Introducing Briana Abrams, Sophie Kaiser & Maya Karwande

It's our great pleasure today to welcome Briana Abrams (left), Sophie Kaiser (right), and Maya Karwande (center) as IntLawGrrls contributors. All 3 were interns this year in the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law International Human Rights Law Clinic, working under the supervision of our colleague, Director Laurel E. Fletcher.
► Briana, who will receive her J.D. degree this month, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and studied Sociology and Spanish Literature at the University of California, San Diego prior to attending law school.
► Sophie, who is completing her 2L year, is from Little Rock, Arkansas. Before entering law school, she studied Political Science at the University of Michigan and International Relations at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University.
► Maya, like Sophie, is a rising 3L. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, she majored in Political Science and Peace and Justice Studies at Tufts before starting law school.
In their introductory post below, the 3 describe the current work of the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh.
Briana, Sophie, and Maya have chosen to honor Jahanara Imam (below left). (photo credit) Of Imam, a writer and political activist who was born in 1929 in what was then West Bengal, British India, who died in 1994 in Detroit, Michigan, and who was buried in Dhaka in her native Bangladesh, they write:

'Mostly known as Shaheed Janani (mother of martyrs), she initiated a movement for the trial of war criminals through forming Ekatturer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee in 1992.'

Today, she joins other inspiring women on IntLawGrrls' transnational foremothers page.
Heartfelt welcome!

Guest Bloggers: Saira Hussain, Peggy Li & Shayla Johnson

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome the three women in the photo at right: Saira Hussain (left), Peggy Li (center), and Shayla Johnson (right). Second-year law students, all three are interns in the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
► Saira moved to the United States from her country of birth, Pakistan, when she was 3. She's lived in the San Francisco Bay Area ever since, and earned a B.A. in Public Health, with a Minor in Spanish, from California-Berkeley before entering law school.
► Peggy, a native of San Francisco, graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a B.A. in Communication Studies.
► Shayla, who was born in Orlando, Florida, is a graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she majored in International Business and Emerging Nations.
All three contributed to Victims’ Right to Remedy: Awarding Meaningful Reparations at the ECCC (2011), a report jointly issued last month by Berkeley's International Human Rights Law Clinic, along with Access to Justice Asia, based in Singapore, and the San Francisco-based Center for Justice & Accountability.
Supervising Saira, Peggy, and Shayla was our colleague, Laurel E. Fletcher, Clinical Professor Law and Director of International Human Rights Law Clinic at Berkeley Law.
Released to coincide with the start of trial in Case 002, the Victims’ Remedy report recommended ways the ECCC, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, might adapt its procedures to grant redress in line with international practice. In their guest post below, Saira, Peggy, and Shayla discuss key features of the report.
The three dedicate their work to Safia Ahmed-jan (left), who was born into a poor family in Afghanistan in 1941. A onetime teacher and high school principal, she campaigned for women's rights after the Taliban regime was toppled. Ahmed-jan served as provincial director of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Kandahar province for five years, until September 25, 2006, when "suspected Taliban gunmen" rode a motorcycle past her house and shot her to death. (credit for undated Reuters photo by Ahmad Masood)
Today Ahmed-jan joins other IntLawGrrls foremothers in our list at right.
Heartfelt welcome!

Gitmo 'Grrls

(One in a series on Experts at Law)

As mentioned in our recent Read On! Review, a recurrent theme in IntLawGrrl Kristine A. Huskey's new book is, to quote her,

the fact that women are woefully scarce in national security law, my chosen field. I do not mean to convey that I am the only woman in this field, as there are many women writing, speaking about, and practicing nationalsecurity legal issues, specifically relating to Guantánamo ...

She continued:

[E]very one of these women will tell you that they, too, are often the only female speaker on these issues in a conference room or on a panel filled with men. The world can stand to have more women in fields that are traditionally filled by men.

(pp. iv-v) Kristine then proceeded "to name a few" of the Gitmo 'Grrls who jumped to mind. Her list is reproduced here, along with links to these women and some of their works:

► IntLawGrrl Beth Van Schaack, Santa Clara Law. Her IntLawGrrls posts are here; list of other publications is here.

► IntLawGrrl yours truly (thanks, Kristine!), University of California, Davis. My IntLawGrrls posts are here; list of other publications is here.

► Leila Nadya Sadat, Washington University. IntLawGrrls posts about her are here; publications list is here.

► Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, Center for Constitutional Rights, attorney for detainees. IntLawGrrls posts about her are here; her op-ed is here.

► Agnieszka M. Fryszman, partner at Cohen Milstein, attorney for detainees.

► Beth Gilson, attorney for detainees.

► H. Candace Gorman, attorney for detainees, whom the Chicago Tribune recently profiled. She runs 2 Gitmo blogs, here and here.

► Sylvia Royce, attorney for detainees.

► Sarah Havens, Allen & Avery, attorney for detainees.

► Becky Dick, attorney for detainees.

► Hina Shamsi, staff attorney at the National Security Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. Her ACLU blog posts are here.

► Maria LaHood, Center for Constitutional Rights.

► Opinio Juris' Deborah Pearlstein, Princeton University. IntLawGrrls posts about her are here; her OJ posts are here; her publications list is here.

► Karen J. Greenberg, New York University. IntLawGrrls posts about are her here; some publications are listed here; her newest Gitmo book is here.

► Suzanne Spaulding, Bingham Consulting Group and former Executive Director of the National Commission on Terrorism, among many other natsec posts. An op-ed by her is here.

► Kate Martin, Center for National Security Studies. Some of her publications are here.

► Sahar Aziz, formerly an associate at Cohen Milstein, now Senior Policy Advisor at Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

► Barbara Olshansky, attorney for detainees. Her books are here.

► Jennifer Daskal, formerly senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, now a Department of Justice attorney.

Recognition is due to many other women as well, of course. (Readers' nominations welcome!)

There are, for example, all the IntLawGrrls and guests/alumnae who have contributed posts in IntLawGrrls' "Guantánamo" series. In addition to Beth, Kristine, and I, they are Elena Baylis, Ursula Bentele, Fiona de Londras, Monica Hakimi, Lynne Henderson, Elizabeth L. Hillman, Dawn Johnsen, Michelle Leighton, Pamela Merchant, Naomi Norberg, Hari M. Osofsky, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, and Lucy Reed. Not to mention guests/alumnae Mary L. Dudziak, editor of this book, and Mary Ellen O'Connell, interviewed here, both with respect to post-9/11 issues. Or my University of California colleague Laurel E. Fletcher, co-author of this book, an empirical study of the fate of ex-detainees.

And there are also the women who shared a Quonset-like tent with Jen Daskal and me during the December '08 week that, as posted earlier, I spent observing Gitmo military commissions on behalf of the National Institute of Military Justice. (A fuller account of my visit begins at page 9 of this report, which also includes dispatches from Executive Director Michelle Lindo McCluer and other NIMJ'ers) These tentmates were: Jill Heine, Amnesty International; Stacy Sullivan, Human Rights Watch; and Devon Chaffee, Human Rights First. And don't get me started on the many women journalists I met at Gitmo, or on the women JAG lawyers whom I watched provide excellent representation of various detainees as detailed defense counsel.

Bottom line -- memo to media reps, conference organizers, anthology editors, etc.:

There are many, many women now working in the field of national security. We've given you the list; it's your job to get in touch. As we posted when a similar issue arose years ago, the key is not only having women "in" the supposedly nontraditional fields of law. It's also having them recognized as being there.