Education for All

Studying with friends

This morning was like any other morning, my day only got interesting when I got to class. In class we had a guest speaker named Sital Kalantry. She came in to talk about her work to get children in Colombia free primary school education and to guarantee it as a right. The thing that stood out to me was how long the process took. It took nearly 14 years and she still isn’t done. It was kind of discouraging thinking of how long it would take to have any progress. It became a little more discouraging when you looked at her strategy to go to many different treaty bodies, human rights commissions and many other things. It sounded like a lot of work over more than a decade. I found it pretty discouraging until she told us about the results of her work. Due to her work she and her team made free education a right in Colombia; she made great progress the indigenous people in getting them on board with filing a complaint to get their children free primary education. I could clearly see what a career in international human rights would look like. The job would be difficult, very long and pretty slow, but looking at the results of Kalantry’s work it is beyond rewarding and makes a difference. The presentation made me consider a career in international law even more. 

Our class ended early so I worked on my assignment that was due today, I sent it in, and then it was time for our TA session. In our last TA session my group talked about prostitution and the rights of refugees. It was interesting because there was some discourse. A lot wanted to follow the Nordic Model which is where you punish the buyers of sex and the prostitute faces no punishment. I disagree with it because that method will never stop prostitution or stop the problem of people being forced into prostitution. I preferred legalization because it addresses the fact that there will always be prostitution, it get rids of the demand for forced prostitution and it provides proper protection for the prostitution. The people who supported the Nordic Model were kind of weirded out about sex being a form of work. I understood that, but it shouldn’t be weird. Sex is natural and happens every day all the time so I wondered how it became so taboo and why it weirds people out a lot.

Our talk on refugees was pretty uneventful. Everyone basically agreed they should be giving every right a natural citizen. The only discourse was from my fellow classmate Brandon who said the nation should think of its people first. I found this extremely troubling because often that is used as an excuse just to strip people of their rights and if a refugee is accepted into their new nation the nation is theirs. They are just as much as a citizen as someone born in that nation. Brandon also thought that refugees were not trustworthy or more likely to commit acts of violence. I thought this was prejudice because they are fleeing from violence so why would they be more likely to cause it? I also thought that displayed the fact that people are afraid of things they don’t know or new things. 

Robison

After our last TA session sone of my classmates and I went to the beautiful courtroom that is outside our class to take pictures. The place was huge and wonderful because I hope that I will be working in place like that. After the courtroom

I went with Pooja, Sultana and Javaria to Starbucks. The only mentionable thing to happen was when I ordered my drink and they called out for Robinson and on the cup it said “Robison”. I wondered if I said my name wrong or something like that because I want to know where they got that extra letter.

After the Starbucks incident nothing happened besides me writing parts of our last assignment. Today was great and I think I am slowly accepting the fact that I will have to leave this wonderful place very soon. I will miss Cornell ,but I really want to be home.