On July 4^th we had the amazing opportunity to visit Human Rights Watch in which we were given a talk by Andrew Stroehlein, the European Media Director at Human Rights Watch, and briefed on major human rights issues today as well as how the NGO works. Stroehlein began by explaining that HRW does three main things: investigate human rights abuses, expose these abuses and push for change in the areas they are committed.

With this in mind, we began simply by asking questions and received some surprising answers. For instance, we all were taken aback when the UK left the EU on June 23, but we mostly thought of Brexit as an economic and political disaster, not one that would spur human rights abuses. Stroehlein informed us, however, that with Brexit there had been a rise in xenophobic attacks. As one of the reasons the UK left the EU was so that they could control their refugee intake, it makes sense that there is xenophobia in the state. Andrew explained that refugees and such a rise in xenophobia are the two primary issues being dealt with at this point.

As I was interested in how NGO’s can affect change, I asked about the advantages and disadvantages of not having the power a government does as I thought this would make it more difficult to effectively stop human rights violations. The resounding answer was that they have independence and that they don’t have to worry about being reelected. “NGO’s are far more able to speak out. We have the freedom to speak the truth,” Stroehlein said. At first I thought of ceasing human rights abuses as threatening economic strain on a country, but HRW is a large and loud enough organization that when they publish an article detailing the abuses that take place in various countries, the media listens and so the world listens.

The two most interesting topics covered in my opinion were the Czech Republic and the US. In the Czech Republic, refugees were being taken off of trains, had numbers written on their arms and then thrown in jail. This was only a year ago, but nobody was paying any attention for some time. HRW then published an article detailing these abuses and received so much media attention that the policies were dropped within 48 hours. This is fascinating to think about the fact that the organization can affect such huge change in such a short span of time. Stroehlein explained that this was one of the more recent instances in which they saw an instantaneous reaction following an investigation and report.

As for the US, Andrew said many interesting things. Firstly, he spoke of how it’s worrying that US politicians openly endorse torture and carpet bombing as both of these are recognized as human rights abuses and are illegal under international treaties. There is some xenophobia in the US, and so some politicians have appealed to this group. Though they most likely won’t actually carpet bomb an area, it is scary to think that this notion is popular enough to be used in any political rhetoric.

I also asked which country has the most investigative funding going into it, and the answer was that the US has the most articles published on its human rights abuses annually. Stroehlein gave two reasons for this. Firstly, as HRW is a US NGO they are more easily able to look within their own country and identify when individuals’ rights are not being recognized. It was also explained that the human rights abuses in the US are not systematic as they might be in other countries and may be less severe, though HRW doesn’t rank abuses as they are all bad. Most investigation in the US is about domestic issues, but there are still a good number of issues that arise out of how the US projects its power in the international arena.

It is impressive their power to affect change, especially given that they are a staff of 450 covering 100 countries. When asked how they got to be so widely known Stroehlein responded “be big and be loud.” HRW is very good at directing attention towards such abuses, and so they are very effective. This site visit was one of my favorites so far as we learned a great deal, it was a good introduction to our human rights course and Stroehlein was a very interesting speaker.

On Friday we had our last scheduled visit in Paris, and it was not even in the city. Our day trip to Normandy was supposed to look like this: we would leave the hotel by 7:45 get to the Normandy beaches and cemetery by around 11:30 and after exploring the museum we would head back to Bayeux France and see the oldest tapestry in Europe. Finally, we would have some extra time to explore Bayeux and head back just in time to make the Euro Cup match.

Again, this was only what the day was supposed to look like but because the train had mechanical problems and we had to stop for repairs for what seemed like hours, so our plans had to be adjusted. We missed our connecting bus from Bayeux to the Normandy beaches so instead we stayed in Bayeux first.

We visited the museum for the Tapestry of Bayeux, which is 1,000 years old, the oldest in Europe. The tapestry depicts the Norman invasion of England telling the story of William the Conqueror. I was surprised by how well preserved the tapestry was and how long it was (68m). We all had audio guides that explained the story the tapestry depicted and it is amazing to see how precise they were and techniques they used to show importance or symbolism throughout the tapestry. My favorite part was when during a battle scene the horses fell so they are upside down in the tapestry. To end our visit in the museum we saw a short video that explained more about the technique and symbolism instead of the story it was telling.

