Worldfocus Radio: Haiti and DR — Unequal Neighbors
I produced this radio show for Worldfocus.org.
In the aftermath of last week’s earthquake in Haiti, the Dominican Republic has expressed solidarity with its neighbor.
Though Haiti and the DR share the island of Hispaniola, their histories, cultures and economies greatly differ. Racial tensions, stateless children and immigrant violence have created tensions along the border.
Martin Savidge hosts Marselha Gonçalves Margerin of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights and Michele Wucker of the World Policy Institute to discuss these unequal neighbors.
The show explores:
- the intertwined but distinct histories
- Haitian migrants in the DR and Dominicans of Haitian descent
- migration and trade along the border
- the statelessness of children born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian migrants
- the role of the Dominican Republic, the U.S. and international community
Worldfocus Radio: Failed states
I produced this online radio show for Worldfocus.org.
Somalia, Zimbabwe and Sudan topped the list of failed states this year — rankings based on human rights, governance, economic activity and other indicators.
Also among the top 10 are Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Poverty is endemic in many failed or failing states; in others, the government has lost legitimacy and control. As economic pressures increase with the global financial crisis, and environmental pressures contribute to water and food shortages, even more countries are at risk of failure.
But these dire conditions have implications far beyond individual borders, as failed states — with their high rates of poverty and violence — may serve as breeding grounds for terrorists with global ambitions.
Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show explores what it means for a state to fail, from the impact on daily life to widespread geopolitical ripple effects.
Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge hosts a panel of guests:
Pauline Baker is the president of The Fund for Peace, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing war and alleviating the conditions that cause conflict. She has also served as an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and is a professorial lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Christopher Boucek is a research associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on regional security challenges. Before joining the Carnegie Endowment, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University and lecturer in Politics at the Woodrow Wilson School. Boucek has written widely on the Middle East, Central Asia, and terrorism.
Georgette Gagnon is the director of the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch and led a research mission to Darfur in 2004. She previously investigated human rights violations in Rwanda and directed the Human Rights Department at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Worldfocus Radio: Statelessness
I produced this online radio show for Worldfocus.org.
Imagine you have no birth certificate, no passport and no legal rights. You’re trapped in the country where you were born, but no document indicates that you even exist. The state doesn’t recognize you, so you can’t vote, you can’t access education and you can’t obtain formal employment.
This is a worst-case situation, but across the globe, between 12 and 15 million people live in various stages of statelessness, which means they lack citizenship in any country.
Some of the most notably stateless people include the Palestinians of the Middle East, the ethnic Tutsis of Central Africa, some Roma in Europe and Haitian children in the Dominican Republic.
Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show explored the common themes that surface among stateless people — economic discrimination, social exclusion, identity and the feeling of invisibility.
Martin Savidge hosted the following guests:
Bill Berkeley, previously an investigative reporter and editorial writer at The New York Times, teaches journalism at Columbia University. He is the author of The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of Africa and a forthcoming book on statelessness.
Dawn Calabia is a senior adviser for Refugees International. She has 30 years of experience with foreign policy analysis, human rights issues and public advocacy. She has handled governmental and non-governmental relations in the U.S. and the Caribbean for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and has led numerous fact-finding missions to Central America, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa.
The show also includes audio clips from:
Julia Harrington, a senior legal officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative, who explains how her organization uses legal channels to advocate for stateless people. Julia has brought cases before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Adam Hussein, who was born stateless as a Nubian in Kenya, and is currently the project coordinator of the Open Society East Africa Initiative.
Samira Trad, the director of Beirut-based Frontiers-Ruwad, a human rights NGO.
Worldfocus: Stateless to Stathood (ongoing multimedia project)
I’m working on a summer-long multimedia project on statelessness.
Every day, 12 to 15 million people wake up as citizens of no nation at all. These men, women and children are scattered across six continents and excluded from virtually all the benefits of nationality - a passport, the right to vote, land ownership, access to health care and legal employment. From Rohingyas in Myanmar to Nubians in Kenya and Haitians in the Dominican Republic, stateless people live without the protection and recognition of the governments that rule the places where they live.
On June 10, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the first-ever legislation to recognize and reduce statelessness, which also addressed issues of global stability and security. The issue encompasses a tangle of nationalistic politics, international human rights law and ethnic discrimination.
This de jure statelessness — meaning, lack of legal status of nationality and citizenship — is often conflated with peoples seeking states of their own. Worldfocus’ project “Stateless to Statehood” traces a continuum — from people with literally no citizenship to groups striving for national self-determination. “Stateless to Statehood” examines the root causes of statelessness in the post-colonial period, the break-up of empires and the aftermath of major wars. We’re identifying potential ways to solve statelessness via legal and political avenues, as well as exploring the themes of nationalism and ethnic identity.
Theme design by Borja Fernandez.