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.

Defending Human Rights During COVID-19

The world looks different each and every day when we wake up. We’re all aware of these drastic changes, because we’re living through them together: school closings, the shuttering of local businesses and restaurants, cancelled gatherings and, of course, the mounting statistics of reported cases and deaths caused by COVID-19. In the past few days, …

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Rebuilding Palu: Women Take Charge

In late 2018, Sri Haris nearly lost everything. A massive earthquake and tsunami caused unimaginable destruction in the city of Palu, Indonesia, killing nearly 5,000 people and displacing tens of thousands. Sri’s home was swept away—everything she’d worked for her entire life, gone in an instant. But she refused to give up. Today, two years …

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Why We’re Hopeful for 2020

We’re excited to share with you the winter edition of Stories of Hope, a special selection of videos, articles and news from our grantee partners that gives us hope in our work for justice and equality around the world. From activists sharing their aspirations for the New Year, to a girl in India rejecting child …

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Just Married

I am delighted to share with you, my AJWS friends, that I got married at the end of last year. For many of us, marriage sounds like a common milestone—but it was unthinkable for someone like me in most parts of the United States until 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all states …

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Marching Towards Justice: After Years of Uncertainty, Families of Mexico’s “Disappeared” Begin to Find Answers

Disappeared. It’s a benign word we use for a lost object, gone without a trace. Something we most likely misplaced by accident. But when ‘disappeared’ describes another human being, it is no longer passive. It’s an act of violence—abduction, imprisonment, and often murder. People don’t simply get lost; they are ‘disappeared’ so that they’re never …

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