We had some time to wander around before we took the bus to the museum.

Lucy and I toured the museum first, and watched a small film that told the story of four soldiers who are buried in the cemetery. Afterwards we headed out and walked only around the cemetery because the entrance to the beach was closed. We saw the wall with the names of all the soldiers who were never found and spent some time inside the chapel. It was shocking to experience how peaceful and safe it feels to be there today. Finally, there were no problems on our way back and the people that wanted to see the game got there in time, but unfortunately Belgium was eliminated from the tournament.

Today we met with Johnny Jones in a more formal setting than our previous meeting. Before a series of briefings, we had the chance to attend an early fourth of July party, “The Annual Community Independence Day Barbecue,” at the official residence of the United States Ambassador to France, the Hôtel de Pontalba in Paris. After making our way through a very rigorous security checkpoint to enter the palace we arrived to the gardens and took a tour of the portion of the residence that is open to guests. The palace was magnificent to say the least and the party was delightful with great food and a small military-looking ensemble playing some great music.

After the party, we made our way through two more security checkpoints to the inside of the United States Embassy which is the oldest diplomatic mission of the US. There we went to the Wallace room, a room that is used in many occasions for official meetings, where we had briefings from three officials of the Embassy. We learned many things about the relationship between the US, France, and the EU in general. Common topics such as the UK referendum on EU membership came up and I was a little surprised to learn that this referendum had been basically disregarded by many officials. The Brexit victory came as a shock to many of them because they really did not expect for this to happen and therefore they had no backup plan but to keep doing things the way they used to. This has led to some uncertainty in negotiations such as TTIP and even talks about the need for the EU to evolve to discourage other members from leaving.

We also learned about some of the differences in opinion and policy between France and the US. For example, whenever a new industry is created in the US, the government does not regulate many aspects of it until the need arises to do so. The opposite is true in France. Whenever a new industry is created, it is immediately heavily regulated and slowly deregulated as it proves to be safe. This, in part, is what many think is one of the cause of the US focus on innovation and of France’s youth unemployment.

All in all, in my opinion the most important lessons of the day were in the areas of the violent extremism and the Privacy Shield Agreement.

The Privacy Shield Agreement that has now ended the negotiation phase has been the focus point for many debates and many people that argue that the agreement does not sufficiently address the problems that it was meant to tackle. Others also argue that because of this lack of resolution to previous problems, the agreement is going to be challenged again in court and that this will deteriorate the credibility of the EU Parliament and the EU in general; however, the argument of many Europeans is that the deal does not meet European standards and does not require US companies to do things the way Europeans do but under EU law, international agreements require that the laws, regulations, and requirements be “essentially equivalent” to those of the EU. This raises the question of what “essentially equivalent” means. According to our speakers, the main point of contention used to be the commercial component of this agreement and not the national security component. Even though there are still many people who disagree with the agreement, many officials on both sides now believe that the Privacy Shield Agreement now provides this essential equivalency. The agreement is set to be voted on July the 4^th by the EU parliament and go into effect on July 11^th.

When speaking about violent extremism one of our speakers said that at the end of the day if your name is Muhammad and you live outside of Paris it is really difficult to find a job and that this is really the greatest challenge that France is facing right now in their fight against the spread of violent extremism. According to them, the suburbs have higher unemployment rates and also higher radicalization incidence than urban areas which combined with the precarious economic situation has made it really hard to mitigate the radicalization of those who are the most susceptible to it. I thought this was a very interesting point of view because it shifts the focus of the problem from the people that spread their radical and violent extremism to the people that are susceptible to it, to the economy, and to a deeper societal problem. There is always going to be people trying to spread their radical views and trying to justify their discontent with society by dragging other people into their problems so that they are not the only ones in that situation; however, if those who would be susceptible to this propaganda and those frustrated with their status quo have opportunities for social mobility, can find a job to sustain themselves and their families and feel accepted in the society they live in, they would dismiss this propaganda and break the cycle that leads to radicalization and violent extremism.