{"id":76273,"date":"2021-05-12T08:30:41","date_gmt":"2021-05-12T12:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?p=76273"},"modified":"2025-08-19T09:36:24","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T13:36:24","slug":"carleton-welcomes-inaugural-activist-in-residence-rehana-hashmi-human-rights-defender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/2021\/carleton-welcomes-inaugural-activist-in-residence-rehana-hashmi-human-rights-defender\/","title":{"rendered":"Carleton Welcomes Inaugural Activist in Residence: Rehana Hashmi, Human Rights Defender"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Carleton Welcomes Inaugural Activist in Residence: Rehana Hashmi, Human Rights Defender\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Carleton University\u2019s Department of Law and Legal Studies<\/a> welcomes human rights advocate Rehana Hashmi<\/a> as the inaugural Activist in Residence<\/a> (AiR). Hashmi will teach students and provide them with access to her firsthand experience and an international perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t choose to become an activist,\u201d says Hashmi. \u201cI was forced into activism at age seven when my father went to prison for speaking out against the dictatorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCarleton is one of the first in Canada to start this type of program to help protect human rights defenders. They can come, rest, reflect, recharge and do their work without being silenced.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building on the department\u2019s successful participation in the Scholars at Risk<\/a> initiative, the new AiR program provides a home base for human rights activists within an academic setting, particularly for those at-risk. Students and faculty will have the opportunity to learn from someone with personal, lived experience fighting to protect human rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of the AiR program, Hashmi is working on a series of video interviews with human rights defenders from around the world. \u201cWhen they are in exile, there should be mechanisms to protect them,\u201d says Hashmi. \u201cThe Activist in Residence program is one way to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hashmi also teaches a fourth-year seminar on patriarchy, human rights and informal justice. Students learn how traditional patriarchal attitudes operate towards women and minorities seeking legal justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStudents in the course get to learn from many human rights defenders,\u201d says Hashmi. \u201cThrough online learning, we have been able to bring in experts from around the world. Recently, mothers from Palestine and Israel presented in a JurisTalk<\/a> about how they lost their children, but are still doing reconciliation work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cActivists bring knowledge from the field to help students get a firsthand experience on how advocacy works. This knowledge narrows the gap between the Global North and Global South. Faculty and students benefit from stories from the field, but it also helps activists at-risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After being exiled from her home city for her activist work, Hashmi became even more involved with activism, giving shelter to women who were beaten or had acid thrown on them. Through Sisters Trust Pakistan<\/a>, Hashmi helped victims of domestic violence and women and girls to break free of religious fundamentalism and forced marriages. This was just one step in her journey to support and protect the vulnerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenges in Pakistan are more difficult for women like Hashmi who are fighting to defend human rights. Offenders target women\u2019s children and extended families. Women can\u2019t always leave when they are at-risk. They may have many obstacles including limited mobility, family and societal restrictions to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media Contact
\n<\/strong>Steven Reid
\nMedia Relations Officer
\nCarleton University
\n613-265-6613
\nSteven.Reid3@carleton.ca<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com\/Cunewsroom<\/a>
\nCOVID 19 Updates: https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/coronavirus-covid-19\/messages\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carleton University\u2019s Department of Law and Legal Studies welcomes human rights advocate Rehana Hashmi as the inaugural Activist in Residence (AiR). Hashmi will teach students and provide them with access to her firsthand experience and an international perspective. \u201cI didn\u2019t choose to become an activist,\u201d says Hashmi. \u201cI was forced into activism at age seven […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":76274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[110],"class_list":["post-76273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-releases","tag-law"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76276,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76273\/revisions\/76276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}