high unemployment rates in South Africa coupled with increasing numbers of immigrants from nearby, less stable countries, particularly Zimbabwe.

The camp we inspected was set up a few days before our arrival and the residents had been recently moved from various other smaller sites. The day of our visit Johannesburg was rainy and cold, affording our team the opportunity to see the newly set up camp at its worst. The Commission’s task was to investigate not only the quality and availability of things like food, shelter, and water, but also to monitor the set-up of schools, transportation to work, health care, etc. Walking through the camp on such a dreary day with residents swarming for news and the opportunity to tell their story was both frustrating and moving. Interestingly, it was mostly men that approached us or sought news from the camp managers. One of my first lessons in the camp was that due to traditional gender roles, female concerns in such emergency situations easily fall by the way-side. Additionally, adolescents and teenagers are often the last to receive attention for all focus is placed on babies and small children. These were just a few of the lessons I learned in my first day of fieldwork.

I have also had the opportunity to observe several mediations. In one such mediation, I accompanied a legal officer from the Commission to mediate a dispute concerning a piece of land between two Afrikaner ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church. Unwilling to question the status of the land’s ownership with the government, the ministers opted to resolve their dispute within their own community. This mediation was my induction to the tension that still exists for some citizens between the old National Party government and the post-apartheid African National Congress government.

Throughout my internship, I have had the opportunity to engage in many valuable comparative law debates. From formal debates over the status of hate speech in South Africa versus the U.S. to informal discussions about the future of the U.S. presidency, I believe my internship with the Commission has afforded me a plethora of new perspectives. This is an experience I certainly would not have been able to gain without the help of EJF funding.

Timap for Justice

Niloufar Khonsari is working at Timap for Justice this summer in
Magburaka, Sierra Leone. Below she shares some of her experiences:


The first picture is of me and some workers doing an investigation at a gold
mining site. An American gold mining company has failed to pay its workers for their services and since terminated them. Through Timap for Justice, we went to the site to speak with the manager of the site and to do further investigations before writing a letter notifing the company, the labor office, and the police station.



The second picture is of me talking with the paramount chiefs during a travel clinic. The chiefs in the town of Malong confiscated farmland from one farmer eleven years ago and fined him several times for removing a neighboring farmowner's vegetables. There has been no oversight, and this poor farmer has been unable to pay his fines because he has not been permitted to harvest his bananas from his farm. Timap for Justice is holding a formal meeting with the paramount chiefs and the farmer next week after conducting some investigations with the local court (where the issue was also brought, but allegedly ignored).

A recent United Nations Development Program ranking of health, education, and standards of living ranked Sierra Leone last out of 177 countries. The World Bank classified Sierra Leone as "severely indebted." The minimum wage is only about 21,000 per month (ca. US$ 7.00 per month). Corruption is massive, and "justice" (as in most places in the world) is only accessible to the wealthy.

The injustices I have read about, seen, and felt recently, has made my last month's work with the NGO I am interning at that much more rewarding. It is truly an invaluable organization in a country with so many injustices and paralyzing poverty. Being surrounded by amazingly beautiful and strong people, facing the kind of poverty and problems that I wish on no one but am grateful to be able to help address, and learning from the paralegals and founders of the organization, have made my time with Timap for Justice a humbling and invaluable experience.

Sierra Leone is divided up into chiefdoms and districts. I live in the Tonkolili district, under the Kholifa Rowalla Chiefdom. In the last month, the organization for which I have been working as a legal intern, is called Timap for Justice. "Timap" means "stand up" in the Krio language. I work with two paralegals, Zainab and Hassan. Mondays through Thursdays we work in Magburaka town, where our office is located. We conduct mediations, do intakes, go on follow ups, talk to chiefs, officials, etc. On occasion, we also travel outside of Magburaka for investigations as we did for the gold mining company case, of which I posted pictures some time ago. On Fridays, we have a mobile clinic where we visit other Chiefdoms in our district and encourage the village people to report problems to Timap for Justice. The most common cases my office has handled during my stay include family disputes, corruption by chiefs and other authority figures, land disputes, breaches of contract, and employment related disputes.

The paralegals, Hassan and Zainab, who I am working with, are amazing. They are really good at feeling out the people they help. They let them know they understand and they're thorough when informing their clients of their options to address their issues. Working for Timap for Justice and with amazing paralegals like Hassan and Zainab has shown me how much I need to be doing this kind of work right now and in the future.