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AJWS Blog

The AJWS community has a lot to say about what's happening in the world. Read our insights about the struggle for justice and human rights around the globe — and meet the activists on the frontlines of the fight to build a better world.

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Moral Courage in the Face of Injustice: A Call to Action from a Global Justice Fellow

I, along with twelve other participants in this year’s New York based Global Justice Fellowship of American Jewish World Service, returned last week from Santo Domingo where we engaged in powerful encounters with representatives of seven NGOs. The deadline of June 17th hovered over most of these meetings, several of which involved Dominican activists of Haitian descent who are not migrants and whose families have lived for generations in the Dominican Republic.

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Empowering Artisanal Miners: Reflections from the Democratic Republic of Congo

Eric Kajemba sat across from me at our hotel in Bukavu, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s South Kivu province. After many hours of driving back from our site visit with Eric’s organization and AJWS grantee L’Observatoire Gouvernance et Paix (OGP), my AJWS colleagues and I were tired. Eric was not. Somewhere in his mid-50s, he has an easy laugh and an undying enthusiasm for his work.

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“We formed our union to have a collective voice”: Reflections from the Democratic Republic of Congo

Takuinja Ruzibuka of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s South Kivu province rises before dawn to cook, get her eight children ready and work on the family’s vegetable plot for a few hours. Only then does she trek down to the Zola Zola tin mine near Nzibira, where she has been a twangaise (stone breaker) for 19 years. The mine sits on land given in a government concession to multinational corporation BANRO.

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