Our work as part of the human rights movement has always been carried out alongside individuals and partner organizations with whom we have collaborated to advance various agendas. The value of these encounters drives us to constantly seek ways to better articulate our work with leaders, activists, and professionals from different areas of the human rights movement in Colombia and different countries of the Global South. As part of this effort, the Fellowship Program for activists and human rights defenders from the Global South was born. With this program, we seek to generate South-South collaboration ties that are sustained over time and contribute both to building a more coordinated and organized civil society, as well as supporting the individual efforts of those who work for global justice on a daily basis.

What does the program entail? Dejusticia provides fellowships for cohorts of 5 to 8 human rights defenders who come to Bogota, Colombia, to live and work here for periods of 3 to 6 months. They are integrated into one of Dejusticia’s teams to work with its researchers on collaborative projects. The program offers fellows a collaborative and creative space to reflect on various relevant issues, strengthen their work in the struggle for social and environmental justice, and get inspired by new strategies, approaches and possibilities of transformative actions. 

For those who in their places of origin often face risks derived from the work they do, Dejusticia offers a quiet and safe space for research, advocacy, and fellowship with those who share their struggles. The program is a useful opportunity for exchange, in which those who come to Dejusticia can explore our tools and action-research strategies to enrich the work they do in their home countries, while Dejusticia learns from their experience and that of their organizations.  

A new kind of profile for fellows 

Fellowship programs are not new. Various academic and research institutions (many of them in the global north) use them to attract people with interesting profiles and to recognize the merits of excellent researchers. However, the program we designed at Dejusticia takes a slightly different approach. We look for human rights defenders and activists with three key characteristics: (1) people who are at risk due to threats, armed conflict, an authoritarian government, or obstruction of their work; (2) people who may be at risk of burnout from their job; and (3) people linked to a human rights organization in the global south that is interested in working with Dejusticia. 

As with all fellowship programs, we take into account criteria of excellence such as academic performance, professional experience, and the quality of the research proposal for the selection of candidates. But we also seek to include other elements that take into account the structures, needs, and interests of the Global South and open the doors to candidates from other corners of the human rights movement. Those who come to Dejusticia are thus a diverse set of voices, with a wide range of expertise and skills, who contribute to the work of Dejusticia while also weaving new networks and relationships of cultural exchange.

This approach has allowed us to receive people from Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Turkey, Venezuela, among other countries. Our fellows are professionals and activists in political science, law, sociology, communications, and more, many with extensive experience, as well as people who are just beginning their careers. Welcoming each of the people who have participated in the program has been an opportunity to add hospitality to the strategies with which we seek to strengthen the human rights movement in the Global South. And in the same vein, programs like this one are a fundamental part of our efforts to strengthen the voice and presence of actors from the Global South in debates, academic production, and the setting of human rights agendas.

A program designed to welcome and foster collaboration

A fundamental part of the objectives of this program is to provide spaces for interaction and collaboration between Fellows, their organizations of origin, the different teams at Dejusticia, and the networks to which they all belong. To this aim, we chose a cohort format, in which each group of fellows begins their stay simultaneously and automatically finds a group of support and collaboration precisely in these other people in their cohort. This opportunity to meet with others who, in their own way and from their own places of origin, share the joys and difficulties of working for social and environmental justice, is one of the great strengths of the program. Although they begin at Dejusticia and in Bogota, the networks of solidarity and camaraderie that we seek to form in these shared research stays aim to go beyond our organization and weave a true network of collaboration that strengthens and widens every year.

To ensure that an ambitious program like this is successful and that those who join Dejusticia can make the most of their stay in Bogotá, fellows participate in a training program at the beginning of their cohort. Here, during an intensive week, Dejusticia’s Escuela D offers the group a series of workshops, interaction spaces, tours and immersions. The different modules that make up this week seek to offer participants sessions for the development of action-research skills, design of advocacy campaigns, and narrative writing, among others, as well as sessions that allow them to boost the institutional resilience of their organizations and communities. With this initial training, participants can begin their stay and integrate seamlessly into Dejusticia’s work.

Each participant in the program is assigned to one of Dejusticia’s research teams and becomes part of that team. In addition to conducting their own research, the fellows participate in the work of their host teams. This cross-learning enriches the work of those who arrive, as well as that of those who receive them, and strengthens a broader understanding of problems that affect communities in different parts of the world in particular ways.

Cohort 2023

In the second semester of 2023 we had a cohort of fellows whose time with Dejusticia was enormously enriching. 

Jorge Lule, for example, is a political scientist and public administrator from Mexico, specializing in public security issues and conflict analysis. He has worked on issues of militarization, drug policy, serious human rights violations and international crimes. During his fellowship at Dejusticia, he collaboratively wrote an article, with a researcher of the Transitional Justice line, regarding the serious crisis of disappearances and the search for missing persons faced by both countries. This text was published in Dejusticia’s Global Blog and in the Mexican news portal Animal Político. 

Another fellow, Danielly Rodriguez, comes from Venezuela and is an activist and social documentarian. She has a long history of telling the stories of  Venezuelans, their struggle against authoritarianism and in favor of human rights. She has been working in the field of human rights for more than 11 years, especially through documentary photography. According to her, the fellowship at Dejusticia helped her understand other contexts of human rights situations, both in the countries of the other fellows and in Colombia. It also confirmed her belief that although we are separated by borders, there are situations that affect us in very similar ways.

Miracle Joseph comes from Nigeria and joined the tax justice team. With a background in geography, he specializes in economic, social and behavioral geography, focusing on the connections between government policies and social patterns. His main project at Dejusticia was an investigation that aimed to understand how corruption affects the advancement of human rights and sustainable development in Nigeria, focusing on health, education and climate change.

Finally, Fabian Hernandez is a young activist from the Colombian Caribbean region with campesino roots, linked to the peasant resistance movement in the department of Cesar. He is active in social movements, especially in the struggle for the recovery of land, water and ecosystems. Fabián strengthened his research skills and exchanged tools with Dejusticia’s Land and Peasant Rights team, which he joined during his stay. During this time he wrote a text on autonomy and peasant resistance in the Sumapaz region and organized a discussion with peasant leaders from different parts of Colombia to discuss the challenges and stakes in agroalimentary farming territories.

Having these four talented and committed people be part of our team in 2023 was a great privilege and an opportunity to learn and build valuable partnerships. By the middle of 2024 we will have a new cohort, which will continue to enable us to strengthen the knowledge, experiences, and collaborative networks essential to the work of those of us who fight for global justice.