Attorney Mario Joseph speaking to prison inmates about their rights
Monday, May 13, 2013
Dear Friends,
This past Saturday, our colleague Mario Joseph of the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) delivered the commencement address to the graduates of the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law class of 2013. The McKinney School of Law also conferred on Mario a degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa. I thought I would share Mario’s remarks with you, because we are proud of him, but also because the speech explains in a powerful way how the inability to enforce basic human rights keeps people in Haiti and places like it poor and vulnerable to disasters.
My favorite part of Mario’s speech explains why vulnerable people need those of us who have the privilege of enforcing most of our basic rights to be “Rights Enforcers”—to use our professional skills, citizenship, rights of expression and assembly and checkbooks to help them to enforce their rights. It is a great articulation of the importance of the inspiring community that makes the work of BAI and IJDH possible. When you sign a petition, call your member of Congress, volunteer your time, attend an event or make a financial contribution, you are a Rights Enforcer, making a sustainable difference for people who really need our help.
I would encourage you to CLICK HERE and read the whole speech. It is not long, about 15 minutes. A few of the highlights are below. Thanks for being a Rights Enforcer!
Justice,
Brian Concannon Jr.
Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
666 Dorchester Avenue | Boston, MA 02127 | (617) 652-0876 | http://ijdh.org | info@ijdh.org
Excerpts from commencement address by Maître Mario Joseph to the graduates of the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, class of 2013, May 11, 2013:
When you think about my country, Haiti, I expect most of you picture misery--a country that is poor and that has endless bad luck with natural disasters. When I look at my country, I see the same misery you do, but I do not see it caused by a lack of resources or bad luck. I see Haiti's misery caused by a lack of rights enforcement. The inability to enforce rights keeps individual Haitians from earning, learning and voting their way out of poverty. It makes my country so vulnerable to stress that acts of nature that cause minor damage elsewhere cause catastrophes in Haiti. Even our 2010 earthquake was a rights enforcement disaster. Since then the earth has shook harder in Chile, in Japan and other places, causing a tiny fraction of the estimated 200,000 deaths that Haiti's earthquake caused. In Haiti many buildings--including my office and my house--suffered damage but did not collapse. Most of the buildings that did collapse on their occupants were constructed below building code standards on hillsides so steep that construction was, in principle, prohibited…
You probably have not thought of today's graduation as the culmination of years of rights enforcement. But you would not have even had the opportunity to deploy your hard work and intelligence without that enforcement. Like you, and me, my siblings and friends growing up in the village of Verrettes had the universally recognized human right to free, universal public education. But unlike you or me, their education rights were not enforced, so they did not go to school and today most of them cannot read. They are excluded, for life, from the immense economic, social and political advantages of literacy.
Today's ceremony is a fulfillment of a legal contract. You complied with years of financial, academic and social obligations to the McKinney School of Law, and in return the school is obligated to present you today with a really, really nice piece of paper. In order to fulfill your contractual obligations, you relied on the enforceability of a host of other contracts, with student loan lenders, employers, landlords, health insurance providers and others. You were protected from harm by your ability to enforce personal injury claims. You honed your skills and broadened your perspective in discussions protected by your right to free expression. Your civil rights protected you from discrimination and persecution. You stayed healthy because your right to potable water was enforced. So when I look out today over the Class of 2013, I see impressive individual accomplishment, but I also see impressive rights enforcement.
When I look out during visits to my family in my home village of Verrettes, I do not see rights enforcement. I see fertile rice fields that were taken from hard-working peasants by the dictatorships of my youth. I see women unable to enforce child support and alimony, which condemns them and their children to another generation of poverty. I pass houses where people who have been imprisoned or killed for organizing to demand economic, political and social rights once lived. I see the irrigation ditch, where my drinking water came from when I was a child, now contaminated with deadly cholera introduced to Haiti through the negligent and reckless acts of UN Peacekeepers…
When lawyers talk about rights, we usually talk about rights holders and duty bearers. In my experience, it is useful to enlarge this discussion to include another category, that of Rights Enforcers. By Rights Enforcers I mean not just judges and police. I mean the broader community of actors who help develop the conditions that allow rights enforcement for the most vulnerable in Haiti and in the United States. Lawyers are Rights Enforcers, of course, but so are policy makers, voters, journalists, donors to charity, consumers and many others…
As you continue along these different career paths, I would ask you to keep in mind the most vulnerable, in Indianapolis, in Haiti and elsewhere, and to keep in mind all the ways that you can serve as a highly-qualified and sorely-needed Rights Enforcer. Do what you can professionally, through your primary work or pro-bono projects. But also think of all the other ways you can be a Rights Enforcer, as a voter, as a community leader, a donor, a consumer, a member of a church or civic organization. In all these roles our basic legal skills--critical analysis of facts and law, and skilled communication of a position - are transferable to a range of tasks. Also remember that being a Rights Enforcer requires us to sometimes challenge powerful or popular institutions, and even our own beliefs.
In conclusion, I bid you a big "byenvini" or "welcome". First, byenvini to the ranks of law graduates and to the legal profession, which will provide you with a lifetime of privileges. But also, byenvini to the ranks of Rights Enforcers, which will provide you with a lifetime of opportunities to help those who really need your help.
Chapo ba, to the Class of 2013! And Mesi!