Human Rights and Access to Justice

Organizations and advocates, members of the Women in Prison Network convened by the Vance Center, submitted open letters to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The letter draws the Commissions’ attention to new research that has identified the severe risks women in detention throughout the African and American regions face regarding their health, safety, and basic human rights as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. It also calls on the Commissions’ support in ensuring that women in prison throughout Africa and the Americas, a vulnerable – and often forgotten – group, are not left behind in the COVID-19 response. The letters refer to research conducted by the Vance Center ‘s Women in Prison Project in collaboration with 15 organizations from the Network to assess government responses to the crisis in detention centers for women in the Global South. The Women in Prison Network  includes 45 individual advocates and 34 organizations from a total of 21 countries representing every continent and is a safe space for advocates to share information and best practices, seek collaborations, and build capacity for improved monitoring and reporting of conditions in women’s prisons worldwide.

The Vance Center assisted The Center for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD), an international NGO whose mission is to mitigate and resolve armed conflict through dialogue and mediation, in advising the government of the Central African Republic (CAR) regarding revising the Nationality Code. Denial of full citizenship to CAR Muslims was one of the root causes of the recent violence between predominantly Muslim and Christian armed groups. Vance Center law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP conducted a comparative research of nationality laws in Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, and South Africa to identify best practices and lessons learned and made recommendations on how CAR can reform its nationality regime to be more inclusive and protective of minority groups.

The Vance Center, in collaboration with the National Conference of Afro-Colombian Organizations (CNOA in Spanish), brought together more than 40 Afro-Colombian women leaders from across Colombia for a seminar on how to maximize their participation in the peace process following the historic peace accords between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The results of the seminar were later compiled in a manual which summarizes the concerns and expectations of Afro-Colombian women regarding participation in the transitional justice process and suggests strategies for maximizing this participation, including in their interactions with the government and other key players in the peace process.  While the peace accords call for the participation of victims and Afro-Colombian communities in the post-conflict transition, these groups so far have been mostly excluded. This project seeks to fulfill this key promise of the peace accords and enable Afro-Colombian women, a particularly vulnerable segment of the victims’ community, to participate effectively in the transitional justice process.