Lindsay Padilla

Lindsay Padilla teaches sociology at and is earning her doctoral degree in International and Multicultural Education with an emphasis on human rights education at the University of San Francisco. In February, she attended several sessions as part of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations in New York. Patch spoke with Padilla about what human rights work means and how it’s meaningful in today’s political climate.

Gilroy Patch: Congratulations on your trip to the United Nations. That must have been exciting.

Lindsay Padilla: Thanks. There were about 4,000 people attending the Commission on the Status of Women so it was very interesting, although a little overwhelming. I had planned to write a blog about the experience but there were so many events to attend every day, I never had the time or energy to write about it.

Patch: You said you were expecting the CSW to be more progressive than you found it to be. Let’s talk about that.

Padilla: Many of the women attending the CSW were from NGOs (non-government agencies) and many of those NGOs are faith-based. They do great work for women but I was expecting the same type of progressive attitudes that I see among academics. 

Patch: You were sent to the commission by an NGO?

Padilla: Yes. I was sent by WILPF; the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Jane Addams was its first president; it’s been around since 1915. I also received a grant from the President's Advisory Commission on the Status of Women at USF; it helped fund my trip.

Patch: You’re working toward a doctoral degree with a focus on human rights education. Is this a new study?

Padilla: The idea of implementing a world-wide doctrine for human rights has been around since the 1940s but it wasn’t until 2004 that the United Nations established the World Programme for Human Rights Education.

Patch: What does the World Programme do?

Padilla: It’s a first step toward educating people on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Implementing human rights will look different in every country and especially in places of conflict, but education in human rights aims to make people aware of basic rights that every human deserves: the right to live, the right to an education, the right to food and healthcare, for example.

Patch: If a country doesn’t give its people these basic rights, what can the U.N. do to that country?

Padilla: Right now, nothing. No country can be held accountable for not implementing or upholding the UDHR.

Patch: If it’s not enforceable, what’s the benefit of working on this?

Padilla: Although the UDHR is not enforceable, many treaties and covenants that have followed can be enforced. If a country ratifies a treaty or covenant, it can be held accountable. The United Nations has task forces and committees that oversee the process within the larger framework so countries and individuals can be held accountable when human rights are violated.

Patch: For example, when you were at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, you served on a caucus for migrant workers.

Padilla: Yes, I helped add to the CSW’s draft agreed conclusions on the theme for this year’s commission. Basically, our caucus looked at the statement and made sure the voices of migrant workers are represented in the outcome document.

Patch: You're helping to write laws that are not yet in effect?

Padilla: Guidelines, not laws, but they can make waves...eventually. The draft agreed conclusions are basically a recommendation on this year's theme. There is, however, a Convention on Migrant Worker’s Rights, yet only 29 countries have ratified this document.

Patch: Has the U.S. ratified it?  

Padilla: No. No receiving countries (meaning industrialized countries that benefit from this low-wage labor) have ratified the document. My goal, as well as the goal of many NGO’s across the world, is to get more countries to ratify this convention. In the future, countries that don’t follow the legal guidelines set forth in this treaty can be brought up for review or legal repercussions. New York state just passed a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, which is a step in the right direction.

Patch: Where does the U.S. stand on other human rights issues?

Padilla: The United States was just given its UPR from the United Nations in November, 2010.

Patch: What is a UPR?

Padilla: The Universal Periodic Review in which a country is reviewed for its human rights practices.

Patch: And how’d the United States do?

Padilla: Not so good.

Patch: Where did we lose points?

Padilla: Our rate of homelessness…the number of Americans who have trouble getting healthcare. There are many countries without resources; in those countries obviously things like healthcare and education are difficult to provide. But for a wealthy nation to have so many homeless people and people without healthcare is shameful.

Patch: Who rates each country in a UPR?

Padilla: There are 192 members in the United Nations. The other 191 members rate the country being reviewed.

Patch: These are big concepts—the idea of worldwide human rights and the struggle for equality. How do you teach human rights education?

Padilla: First, people need to know their rights to claim them. “Human rights” is such a loaded term. When you say “human rights,” people think of torture, tyrannical leaders like Muammar Qaddafi or Idi Amin, of genocide.

But the study of human rights is more than these extreme violations. There is such a thing as a right to culture, for example.

I believe human rights education should be a part of every other study: philosophy, geography, medicine. I teach a sociology class in Social Problems, and the human rights framework makes sense once you begin looking at social inequities. Using a human rights perspective shifts from viewing people as statistics to humans with dignity.

Many political freedoms were built into the founding of our country–freedom of speech, freedom of religion – so we don’t always consider the rights we are lacking. Freedom of speech is easy to promise; it doesn’t cost anything to implement other than the cost of the court system when people litigate over right to free speech. But the right to healthcare or the right to good education—those can be costly, and thus more difficult to implement. The US has yet to ratify the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for this very reason.

Patch: And your students at Gavilan: Here in Gilroy, does the study of human rights seem relevant to college-age kids?

Padilla: It’s relevant everywhere. And my class has students in high school and a few students in their thirties, forties, and fifties, so it’s a wider age range than you’d think. Most of my students are in their fourth or fifth semester at Gavilan.

Patch: So your class has seasoned students.

Padilla: Yes. Also, my class is a service-learning class.

Patch: What does that mean?

Padilla: Every student puts in 20 hours of community service over the semester. It’s part of the requirement for the class.

Patch: Which community services relate to human rights?

Padilla: All of them. If you think about it, if your community has a need, there’s a human right that isn’t being met. If you volunteer at a homeless shelter or a food bank, or help in an afterschool tutoring program, all of those services link to human rights.

Patch: That makes sense. And I like that for their final paper in your class, your students aren’t actually writing a paper.

Padilla: No, instead of a research paper, they’re writing a letter. They’re finding a cause that matters to them, finding out who has some power to further that cause, and writing a letter to that person.

Patch: You believe that writing a letter can make a difference?

Padilla: I do. Last year I took a course at the University of San Francisco. One of my professors invited a former political prisoner to speak to the class. He came in carrying a sheath of letters. They were wrinkled and had been folded, opened, and refolded. Obviously, he’d read these letters many times. He let us look at the letters, and they were written in every language you can think of. He was very emotional when he told us those letters freed him from prison. Yes, I believe a letter can make a difference.

Patch: I can see why your students are excited about your class. In this political climate where it sometimes feels as if the fighting between Democrats and Republicans means no forward progress, it seems like you have a different perspective.

Padilla: We can make progress. New York state passed the bill for the National Rights of Domestic Workers and California is working on this, too. It’s taken a long time, but this is progress from where we were forty years ago.

Patch: Letter writing is a good first step?

Padilla: We can’t stop writing our letters. I recently wrote to Representative Farr protesting the defunding of NPR. I got a letter back and was able to bring it to my students and say, “I’m making my voice heard. You can do this too.”

Some of my students will be writing letters to John Kerry, head of the Foreign Relations Committee, to see that we ratify the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Patch: The United States is in dubious company in not ratifying this, right?

Padilla: Well, only seven members of the United Nations have not ratified; those who haven't ratified are the United States, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, and three small Pacific Island nations (Nauru, Palau and Tonga).

Patch: Suddenly I have a clearer sense of the importance of what you teach. You’re invested in teaching your students how to make their voices heard.

Padilla: Exactly! What good is learning about human rights and social problems if you are not given the tools or the support to do something about it?