With a background in environmental law and environmental justice advocacy, Caitlin has worked for a decade in fundraising, organizational development, and strategic planning for social impact organizations. She has raised millions of dollars in collaboration with NGO leaders, first as a senior member of the program and operations teams for Women’s Earth Alliance, and subsequently as a consultant and facilitator to organizations across the United States. Previously, she built and directed a legal advocacy network linking pro bono lawyers with grassroots environmental justice activists. Caitlin received her B.A. from Stanford University and her J.D. with an environmental law certificate from UC Berkeley School of Law.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
The TAP Network is excited to present “Advocacy: Justice and the SDGs,” a guide for civil society, activists, and policy practitioners. It is our hope that it will help its users use the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to successfully advocate for a national justice plan in their country. We are united in our belief that legal empowerment and access to justice are essential to the overall success of the SDGs.
This how-to resource guide is an online version of the “Advocacy: Justice and the SDGs” guide, which is available to download as a complete resource here. The online version that follows below separates the publication into individual chapters and includes links to related resources in each section.
This expanded edition presents regional and country perspectives on access to land for the rural poor from the eight countries-Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines and Sri Lanka. It makes assessments of land reforms and their implementation, and the legal frameworks and conditions necessary to advance land rights. The publication also examines the changing roles of government, the private sector, NGOs and civil society in influencing agrarian reform and sustainable development for the rural poor. Finally, it puts forward an agenda for actors and activists in pursuit of more equitable access to land in the Asian region.
According to statistics from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) , as at the 31st of March 2017, Cameroon is host to over 600,000 refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons (IDPs) from 26 countries. The majority of them come from Nigeria, the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Niger. These persons have been forced out of their country of origin for political, economic or social reasons. Amongst them, less than 1% is ‘resettled ‘ to countries where their rights are respected. Most of them have remained in Cameroon as their country of first asylum where their rights as refugees are not respected and their humane conditions are deteriorating.
Cameroon is a Signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, Its Optional Protocols as well as the 1969 OUA Convention on the Treatment of Refugees in Africa. In the year 2005, Cameroon passed a national law on the protection of refugees. Yet, the law {supra) is at variance with the Constitution of Cameroon and the UN Refugee Convention. A major and critical problem is that of the determination of the status of refugees (RSD), which is left in the hands of the Office of the UN Refugee Agency alone and the local Courts have been totally excluded.. The 2005 law permits denied applicants to appeal within 30 days of notification but does not allow ordinary Courts to review decisions, yet as per the 2006 ordinance of Judicial Organization as amended, the competent High Courts are charged with the determination of the status of persons in Cameroon. Applicants submit their appeals to the same UN Refugee Agency for review and hearings are scheduled by the same UN Refugee Agency within three months. No known case of a refugee receiving representation by a Lawyer has been documented. Without the determination of their status, these persons can not have access to other services like health care, work, housing, education, and other entitlements.
Assam has the highest maternal mortality rate in India, a country that, overall, accounted for some 50,000 of the 289,000 maternal deaths worldwide in 2013. From 2011 to 2013, 167 Indian women died for every 100,000 live births. In Assam the figure was nearly double that at 300. Yet many of these deaths could have been prevented, but for lack of resources. Even as India’s economy expands, the World Bank estimates that from 2010 to 2013, the country spent less on public health as a proportion of GDP than poorer nations like Sierra Leone, Cameroon and Nepal.
The consequences were clear to photographer Lynsey Addario when she arrived in Assam in April with an Indian human-rights nonprofit backed by the U.S. charity Every Mother Counts.
Each year, around half a million Indonesians travel abroad to work, half of those to the Middle East. Many are women who suffer abuse and exploitation when they work abroad but have virtually no access to recourse within their host country’s legal system. The vulnerability of migrant workers abroad makes it crucial for them to be able to seek redress in their own countries.
Migrant Workers’ Access to Justice at Home: Indonesia is the first comprehensive study of migrant workers’ access to justice in their country of origin. A collaborative effort by the Open Society International Migration Initiative, the Tifa Foundation, and the Migrant Worker Access to Justice Project, the report analyzes how migrant workers may access justice in Indonesia, and identifies the systemic barriers that prevent them from receiving redress for harms they suffer before, during, and after their work abroad.
