Meet Emma: A Champion of Human Rights

8th March

Emma's journey is a testament to her unwavering resilience and pioneering spirit in the realm of human rights law and activism. With a background deeply rooted in advocating for justice and equality, Emma embarked on her career path long before the term "human rights lawyer and activist" gained widespread recognition. Her determination to champion the rights of marginalized communities led her to take bold strides, often venturing into uncharted territory.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? What's your background and how did you get to where you are now?

By training, I'm a human rights lawyer. My first ever job was with the Citizens Advice Bureau in Lambeth and I absolutely loved working with them. But my real interest was in human rights. I felt I would be able to do similar work more effectively if I became a lawyer, so I qualified as a solicitor. That was in the days before there was such a thing as a ‘human rights lawyer’!

My other real passion was the Middle East, Islamic art and archaeology, things like that. After working as a solicitor in the City for six years, I saw an advert on the back of the Times saying, “Human Rights Organization in the West Bank seeks British Lawyer Volunteer”. I thought “That sounds just right for me”.

After applying, I didn’t hear back for two years. Then one of the organization’s founders appeared in London to interview me and apparently felt that I would be a good fit. So I said goodbye to the City, goodbye to being a full-time lawyer and set off into the unknown to live on my savings as a volunteer for two years. I had no clue about the place I was going to or what to expect. I remember having my last cup of coffee, as I thought, and off I went.

I was volunteering with the first Palestinian human rights organization called Al Haq, based in Ramallah in the West Bank.  I was actually living in East Jerusalem, commuting by shared taxi each day the ten miles to Ramallah.  The work and the life was absolutely fascinating and was undoubtedly the steepest learning curve of my life.

Al Haq is a very well-established organisation, what were you doing with them?

The main hurdle we faced at Al Haq revolved around dismantling the facade perpetuated by Israel, portraying its governance over the West Bank and Gaza Strip as compliant with international law. Despite the world recognizing these territories as under occupation, Israel adamantly rejected this notion, preferring the term 'administered'. Moreover, it refused to acknowledge the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention, covering protection of civilians in occupied territories, unlike the consensus within the international community.

In response, our dedicated field workers diligently observed and documented human rights violations, ranging from the demolition of homes, deportation and administrative detention to unjust military trials. We painstakingly collected affidavits from victims, capturing their harrowing experiences of rights abuses. Subsequently, we meticulously analysed these incidents through a legal lens, highlighting how Israel's actions and legal framework flagrantly violated international human rights and humanitarian law.

When I joined Al-Haq, it was a small organisation with only a handful of staff and its four volunteer founders.  After two years, I was adopted by Oxfam, who paid me a living stipend which enabled me to continue working there for another couple of years.  I helped Al-Haq develop systems, a variety of publications in English and Arabic including on women’s rights, legal advice programmes and a library.  By the time I left, after four years, it had become a substantial organisation. 

I absolutely loved the place and the work I was doing but inevitably I ended up playing quite a leading role.  I thought “Well, I love this place and my work, I could live here forever. But it's not really appropriate as a foreigner to be living and speaking for Palestinians.” So I thought it would be best if I moved on.

What did you do after leaving?

That’s when I joined the Ford Foundation. The Foundation was already supporting Al Haq and the Tunisian League for Human Rights, so I applied and was brought in to set up the Foundation’s human rights program in the Middle East and North Africa, based in Cairo.

Most of our program was supporting human rights in Egypt and in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but we also had a sub-office in Sudan and made some grants covering the rest of the Arab region. Our work in Israel was handled from New York though we liaised closely.  So I carried on going back and forth to Ramallah all the time, supporting the work I'd been doing which was very rewarding.

When my time there came to an end, I applied and got a job as Executive Director of Interights, an international human rights organization based in London. My job there took me around the world, to a variety of commonwealth countries in Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean.  While I was there we also started to work in Central and Eastern Europe. We provided support and leadership to lawyers in those countries in the legal protection of human rights worldwide using international and comparative law. It felt very satisfying to be able to play this very supportive role, developing local capacity in the places where we worked.

After ten years with Interights, I returned to Cairo, again working for the Ford Foundation, this time as a Regional Representative, staying there for another six years. 

So most of your career has been outside of England, when did you come back?

I really loved the work I did in Cairo, but for various political reasons relating to our support for Palestinian grantees, the six years I spent there were extremely stressful.  After all this time, I really wanted to come home and spend time in my house in London– at least for a while. I decided to take three months off work because I felt completely exhausted and needed some time to re-adjust and to work out what I wanted to do next.

What did you end up doing?

Just as I was thinking of starting to look for jobs, I had a major stroke. I was completely out and had to learn to walk again. I became deaf and I lost much of my memory. When I came around, I mentioned to a friend that I was surprised that my mother hadn’t been around to see me. They had to remind me that she had died some ten years earlier.

