Current Tolan Grant Recipients: 2009-2010

Sarah Braasch (’09)

Sarah Braasch will work with Ni Putes, Ni Soumises (NPNS) in Paris, France. The primary goal of NPNS is to combat gender discrimination and violence. NPNS promotes the aims of gender desegregation, equality, and secularism, in order to advance human rights, democracy, and rule of law. Sarah will contribute to the work of NPNS by helping them create a sexual and reproductive rights project, which will focus on women residing in the insular Muslim immigrant communities in the ghettoized suburbs of Paris. Sarah previously worked in Rabat, Morocco at the Moroccan Organization for Human Rights (Organisation Marocaine des Droits Humains – OMDH) with the support of a Leitner Fellowship. Sarah also interned at the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Madison, Wisconsin and the United Nations Development Programme in New York. She was a student in the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic during the spring semester of 2008. She received her undergraduate degrees in aerospace engineering and mechanics and mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1997.

Aya Fujimura-Fanselow (’04)

Aya Fujimura-Fanselow will be based in Kathmandu, Nepal with the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). The ICTJ established a full-time presence in Nepal in August 2007. The ICTJ works with countries that are pursuing accountabilities for past atrocities and human rights abuses by participating in the development of integrated, comprehensive, and localized approaches to transitional. Aya will work with the ICTJ and their partner organizations, including Advocacy Forum, to disseminate a forthcoming report on the impact of the recent 10-year long “people’s war” on women. She will assist the ICTJ, Advocacy Forum and other local partners as they advocate for increased participation by women in the transitional justice process. Aya will also be involved in capacity-building efforts with the goal of ensuring that NGOs have the information and tools to document gender-based violence. Finally, working closely with the National Women’s Commission, Aya will monitor transitional justice initiatives and provide analyses to ensure that gender is integrated into this process. She has previously worked with Amnesty International in Tokyo, the Fourth World Movement in New York, the Center for Reproductive Rights’ International Legal Program in New York, and most recently the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York. Immediately following her graduation from law school, she was a Georgetown Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow based at Bread for the City in Washington, D.C.

Identity Withheld

A third Tolan Fellow will work with Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its Middle East and North Africa (MENA) division on topics related to child rights, women’s rights and due process in the region. Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention to where human rights are violated, HRW gives voice to the oppressed and holds oppressors accountable for their crimes. The Middle East and North Africa division is one of six regional divisions. The identity of the Fellow is being withheld for security reasons.

Former Tolan Grant Recipients: 2007- 2009

2008-2009 James E. Tolan Fellows

Julie Ebenstein (`07)

Julie worked with Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) in Johannesburg, South Africa.  Temporary shelter settlements have recently been erected in South Africa in response to a wave of violence against immigrants and asylum seekers.  With LHR, Julie monitored the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in these facilities, and at Refugee Reception Centers, detention centers and deportation facilities.  She visited the main point of border entry for Zimbabwean asylum seekers, to observe and document human rights abuses in the border entry process.  She also participated in impact litigation with LHR̓s Strategic Litigation Unit challenging South Africa̓s current asylum process and refugee detention policies.  She previously worked in Johannesburg at the Southern Africa Litigation Centre with the support of a Leitner Fellowship.  Following law school, she won a fellowship to work in establishing a Legal Assistance Center within Mae La refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border.

Soo-Ryun Kwon (`08)

Soo worked with the International Refugee Rights Initiative, an organization based in Kampala, Uganda that aims to enhance the protection of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and the stateless on the African continent.  She aided in the implementation of a litigation strategy on behalf of refugees, IDPs, and the stateless before the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights.  In addition, she worked on formulating a series of recommendations following a compilation of studies on international criminal justice mechanisms, including the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the International Criminal Court.  In addition to these two long-term projects, she wrote on the impact that the rhetoric of terrorism has had on migration, research the interaction of African and European migration policies, and provide support for a consortium of women's rights activists involving gender violence in Darfur.  She previously worked at the AIDS and Human Rights Research Unit at the University of Pretoria on a Leitner Fellowship, where she researched the antiretroviral medication access rights of asylum seekers in South Africa for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

2007-2008 James E. Tolan Fellow

Brian Honermann (`07)

As the first Tolan Fellow, Brian worked with Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and the AIDS Law Project (ALP), the two premiere organizations campaigning for the treatment and prevention of HIV and AIDS in South Africa. Brian provided legal research for on-going litigation to ensure human rights obligations are upheld and proper medicine advertising regulations enforced. He also co-ordinated with the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor to develop new economic approaches to poverty eradication, such as reducing barriers to the formal legal system, advocating for recognition of property rights for the poor, and legally empowering informal businesses to grow and develop within formal economic structures. In law school, he was a 2005-2006 Crowley Scholar and participant in the 2006 Crowley Human Rights Fact-Finding mission to South Africa. He spent his law school summers as a Leitner Intern working with the HIV/AIDS organizations Grupo Pela VIDDA in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the Treatment Action Campaign in Cape Town, South Africa. His main research and interest is in international intellectual property rights regimes and their corresponding impact on health and development.

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