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November 15, 2012
In this Newsletter:
- Get To Know ICAAD: Vision, Mission, & Program Areas
- What Has ICAAD Accomplished This Year?
- ICAAD’s Website Is Live! Formal Launch On Human Rights Day
- Exploring The Intersection Of Art & Discrimination Exhibition & Fundraiser
Dear Supporters, Colleagues, and Friends:
Welcome to Raise Your Shield, the newsletter for The International Center for Advocates Against Discrimination (ICAAD). Thanks to our supporters, we are nearing the completion of a very successful first year. Many of you have been following our work in civil and human rights even before we (Hansdeep Singh and Jaspreet Singh) started ICAAD. We request your support as we take on the difficult challenge of combating structural discrimination globally.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with ICAAD’s work, we will provide a brief overview of our goals and the work we have accomplished in this first year.
Get To Know ICAAD
Vision: As societies build walls of separation between communities, ICAAD works to remove each brick to illuminate our common humanity.
Mission: The International Center for Advocates Against Discrimination (ICAAD) is an nonprofit organization founded for the charitable purpose of eradicating structural discrimination globally, and to promote human rights norms consistent with public international law. Using high impact strategic litigation, coalition building, leveraged partnerships, and international law, ICAAD strives to combat both structural discrimination and the State’s failure to protect vulnerable communities. Our project-based approach utilizes small teams of experts to identify specific structural discrimination policies, marshal resources and key partnerships, and provide strategic support with the aim of systematically tearing down these policies globally.
What Has ICAAD Achieved In Year 1: A Few Brief Highlights
Partnership Projects: Our partners provide invaluable probono service on human rights advocacy and litigation projects. Currently, ICAAD has received over 415 hours in probono services which is equal to over $210,000 in services to the organization.
Litigation: We have achieved tremendous success in our first year, prevailing in three major discrimination cases against the federal government. This is just the beginning and with your support we will continue to build the successful partnerships that help us achieve tremendous results.
- Nijar v. Holder (minority rights): Closed a gap in the law by obtaining a victory at the 9th Cir. Court of Appeals protecting the rights of asylees. Prior to the decision, asylees did not have judicial review of termination of asylum by the DHS Asylum Office. The decision corrected this injustice and granted Immigration Judges the right to review termination. Read the published decision, and listen to oral arguments.
- Veliamma v. DHS (women’s rights): Obtained withholding of removal after a decade of litigation for an elderly Indo-Fijian woman who experienced severe gender-based violence in Fiji. ICAAD has taken on three other similar cases that reveal a pattern and practice of the Fijian government’s failure to protect these women.
- Kulwinder Singh v. DHS (religious freedoms): Protected the right of a TSA employee to practice his faith. Obtained a settlement of $30,000, TSA posted a notice of discrimination at JFK airport, and provided diversity training for TSA employees. Ultimately, this prevented the policy from being enacted in over 400+ airports.
Advocacy: Through our coalition building advocacy model, we have made progress on two major projects:
Anti-Bullying Initiative: Received a consultancy grant from the Sikh Coalition to conduct a national survey on bullying and produce a national report. What we achieved:
- Met with over 700 children and conducted 6 workshops in 4 cities
- Surveyed over 500 children
- Interviewed over 50 children one-on-one to get their personal stories
- Drafted a 60 page Report highlighting bullying stories, legislation, and case law.
Hate Crimes Documentation: Petitioned the government to look into the systemic flaws resulting from the failure to document hate crimes. Government statistics from the National Crime Victimization Surveys (NCVS) report close to 200,000 hate crimes per year from 2003-2009. However, the FBI has consistently reported between 6,000 – 10,000 hate crimes per year during that same period. Our work on the issue:
- Law Review Journal: We will be publishing a comprehensive assessment of hate crimes in Berkeley’s Asian American Law Review Journal.
- Published in the Daily Beast: Editorial showing the link between hate speech and the rise in hate crimes against both religious and LGBT communities.
- Submitted Report on the Senate Hearing on Hate Crimes on September 19, 2012
- Submitted Report to Department of Justice (DOJ) at Town Hall Meeting
- Requested the FBI to code hate crimes against Sikhs, Arabs, and Hindus
- Asked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to enhance its intelligence capacity for non-Islamic domestic terrorist threats
Please support our ongoing project “We Shall Remain Silent No More” on hate crimes, which is hosted on a crowdsourcing platorm Dasvandh Network (DVN).
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