Ch. 1 - Arriving to the Cité
Arriving in Geneva took longer than expected— 9 hours and an extra flight to Germany, to be exact. But I cannot complain, as the final destination of all of my travel labors was a city where not only am I surrounded by a culture that emphasizes the enjoyment of life’s simple moments, but also where great number of international individuals live and work that share my same interests and values.
Although this was vaguely known to me before I reached the “Peace Capitol,” the reality of my good fortune was not evident to me until Kyle (my trusted comrade and the other W&M student on this life adventure) and I decided to join a group I found on Facebook for a day-long excursion our first Saturday in town. We arrived to Gare Coranvin (the train station) 45 minutes before the group was set to depart.
We were soon met with an issue—we had no idea who was in this group, plainly labeled “Geneva Intern’s Association” (GIA, from here on). As the only information we had was that we were joining the group for “Caves Ouvertes,” a regional wine festival spread out over dozens of miles and UNESCO World Heritage sites, we were eager to join others who knew more about the area rather than attempt to direct ourselves through the festivities. This sense of urgency led to an embarrassing spectacle, where Kyle and I took turns asking random groups of people if they were interns, my first victim being a group of four senior citizens standing with two twenty-something-year-olds. Unsurprisingly, they were not interns. Finally, after almost resorting to slyly joining one group celebrating “Nick’s birthday party” without invitation, we found the other members of GIA.
Boarding the train, we met several different groups of interns from all around the world, almost all of whom were working for the UN or some other sort of international government agency. As if I was living in my own personal fantasy, I was able to rave on about topics like the Gacaca courts of Rwanda and transitional justice with other young people who are similarly interested in the same field. We went from winery to winery, having in-depth conversations about International affairs whilst simultaneously seeing what must be some of the finest landscapes on this earthly plane.
Kyle and I retired early, taking “naps” at 7 pm that led me to waking up with a full night’s worth of sleep at 3 am on Sunday. After I tried and failed to return to my peaceful slumber, I decided to slide my tennis shoes on and discover what a sleepy Geneva is like at 6 a.m. on a Sunday. After walking to the other side of the city and buying a cheese danish and a bouquet of flowers at the train station, I took a bus back to Cité and arrived home around the time that Kyle was waking up. After eating brunch, we walked alongside La Jonction, where the Arve and Rhone rivers meet with fiercely contrasting colors. The Rhone’s glacial blue waters stand fierce against the milky green-brown current of the Arve, leading to a natural phenomenon that is even more striking in person than it is in photos.
Monday, which I assumed would be my first day of work at International Bridges to Justice (IBJ), came with a surprise—it was a national holiday, and thus—work was cancelled. As Whit Monday, the day following Pentecost, is is a national holiday, I spent the day picnicking with some friends made at the Caves Ouvertes festival. Five of us went to Geneva Beach and afterwards, took one of Geneva’s signature “mouettes,” small yellow shuttle boats, to the other side of Lake Geneva to eat kebab before retiring for the night and preparing for my first day of work.
Tuesday morning, I arrived at the IBJ office. The only people in the office at the time I entered were other interns, who quickly welcomed Kyle and I and told us where to sit. At this point there are 8 interns at the IBJ office; one of these is another law student, and the rest are in varying degrees of completing undergraduate or graduate studies. Two Americans, two French, and two Swiss. After the remainder of the office started to trickle in (the starting hour of the work day is not nearly as uncompromising as it is in the States), I became settled and was assigned my first project by Chris, a former DOJ attorney who now oversees many of IBJ’s global legal programs. She also is the one who manages the interns and assigns them to various projects.
Kyle and I were both assigned to work on a funding proposal for a potential new project in Afghanistan that would provide services to internally displaced women within the country’s borders. As this specific funding proposal is essentially a (detailed) open form that is provided by the organization we will be submitting it to, there are plenty of minute details and specific metrics that need to be included for it to be considered. Kyle and I split up the work, meticulously going through the document and its guidelines and to note what information would be essential to its completion. With these notes, we joined a Zoom call at 4:00 P.M. with Chris, ourselves, an Afghan employee at IBJ, and an employee of the organization we are partnering with on this project. The female founder of the other organization had to flee Afghanistan and is now located in a country with frequent power outages, so she was unfortunately unable to join the call at this time. About thirty minutes into the meeting, Chris had to leave for an appointment; she left what was left of the meeting to the direction of Kyle and myself.
During the call, we learned how dire the situation in Afghanistan truly is at the moment. The Taliban has completely dismantled the country’s justice department, dissolving the Kabul Bar Association, and leaving criminal trials to the discretion of a singular member of the Taliban at a time, where he has the role of prosecutor, judge, and jury. Women cannot leave home without being accompanied by a male relative, and they cannot attend school after a certain age. This leaves them completely financially dependent on their husbands and male family members. Hearing this impressed upon me the importance of the project that we were writing this proposal for. The program has four focus areas, all catered towards internally-displaced women within Afghanistan: (1) Leadership training and committee building workshops, (2) business counseling, (3) providing psychosocial services, and (4) giving out legal advice. The rest of the week, Kyle and I focused on writing, rewriting, and editing and the proposal, a process of combing through that will likely take until the 17th of this upcoming week, when it is due.
On top of the Afghanistan proposal, I worked on a few side projects including updating the online profiles of our Burundi team and attending a meeting with their office, which was conducted in French (luckily, my rusty language skills have come back enough for me to have understood the majority of what was being discussed). I also joined several other interns in a meeting about IBJ’s eLearning modules, which we are beginning to redo and relaunch. These eLearning modules provide legal education courses to lawyers around the world. They are created from IBJ’s Global Curriculum that focuses on country-specific laws, and IBJ’s “Defender Scorecard,” which promotes universal principles of effective defense advocacy.
My first Friday at IBJ was a special one; it was the first in-person board meeting to happen in Geneva in many years. The Board of Advisors to IBJ consists of global leaders in criminal defense and human rights issues. Mia Yamamoto, a former public defender who was IBJ founder Karen Tse’s mentor when she was in law school, recalled her history as a transgender woman who was born in a Japanese internment camp. As I had spent the prior night watching a two-hour-long interview of hers, it was a surreal experience to actually be able to speak to her at the end of the day, as the board was clearing out of the office. To add to my incredulity, Nancy Hollander, a public defender icon, also popped into our conversation for a minute. In one conversation, I went from knowing the exact route I plan to take following law school to considering starting my career in the sphere of public defense. As swaying the opinion of a judge and jury is at the crux of the two women’s career, their ability to cause such a drastic shift of my intentions within a short conversation is not shocking. It was an incredible end to my first week in the office. Afterwards, all of the interns went to Bains de Paquis to listen to music and watch the sunset; chatting on the public beach until nearly 9:30 p.m., we relished in the success of the day.
My first week at IBJ has already been more fulfilling than any work I have ever accomplished. The company’s statistics and global impact, highlighted throughout the board meeting, astounded me. It is truly an honor to work at an organization that produces such tangible results. For more information about IBJ’s programs and current success, please visit their website here: https://www.ibj.org.
