The Catch-Up with Carly A. Krakow

Episode 1 – URGENT SPECIAL EDITION

Humanitarian Catastrophe in Gaza:

Health Devastation, Environmental Destruction, and Impacts on People with Disabilities

Carly A. Krakow interviews Emina Ćerimović,
Senior Disability Rights Researcher, Human Rights Watch

This episode focuses on the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with coverage of dire current conditions including in-depth analysis by host Carly A. Krakow addressing the long-term, disastrous health and environmental consequences of the blockade and repeated military bombardments.

The episode features an interview with Emina Ćerimović, Senior Researcher on Disability Rights at Human Rights Watch, including testimonies Emina has collected from people with disabilities currently in Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing bombardment.

About The Catch-Up with Carly A. Krakow

The Catch-Up with Carly A. Krakow is a video podcast focused on international current affairs, covering politics, policy, and culture. The Catch-Up features analysis, interviews, and reports about human rights issues, environmental and climate justice, international law and politics, cinema and literature, and more. You can watch earlier editions of The Catch-Up from when it previously aired as Carly A. Krakow’s recurring segment on Live with ASI, the Arab Studies Institute’s monthly live broadcast program. This episode marks the launch of The Catch-Up as a freestanding podcast. Welcome (back) to all viewers!

Host

Carly A. Krakow (@CarlyKrakow) is a writer, journalist, and scholar of environmental and climate justice, international law, and human rights. She writes for publications including Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, The Progressive, Opinio Juris, Jadaliyya, E-International Relations, openDemocracy, Truthout, and the academic journal Water. She is a faculty member at NYU’s Gallatin School, where her current teaching focuses on environmental justice. At the London School of Economics, she is a Judge Higgins Scholar and Modern Law Review Scholar, currently finalizing her doctoral manuscript addressing the impacts of environmental injustice on displaced and marginalized communities. She is Managing Editor for Special Projects and Environment Co-Editor at Jadaliyya. For Jadaliyya and the Arab Studies Institute, she has hosted and produced broadcast and podcast programs, and currently hosts The Catch-Up with Carly A. Krakow, a video podcast focused on international current affairs.

Carly has extensive experience researching and reporting on international climate justice and negotiations, recently including at COP27 in Egypt and at UN Headquarters in New York, and on international justice and policy institutions in The Hague and Geneva. She speaks widely at international events about climate, environment, and human rights issues, including on her original concept of “toxic saturation,” focused on the long-term consequences of forced toxic exposure. Her research has focused on the rights of displaced and Indigenous communities in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, and on the rights of people with disabilities. Over multiple periods of research in Palestine, she investigated water access and exposure to toxins in the West Bank. In South Africa, she analyzed the impacts of Cape Town’s water crisis on the city’s most marginalized communities. In Greece, she examined living conditions and access to healthcare for asylum-seekers and refugees. Carly earned her MPhil in International Relations and Politics from the University of Cambridge, where she wrote a Distinction-awarded dissertation on the international law and politics of water access in the Middle East, and her BA summa cum laude with a concentration in Human Rights Law, Environmental Policy, and Comparative Literature from NYU. Read more about her work at www.carlykrakow.com.

Guest

Emina Ćerimović (@EminaCerimovic) is a senior researcher on disability rights at Human Rights Watch. She leads the organization’s work on the protection of people with disabilities in situations of risk and humanitarian emergencies worldwide. She has also documented shackling and abuses against people with mental health conditions in Nigeria, the institutionalization of children and adults with disabilities in Croatia and Serbia, and discrimination in access to education for children with disabilities. Before joining Human Rights Watch, Ćerimović worked with the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina and with the State Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ćerimović holds a law degree from the University of Sarajevo and an LLM in Human Rights with a Specialization in EU Law from the Central European University in Budapest. She speaks Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, English, and Swedish.

Resources related to analysis by Carly A. Krakow

Carly A. Krakow’s previous Jadaliyya and Live with ASI interviews about Palestine mentioned in this episode, with Noura Erakat, Ilan Pappe, Hind Shoufani, and Beshara Doumani
Noura Erakat’s PalFest speech, “In This Moment,” 1 November 2023
Gaza in Context Teach-In: “Gaza 101,” 20 October 2023, including remarks by Sherene Seikaly featured in this episode
Carly A. Krakow, “Toxic Saturation and Health Devastation in Iraq: The Indelible Damage of War (Part 1),” 17 February 2021, Jadaliyya
Carly A. Krakow, “President Biden’s focus on environmental justice has a crucial blind spot,” 13 June 2023, The Washington Post
Carly A. Krakow, “Settlement expansion in the Occupied West Bank – Part 1: unjust pasts and interrupted futures,”and “Part 2: resisting disrupted futures,” February 2020, openDemocracy
Carly A. Krakow, “President Biden, Meet Gaza’s Children. Then Will You Stop Arms Sales to End ‘Cycles of Violence’?,” 5 June 2021 (blog post)
Sara Roy, The Gaza Strip:The Political Economy of De-Development (Institute for Palestine Studies, Expanded Third Edition, 2016)

Ahmad, a child in Gaza who was injured by an Israeli airstrike and had to have his right leg amputated. A still from Al Jazeera’s “Living with trauma: Palestinian children share their stories.”

Resources from interview with Emina Ćerimović, Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch, Gaza: Israeli Attacks, Blockade Devastating for People with Disabilities, 1 November 2023
Human Rights Watch, Gaza: Israeli Restrictions Harm People with Disabilities, 3 December 2020
Abier Almasri, “Locked Out of Gaza’s Permanent Lockdown,” 22 April 2020, Human Rights Watch
Nujeen Mustafa, “I Am Not a Number: A Refugee’s Tale,” TEDxExeter Talk, 2017

An image from Human Rights Watch’s new report, Gaza: Israeli Attacks, Blockade Devastating for People with Disabilities. Three men help a man in a wheelchair move amid the rubble and destruction in the southern Gaza Strip on October 22, 2023. © 2023 SAID KHATIB/AFP via Getty Images.

Selected previous editions of The Catch-Up from Live with ASI and other broadcast programs hosted by Carly A. Krakow

Palestinian Cinema: Memory, Poetry, Politics [Hind Shoufani in Conversation with Carly A. Krakow] (Video) (August 2021)
Yemen: Beyond Breaking News – Afrah Nasser in Conversation with Carly A. Krakow (Video) (June 2021)
The Catch-Up with Carly A. Krakow: International Current Affairs (Live with ASI Ep. 2.3, September 2021)
The Catch-Up with Carly A. Krakow: International Current Affairs (Live with ASI Ep. 2.1, June 2021)
The Catch-Up with Carly A. Krakow: International Current Affairs (Live with ASI Ep. 9, May 2021)
The Catch-Up with Carly A. Krakow: International Current Affairs (Live with ASI Ep. 8, April 2021)
The Catch-Up with Carly A. Krakow: International Current Affairs (Live with ASI Ep. 7, March 2021)
The Catch-Up with Carly A. Krakow: International Current Affairs (Live with ASI Ep. 6, February 2021)

The Catch-Up with Carly A. Krakow, Ep. 1 – Humanitarian Catastrophe in Gaza: Health Devastation, Environmental Destruction, and Impacts on People with Disabilities, w/ guest Emina Ćerimović (Video)