Our Advocates

Pornsuk Koetsawang is the Chairperson at Friends Without Borders. After participating in HRAP, Koetsawang returned to Thailand and started this organization that works to promote human rights of those seen by the Thai public as 'the others': refugees, migrant workers, indigenous peoples, especially those on the Thai-Burma/Myanmar border and those from Burma/Myanmar in Thailand.

Nuala Kelly is a 1997 HRAP graduate from Ireland. She is a program coordinator at Pavee Point Traveller & Roma Centre (Pavee Point), an Irish NGO adopting a community development approach to promote Traveller and Roma rights and social inclusion. Pavee Point advocates for promoting equality, preventing discrimination and protecting human rights of vulnerable ethnic minority groups – Irish Travellers and Roma communities in Ireland. The organization lobbies for human rights-based approaches to ethnic data collection across administrative systems to inform policy and practice from an evidence-based approach.

Participation in HRAP enlarged Nuala’s knowledge of the international human rights system. She says: “I learned more about the international human rights infrastructure, the role of some international and regional treaty monitoring bodies, the role of human rights NGOs and in particular, the importance and application of economic, social and cultural rights standards to promote social change and engage the voices of disadvantaged groups in society.” 

HRAP’s skills’ workshop in fundraising had a practical impact on Nuala’s organization – the Irish Bishops’ Commission for Emigrants & Prisoners Overseas. She recalls: “I developed a funding application during the HRAP course which I was able to adapt on return and successfully sought funding for a new paralegal position in my organization. This was a new approach at the time and it enabled us to fund advocacy work to seek improvements in the operation of a Council of Europe Convention for the Transfer of Sentenced Persons. It also helped to build links with NGOs and human rights organizations that contributed to the work towards building the peace process in Ireland after ceasefires urging that peace would only be enabled if human rights were protected and respected.”

Nuala highlights an important feature of the HRAP, namely the benefit of stepping back from a long-term working experience to reflect and identify new ways of complementing and strengthening human rights work. She notes: “HRAP offered space to step back and reflect on my work over the previous 13 years and identify ways to develop more human rights-based approaches to supporting prisoners far from home and, in some instances, network and lobby for changes in conditions or procedures that fell short of international human rights norms.”

For Nuala, one of the greatest benefits of the HRAP is the exposure to geographically diverse perspectives on human rights work. “Meeting fellow students from diverse ethnic backgrounds and a range of continents allowed us to share understandings of the many issues in our work, which although very different in scale and content, still resonated with my own work in ‘so-called’ developed western democracies where the rule of law was not at all perfect and where human rights abuses in the context of the Irish Troubles were still too widespread,” says Nuala.

 - Article compiled by Chiora Taktakishvili, Fulbright Exchange Visitor, July 2019

Twesigye Jackson Kaguri, a 1996 graduate of the Human Rights Advocates Program, began his advocacy work with the organization, Human Rights Concern (HURICO), located in his home country, Uganda. Kaguri co-founded HURICO to help victims of human rights violations in Uganda and to educate the public about their rights. Reflecting on the impact of HRAP to his work, Kaguri says, “Without skills and knowledge from the Advocates Program, I would not have continued with HURICO.”

HRAP provides its participants with a greater understanding of human rights tools and methods as well as the confidence and leadership skills to enhance their individual pursuits. In addition, many participants take advantage of the courses available at Columbia University and the infinite resources available in New York City. Kaguri recalls that during the program, “I started using a computer for the first time and never stopped.”

Since leaving HRAP, Kaguri has made a number of professional and personal accomplishments. He served as a Program Assistant for People’s Decade for Human Rights Education (PDHRE) after having met the founder and director during his participation in HRAP. He also completed a second bachelor’s degree, specializing in fundraising and management, from Indiana University as well as received numerous certificates in various areas of fundraising.

Kaguri currently works with the Nyaka AIDS Orphans Project, which he founded and directs. Nyaka builds schools for HIV/AIDS orphans in rural Uganda, using a holistic approach to provide free education, uniforms, books, healthcare, shelter for the children, community water, and a community library. Kaguri has successfully started two schools in the villages of Nyaka and Kutamba, the impacts of which have been profound for the two villages and brought wide praise to Kaguri. He has been named Ugandan of the Year, Ugandan Making a Difference, and Social Entrepreneur by Global Giving. In addition, in June 2010, Kaguri and Nyaka were featured in Time Magazine. He is also the Associate Director of Development at Michigan State University.

Kaguri has also completed publishing a book entitled “The Price of Stones: Building a School for My Village,” released in June 2010 and which details the founding, evolution, and impact of the Nyaka AIDS Orphans Project. However, Kaguri still recalls his experience in HRAP as a crucial component of his accomplishments, saying the greatest benefit had been “networking with fellow professionals and other organizations all over the world.” He concludes, “Without this program, I would not have accomplished what I have accomplished. Our children, their grannies, and communities Nyaka serves would not have anything if not for the exposure I got while at Columbia University.”

November 2016 update: Kaguri has been awarded the 2015 Waislitz Global Citizen Award, named a 2012 CNN Hero, a Heifer International Hero, recognized in Time Magazine’s ‘Power of One’ Series, and spoken to the UN about his work. In 2016 Kaguri received an honarory PhD in Humanities from Shenandoah University recognizing his work with Nyaka. Kaguri divides his time between Uganda and Michigan where he lives with his wife Tabitha, their two sons and two twin girls.

—Article composed by Andrew Richardson, Program Assistant, June 2010

Professor Kwame Karikari is the former Executive Director of the MFWA. He has been for several years, a professor in journalism and mass communication at the School of Communication Studies at the University of Ghana.  He has also been involved in training journalists in several countries in Africa over the years.

Prior to that and during all those years, he practiced as a journalist, including serving as director general of the public Ghana Broadcasting Corporation in the early 1980s. He has also been an activist pursuing social justice and human rights causes, in Africa, including democratic reforms in Ghana. He serves on the boards of a number of African and international rights organisations and on the editorial boards of academic publications.

He was educated at the City College of New York and Columbia University in New York.