Filipino law student chosen for TrialWatch program under Amal and George Clooney
Credit to Author: nguno| Date: Fri, 31 May 2019 10:25:32 +0000
One Filipino student in New York is part of a select team working on an initiative by Amal and George Clooney to ensure human rights are upheld in court trials.
Andie Reyes, a second-year student at Columbia Law School, was chosen to work for the TrialWatch program under the Clooney Foundation for Justice.
TrialWatch, launched last April, monitors trials that pose a high risk of human rights violations. Its partners are Columbia Law School and the American Bar Association, and the program is housed in Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Clinic.
Reyes told INQUIRER.net in an email interview that the clinic gives a handful of students the chance to work on human rights initiatives in small teams. She was one of three students chosen in a competitive application process.
She said, “This was the first year TrialWatch was a project on the clinic, so it was very cool feeling like we were building the project from the ground up; that felt like a really special opportunity that not many people get to do as students!”
Working with Professor Clooney
Reyes could only gush about working with Amal, whom she refers to as “Professor Clooney.” She said even with Amal’s stellar career and high-profile clients whom she has represented in international courts, she “acts like a normal human being.”
“She is absolutely incredible, inspiring, funny, down-to-earth. I don’t know how she does it—she’s kind, easy to talk to, but just so sharp and so knowledgeable about the work,” Reyes said.
“She also made time for us as students to really talk to her about our thoughts on how the project should proceed, our research conclusions, etc. She’s a truly incredible human being, so committed and passionate about the work, and that’s really inspiring.”
During the launch, Reyes was excited when George Clooney cited her research in his speech. “I’d done most of the research on abortion laws and how women who have miscarriages can be prosecuted for abortions in some countries—so it was really amazing to hear George Clooney talking about that research in his opening speech during our official launch!”
Of course, she could not help but get starstruck at the Hollywood star. “He also asked us if we had had coffee that morning when we met him and kinilig ako (I felt giddy) hahaha.”
From environmental research to policy work
Reyes’ background was not initially on the path to a legal career. She graduated from Ateneo de Manila University with an undergraduate degree in environmental science.
It was working in the Ateneo School of Government (ASoG) under Dean Tony La Viña that she became involved with projects on climate change and environmental policy.
“Part of that work included being involved in the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which was very cool and definitely sparked my interest in policy/legal work,” she said.
Working with lawyers in ASoG opened her to a new perspective on environmental science. “I thought their training gave them a skill set that allowed them to do a variety of things,” she explained. “Environmental science had been interesting and I enjoyed the work, but I was coming to realize that I preferred policy work over pure scientific research.”
Reyes applied to law schools in the country and abroad, ultimately deciding on studying in Columbia when she was accepted.
“I thought it would be really valuable to live in a place that was different from where I’ve been my whole life, and Columbia as an institution offered so many opportunities for me to do international work,” she said.
When she got to law school, she had her eyes set on environmental work, but Columbia brought unexpected opportunities. She has been able to delve into the fields of technology with Microsoft and now human rights with TrialWatch. Microsoft is developing an app to monitor trials in courtrooms.
Reyes hopes to bring her experience and learnings from abroad back to the Philippines. “I do know that I want to come home after studying or working here for a few years. I think the work is really back home.”
TrialWatch in Zambia, Turkey
TrialWatch began in 2018 with the aim of holding courts accountable for human rights violations.
“[Human rights violations] can be done in a variety of ways, like if the judge isn’t impartial, or if a trial is dragged out, or even if a court upholds an existing law but it’s discriminatory, like criminalizing being LGBTQ,” Reyes said.
TrialWatch is addressing this by recruiting trial monitors on the ground who will be trained on what constitutes a fair trial based on international standards.
Reyes said monitoring starts with researching the country and a specific trial to make a “background memo.” “We want to make sure we’re capturing all the relevant political, historical and legal context before we begin monitoring,” she explained.
While observing a trial, a monitor answers a standardized set of questions. Legal experts will then refer to the data in grading a trial.
The collected information can be used to create a “Global Justice Index” to rank countries on how fair their judicial system is on trials.
For their first run, the group monitored trials in Zambia and Turkey. The countries chosen met their criteria: “They involved government critics, the trials had not yet begun (we wanted to monitor from the very beginning), and they were accessible to us to monitor.”
“For Zambia, the student team didn’t go in person but we coordinated with a few other Zambian law students who sent us their observations, but we worked on all the background information, we worked with the expert, etc.,” she said. “We did get to monitor trials in Turkey, and that was a very interesting and sobering experience.”
‘Infinitely rewarding work’
Reyes admitted that working on both law school and TrialWatch was “really tough” given that the workload was equivalent to having a job.
Adding to the challenge of the project was that it was completely new. “We sometimes had to deal with the fact that there weren’t real, concrete answers, or sometimes we would do a bunch of work and it turned out that we had to go in an entire different direction.”
“I’ve definitely worked on TrialWatch-related things during class (oops), and I had to miss a week of class when we went to Turkey,” she said. “But it’s infinitely rewarding work, and I’m always grateful to have the chance to do this work, even with classes going on.”
She said there is a plan to bring TrialWatch to other parts of the world, including the Philippines. In fact, she was encouraged by Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, who was a guest speaker at the TrialWatch Conference to launch the program.
“I got the chance to meet her afterwards. She said, ‘You have to bring this to the Philippines!’” Reyes recalled. “I hope that when the project is ready for launch, local monitors from the Philippines will sign up.” /ra
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