Strength & Solidarity

Relative to other marginalised people, the disability community had to wait a long time for their rights to be globally asserted. But the adoption, 15 years ago, of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) marked a major step forward, from the language of charity and medical strategies to the language of rights. Now widely ratified, the Convention has had a remarkable effec...

The spontaneous welcome given by Poland’s citizens to Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion drew applause all over the world. But there was another, less positive story –the open hostility shown to the black and brown, queer and Roma people also trying to cross to safety. Or worse, the brutal treatment being meted out by border guards to refugees from places like Syria and Afghanistan who were at t...

For minority communities it can be exhausting to sustain morale and self-confidence in the face of exclusion and stereotyping. Raheel Mohammed, director of Maslaha, a London-based organization dedicated to defending and supporting muslim communities, has been moved and inspired by the writings of Saidiya Hartman on waywardness –as a strategy to refuse oppression, even when you are a incarcerated....

Eighteen months ago, Shaharzad Akbar was still leading Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission and gave this podcast an insight into what it meant to try and infuse rights into the laws, institutions and culture of a country that was a crossroads for conflict and competing foreign interests. She acknowledged that for many, the language of human rights felt like a foreign import but she b...

Last month, Ferdinand Marcos Junior was elected president of the Philippines, thirty-six years after his father was chased from office by the People Power revolution in 1986.  For activists like Mary Jane Real, this is grim news, bringing back memories of brutal rule, torture and impunity. But an essay by Rebecca Solnit brings her a surprising insight. For a list of supplemental readings and addit...

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) didn’t give much thought to its internal processes in its early years. It was focused on those whose rights were being abused, not on building an administrative paragon. But with the organization expanding amid the 2011 revolution, ad hoc informality no longer seemed viable or appropriate. The leadership began to put new systems in place, and a bo...

In this second part of our episode featuring Libyan human rights lawyer Elham Saudi, we get an up-close look at international mediation efforts to broker an agreement between rival political actors and establish a stable democratic government in Libya. As a civil society representative in the UN-convened Libya Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF), Elham has a ringside seat from which to observe the com...

With the fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 ,four decades of tyranny came to an end and Libya experienced an all too brief period of optimism–its own Arab Spring. But the hopes were overwritten by a lawless and violent competition for power and resources, egged on by foreign actorskeen to access the country’s mineral wealth.  If you were an advocate of justice and human rights in...

For the human rights defender forced to leave their home country to get away from threats of violence or detention, there is a strange life ahead –of dislocation and adaption to a new culture, while remaining umbilically connected to their place of origin. Guatemalan activist Gabriel Wer shares a poem by celebrated Argentinian poet Juan Gelman who lived much of his life in exile.

It is 14 months since the military once again seized power in Myanmar, using merciless brutality to suppress civic protest. From day one of the coup in February 2021, millions of students, workers, opposition politicians, and professionals have mobilized daily with extraordinary courage. The International Crisis Group reports that 1,500 civilians have been killed and nearly 9,000 more arrested, ch...

Denise Levertov’s poem, Making Peace, says that we bring peace into the world by speaking it and for Ryan Figueiredo, there’s special meaning here for the social justice activist. Fighting to make rights and justice a reality inevitably causes in friction but that’s not a negative, Ryan says, it polishes us in the work that we do, perhaps-as the poem has it-“facets of the forming crystal.”

After the shock of Russia’s invasion, Ukrainians who did not enlist to fight mobilized around other pressing tasks. For human rights workers, one of the most obvious was documentation. There are multiple instances of Russian missiles hitting civilian targets – hospitals, residential buildings, schools and evacuation convoys – and local and international digital activists have rushed to collect the...

Most would agree that social justice and human rights movements should be led by those who need the change they’re fighting for. But what’s the best way to achieve that? In this episode, we hear about a South African organizational model that centers community ownership by electing leaders and board. But if a movement has to double as a professional NGO, meeting legal, bureaucratic and donor oblig...

Human rights lawyer and racial justice activist Nani Jansen Reventlow has been helping to build a vibrant digital rights field. But as important as online spaces are, she's worried that people tend to value online activism too highly. The late poet, musician and social critic, Gil Scott Heron helps her make the point.

In late 2019, activists across Sudan thought they had won a remarkable victory against military dictatorship and a transition to civilian rule had begun. Just two years later, though, their worst nightmare was realized when General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan declared the military was back. Those who had lived through the intense street battles of 2019, now faced a gruelling return to the barricades an...

Irish human rights leader Liam Herrick doesn’t know exactly how it happened, but one day he realized he had stopped reading even though he had always loved books. Inspired by his kids’ love of stories, he set out to regain the reading habit. For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, visit https://strengthandsolidarity.org/podcasts/ Contact us at p...

When the pandemic brought New York’s economy to a shuddering halt in 2020, there was a safety net for workers –if they were US citizens. But over half a million undocumented workers in the state weren’t included and faced a sudden loss of income. Strength & Solidarity returns with this close look at the “Fund Excluded Workers”campaign which used both street-level activism and behind-the-scenes...

Excerpted from Strength and Solidarity Episode 17. Queer rights activist Henry Koh reflects that in his home country Malaysia, the only space where queer people are acknowledged is on screen – in flamboyant characters played for laughs. He reflects on growing up gay in a society that expects you to stay in the closet. For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episod...

Strength & Solidarity returns this week with more conversations about global struggles to secure rights, equality and justice. We get curious about the tools and tactics activists are using and the strategies they adopt, and we ask what’s working, and why?  Join Akwe Amosu and her guests from all over the world – our first round of interviews look at activism in the US, Sudan, Libya and M...

The final episode of Season Two gets an up-close look at the roots of the increasingly prominent pro-Palestine solidarity campaign, BDS. Co-founder Omar Barghouti recalls the steps leading to the movement’s formation by a large coalition of Palestinian civil society groups, explains it’s architecture and describes some ofthe ways it has tried to have an impact. He rebuts accusations that BDS is an...

Excerpted from Strength and Solidarity Episode 15. When Mike Davis, CEO of Global Witness, wants to take a break from calling out states’ harm to the environment or corporate corruption, he dons a wetsuit and heads out into the waves.

South Korea’s human rights record looks quite good –unless you’re a member of a minority.  LGBTQI  persons, people of minority faiths and foreigners have a tough time, and it’s getting tougher. Human rights lawyer PillKyu Hwang is the director of the GongGam Human Rights Law Foundation, and works with other lawyers and activists to uphold and defend minority rights. He talks about the so...

Decades of police impunity against black citizens in the US were interrupted this year with a rare conviction for murder of Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed George Floyd. What changed? A bystander filmed the crime with her smart phone and made a cover-up impossible. All over the world, citizens and activists are using their phones the same way, to document violent repression. But what is the...

Excerpted from Strength and Solidarity Episode 14. Economic and social justice campaigner Ignacio Saiz tells us about a song that means a great deal to him -Balderrama, by the great Mercedes Sosa. It celebrates a famous bar in Argentina’s far northern town of Salta, whose musicians and regulars cherish the community that gathers there.

We’re devoting the whole of this episode to a conversation with Indian social justice campaigner Harsh Mander, a renowned activist on behalf of the poor, the marginalized and those suffering from identity-based hatred. He has worked in a host of campaigns especially on access to health services and food security, and against homelessness and child labour and he has taken a passionate stand against...