The report also provides recommendations for improving access to justice and private sector accountability in 11 key areas, addressed to government, parliament, civil society, donors, and others. The report has in Bahasa.
This resource is also available in English.
Each year, around half a million Indonesians travel abroad to work, half of those to the Middle East. Many are women who suffer abuse and exploitation when they work abroad but have virtually no access to recourse within their host country’s legal system. The vulnerability of migrant workers abroad makes it crucial for them to be able to seek redress in their own countries.
Migrant Workers’ Access to Justice at Home: Indonesia is the first comprehensive study of migrant workers’ access to justice in their country of origin. A collaborative effort by the Open Society International Migration Initiative, the Tifa Foundation, and the Migrant Worker Access to Justice Project, the report analyzes how migrant workers may access justice in Indonesia, and identifies the systemic barriers that prevent them from receiving redress for harms they suffer before, during, and after their work abroad.
The report also provides recommendations for improving access to justice and private sector accountability in 11 key areas, addressed to government, parliament, civil society, donors, and others.The report is also available in Bahasa.
This resource is the first in the Open Society Foundations’ Migrant Workers’ Access to Justice Series. The second report, Migrant Workers’ Access to Justice at Home: Nepal, was published in 2014.
Stateless persons including Vietnamese and Khmer Krom who are living in the country have been considered as one of the many persisting challenges in Cambodia society. As one of the many developing countries in South East Asia, Cambodia is acutely met with the complexity of the issue; Statelessness in Cambodia has been a matter of significant concerns for the last decade. It’s become a political agenda for political parties in the country. Especially, the ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia is one of the minority groups most at risk of statelessness while the Khmer Krom has the same situation.
At the present, the exact number of stateless people is not known, but UNHCR estimates that there are at least 10 million globally situated in all regions of the world. Approximately one third of these are children. Otherwise, the statistics reveals that there were 1.4 million stateless persons or persons at risk of statelessness in Asia and included Vietnam (11,500) but exact number of stateless persons in Cambodia was unknown or not addressed. The statelessness of these persons leaves them socially disadvantaged in being unable to economic rights and entitlements afforded to those with a nationality.
The study aims to achieve the following objectives: 1) Research on the situation in relation to legal documents among ethnic Vietnamese and Khmer Krom Refugee, and 2) Meet the expected outputs through collecting legal status and the possession of identification papers of Vietnamese minority members and Khmer Krom in various communities in three provinces.
This report can be found in English here.
Stateless persons including Vietnamese and Khmer Krom who are living in the country have been considered as one of the many persisting challenges in Cambodia society. As one of the many developing countries in South East Asia, Cambodia is acutely met with the complexity of the issue; Statelessness in Cambodia has been a matter of significant concerns for the last decade. It’s become a political agenda for political parties in the country. Especially, the ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia is one of the minority groups most at risk of statelessness while the Khmer Krom has the same situation.
At the present, the exact number of stateless people is not known, but UNHCR estimates that there are at least 10 million globally situated in all regions of the world. Approximately one third of these are children. Otherwise, the statistics reveals that there were 1.4 million stateless persons or persons at risk of statelessness in Asia and included Vietnam (11,500) but exact number of stateless persons in Cambodia was unknown or not addressed. The statelessness of these persons leaves them socially disadvantaged in being unable to economic rights and entitlements afforded to those with a nationality.
The study aims to achieve the following objectives: 1) Research on the situation in relation to legal documents among ethnic Vietnamese and Khmer Krom Refugee, and 2) Meet the expected outputs through collecting legal status and the possession of identification papers of Vietnamese minority members and Khmer Krom in various communities in three provinces.
This report can be found in Khmer here.
This publication provides examples from partner countries as well as tools and concepts on mainstreaming human rights. The issue briefs provide, for example, information on: defining ‘Mainstreaming Human Rights’, the UN human rights system, a checklist for development policies and programs, as well as case studies from Argentina, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Guatemala, and Liberia. The aim of this folder of issue briefs is to make the growing body of experience of UNDP and its partners in mainstreaming human rights in development policies and programs accessible to a wider audience
The online link for this resource also has versions of this publication in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish.