Week 3
Hello! Another week has flown by here in Geneva. At work I am mainly working on the proposal I mentioned earlier with Jayli and the country team. We have been on a few calls with the IBJ lawyers in Turkey currently working on their Syrian refugee access to justice project to gain more insights about what obstacles minority groups face in accessing representation and discrimination they face in the legal system in Turkey. These “justice makers,” as IBJ calls them, are astounding people who are fighting against the system to represent individuals who otherwise would be wrongfully treated or sentenced, and they are working overtime to be able to help us win this proposal. Working with them is such a meaningful experience.
There are many many new interns here, we are now pushing almost 14, and the office is very crowded. That being said, I am thankful we have such a great group of people to spend time with at lunch and outside the office, even though the office is very cramped and hot now. Geneva was having a street food festival this week so the other interns and I went for lunch. I have noticed Geneva is extremely environmentally conscious. They really try to limit single use plastics and waste, so for the street food festival you had to put a deposit down for plates/cups/silverware to use and then when you returned them after you were done you got your deposit back. This was a great idea but I don’t think the USA would ever do the same unfortunately.
Non-work related - I took Friday off and went to Croatia with a few other interns for the weekend! We spent 48 hours in Split and it was so cool. We toured the Diocletian Palace which was built in 395 AD. It is still used today as a market and residence, as well as a tourist attraction. The second day we went on a boat tour of the surrounding islands and got to swim in the crystal blue ocean. It was a great day except for the fact that one of my friend’s stepped on a sea urchin towards the end. Thankfully, the sea urchins are not poisonous in Croatia! I am thankful that IBJ lets the interns take days off to travel and explore, and I have many more weekend trips planned.