Job Opening: Egypt Researcher at Human Rights Watch (Regionally-Based)

[Logo of Human Rights Watch. Image from hrw.org] [Logo of Human Rights Watch. Image from hrw.org]

Job Opening: Egypt Researcher at Human Rights Watch (Regionally-Based)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

FULL-TIME JOB VACANCY
RESEARCHER ON EGYPT

Middle East and North Africa Division
(TBD but MENA Office preferred)
Application Deadline: May 23, 2014

Human Rights Watch (“HRW”) is seeking a Researcher to monitor the human rights situation in Egypt. This position will report to the Director of the Middle East and North Africa (“MENA”) Division. The position will preferably be based in the MENA region.

Responsibilities:

  1. Monitor and document human rights abuses in Egypt by collecting and analyzing information from a wide variety of sources including governments, local media, NGOs, journalists, diplomats, security forces, and others in the field;
  2. Write and publicize reports, briefing papers, letters, news releases, op-eds, and submissions to national and international bodies on human rights concerns in Egypt as needed in a concise and accurate manner, with a quick turnaround time;
  3. Develop and implement local, regional, and international strategies to change abusive laws, policies, and practices in Egypt;
  4. Respond promptly to queries from the media, public, and colleagues in the human rights community;
  5. Place abuses within the broader political, social and economic contexts and present human rights concerns to government officials, opinion leaders, inter-governmental agencies, and the media;
  6. Work closely with colleague non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and local human rights organizations to ensure that HRW’s work complements and enhances their own work;
  7. Liaise effectively with HRW staff located in multiple locations throughout the world to ensure effective coordination and delivery of activities;
  8. Be prepared and willing to work flexible hours to accommodate developing and urgent events;
  9. Travel domestically and overseas, as required, to conduct fact-finding missions;
  10. Deliver outputs in a timely manner and be consistent with the agreed strategy and priorities of the MENA division; and
  11.  Carry out any other duties as required.

Qualifications

Education: An advanced (graduate) degree in international relations, regional studies, journalism, law, or social sciences and/or extensive experience in human rights or related work are required.

Experience: Minimum three years of directly-related experience working on human rights or related issues in Egypt or the Middle East and North Africa region.

Related Skills and Knowledge 

  1. Ability to identify, research, analyze and effectively communicate important human rights developments in a timely and sophisticated fashion is required.
  2. Ability and sensitivity to conduct interviews with a wide range of people, including victims and witnesses are required.
  3. Ability to efficiently distil information about Egypt so as to focus time and effort on issues of greatest importance or issues that are most capable of being influenced is required.
  4. Ability to produce excellent written material under tight deadlines is required.
  5. Ability to identify and advise the MENA division in developing and implementing advocacy strategies in order to seize advocacy opportunities is required.
  6. Ability to respond quickly to crises and conflicts as they may occur.
  7. Excellent oral and written communication skills in English are required. Proficiency in Arabic is strongly desired.
  8. Ability to think strategically about the global and local media environments and how to use the media and electronic media to further advocacy goals is strongly preferred.
  9. Knowledge of and experience working in international human rights and familiarity with international human rights law is preferred.
  10. Strong interpersonal skills, in order to work collaboratively within HRW as well as with local partners, government officials, and others.
  11. Strong initiative and follow-through, the capacity to think creatively and strategically, and dynamic public speaking ability are required.
  12. Ability to multi-task effectively, including having good planning and organizing skills and ability to work under pressure are required.
  13. Ability to make sound decisions consistent with functions is required.
  14. Demonstrated ability to think strategically about the global and local media environments and how to use the media and electronic media to further advocacy goals is desirable.

Other: S/he must be willing to travel frequently and be prepared to spend extensive periods in the field. This position will preferably be based in one of Human Rights Watch’s offices located in the Middle East region.

Salary and Benefits

HRW seeks exceptional applicants and offers competitive compensation and employer-paid benefits. HRW offers a relocation assistance package and will assist employees in obtaining necessary work authorization, if required; citizens of all nationalities are encouraged to apply.

Contact

Please submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, salary requirements, a brief writing sample (unedited by others), and contact information for three references tomenajobs@hrw.org<mailto:menajobs@hrw.org>. Please use “Egypt Researcher Ref MENA-14-1016-B” as the subject of your email.

Only complete applications will be reviewed and only qualified candidates will be contacted.

Human Rights Watch is an equal opportunity employer that does not discriminate in its hiring practices and, in order to build the strongest possible workforce, actively seeks a diverse applicant pool.

Human Rights Watch is an international human rights monitoring and advocacy organization known for its in-depth investigations, its incisive and timely reporting, its innovative and high-profile advocacy campaigns, and its success in changing the human rights-related policies and practices of influential governments and international institutions.

http://www.hrw.org/employment/2014/04/22/researcher-egypt

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412