Kelberer in HuffPo: Syria from the Sidelines
Vicky Kelberer, MA Candidate at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, shared her experiences of being in a Swiss human rights NGO during the heady days of the Arab Spring.
Kelberer wrote her story in an article published Jan. 26 on the Huffington Post’s international news blog The World Post entitled “Syria from the Sidelines: Working in Human Rights in the Thick of the Arab Spring.”
From the text of the article:
The NGO is small, yet it submits a large portion of the cases from the Arab world to the UN human rights Special Procedures Bodies. In March, while violent repression was spreading, there was still hope for relatively peaceful transitions. The day I started work, the Syrian regime released a longtime human rights activist whose case the NGO had repeatedly submitted to the UN since his latest arrest two years earlier. It was part of a larger amnesty of political prisoners over 70, however, and as the majority of his sentence had been served, this was one of many empty gestures the Syrian regime would make to suppress protests. Like so many hopeful moments that spring, it would prove to be the exception to what would happen in the following years, not the rule.
You can read the entire article here.
Kelberer is a prior contributor to the Huffington Post, as well as a Graduate Co-Chair of the Pardee School Initiative on Forced Migration and Human Trafficking.