How did you overcome this?

It does take a lot of time and effort to recover from something like this and it was tough, but I was really lucky. I was so well supported by my sisters and friends and by fantastic doctors, nurses and most of all physiotherapists.  I got hearing aids which help to some extent with my deafness.

I realised I needed to mend and rebuild my brain so I signed myself up for a masters course in Arabic in SOAS. I had taught myself to read and write Arabic in my twenties and had learnt the colloquial dialects of Palestine, Egypt and Sudan while living there, but I wasn’t fluent. I did the Masters over two years and it was wonderful. I could feel my brain clicking into play again.

One sadness was that I have always loved playing the piano, but after my stroke I found that I couldn’t remember how to play. Not only were my hands affected, but I had lost my music muscle memory.  After looking sadly at my piano for ten years, I decided at the start of lockdown to take piano lessons and start learning again from scratch.  I found a wonderful teacher who taught me on Facetime and after six months I was playing the type of music I played before, even if not quite as well. 

Did you go back to work after your stroke, are you still working now?

Being deaf and with an unreliable memory, I quickly realised that I would not be able to do the type of work I was doing before.  At first I just had to concentrate on my recovery.

But some six years after my stroke, I went on a botanical trip to Szechuan in China.  I met someone on the trip who was working for Citizens Advice in the Midlands. I was really missing working on human rights, so on my return I applied to Citizens Advice in South London to work as a volunteer.  It is a walk-in service where people can ask advice on anything, but by far the majority of problems relate to poverty.  Having not worked on domestic issues in the UK for decades, it offered me a really valuable opportunity to learn about some of the problems in this country and to help people address those problem. 

I really loved this work, but sadly I had to stop when Covid hit, when initially they said that stroke victims were particularly at risk. I would have loved to go back but it became a bit too complicated when they stopped us taking notes out of the office. That was understandable, for confidentiality reasons, however, with my memory, I depended on taking my notes home with me and writing them up there. I was not able to do any telephone work because of my hearing. I thought about maybe working online, but I was also finding that my energy reserves would deplete quite quickly, so I have not returned.

I do miss doing something useful, so once I am fully settled here I might see if I can find some more voluntary work to do.

How do you find life at Riverstone?

I have loved it from the moment I arrived here. It's just such a lovely, comfortable, secure place.  The concierges and the rest of the staff and management are extraordinary, so friendly and helpful. I mean, it's like living in a five-star hotel but being completely independent and at home.

What about it makes you happy? What makes it great?

When I was thinking of moving here, I requested a two bedroom apartment with room for a grand piano.  I was so lucky to find a beautiful apartment, with a huge terrace opening up onto the gardens. That means I can still do some gardening and can pick fresh herbs from the herb garden for my cooking. 

Having an extra bedroom, my nieces and nephews and friends can come to stay, which I love and potentially I can have a live-in carer if I ever need one.

When I was first thinking of coming here, I was told that it’s a great community and that I would meet lots of interesting people.

I thought, “Well, I don’t really want to meet more people. I’ve got more than enough friends and family”. But what I find is that it is like living in a really friendly neighbourhood, where you regularly bump into people and they are really nice, so I am making friends.

I have even joined a choir. Again, I lost my ability to sing after my stroke and going deaf, but encouraged by the choir, I am seeing a vocal therapist and am already able to join in and really enjoy it.

I also go to horticultural sessions organised by Riverstone’s gardener every two weeks, most recently sowing seeds which do brilliantly.  We are using one of the unoccupied flats with huge windows which acts as a very effective greenhouse.

How did you find downsizing?

I was living in quite a large house with a substantial garden, so knew I would have to downsize drastically. I was helped enormously by The Senior Move Partnership, to which I had been referred by Riverstone, which covers some of their costs to assist residents moving in’. I had been carefully cutting out cardboard shapes of my piano and furniture, but they immediately said: ”Forget about that.  We can put it all on the computer.” which they did.  

Lou from Senior Move came and helped me sort through what I wanted to take with me, what was to be given away, what could be sold, and what could be given to charity or thrown away.  They organised all of that, and the move itself, taking the difficult part of the process completely out of my hands.  On the day of the move, Lou had organised the removal and went ahead of me to Riverstone to oversee the delivery and set up the furniture as we had agreed, even making up my bed.  When I arrived, I felt instantly at home.  My sisters came to have dinner that evening at the restaurant, later saying that they had left feeling completely confident that I would be happy here.

Now that I have downsized, I feel it’s very liberating. I am really enjoying having less clutter. My life has become wonderfully simple. I appreciate the books I have kept more, now I can see them so easily. Similarly with my pictures. I am having some of those cleaned now that I can see at close quarters how dirty they are.

I love the fact that I am living completely independently, but if I can’t open a jar or change a light bulb, I only have to ask the concierges or the maintenance team and it will be sorted out.