Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Chris Jochnick
To Avert the Next Humanitarian Crisis, Empower Women and Girls
By Zainab Salbi and Chris Jochnick The past few years have been marked by crisis and conflict not seen in generations. Covid-19, the war in Ukraine, the mounting consequences of climate change – each has left a devastating imprint on our world. And each has had a disproportionate impact on millions of women and girls.
Closing the doors of justice? The South African Constitutional Court’s approach to direct access
Legal interventions can help improve poverty and inequality, but in South Africa the poor don’t have sufficient access to courts. Photo: Flickr/Harvey Barrison (Some rights reserved) Can the South African Constitutional Court better serve South Africans by hearing more direct-access cases? While there is some debate on the extent to which the law can improve implementation of economic and social rights, this much is clear: if the law is going to help at all, the poor must have access to courts.
Can legal interventions really tackle the root causes of poverty?
Legal interventions can ameliorate some of poverty’s most harmful consequences, but they cannot address poverty’s root causes. This can only be done through major policy changes. Photo: Federico Casella/Flickr (Some rights reserved) The Indian supreme court ordered the Indian government to provide one cooked meal each day to students in public schools. Legal interventions have helped poor people gain access to food, water, housing and healthcare, but they cannot transform poverty.
Poverty and human rights: can courts, lawyers and activists make a difference?
We have long known that poverty is rooted in power, yet traditional power-blind approaches to poverty remain predominant. Can a human rights lens and the traditional tools of the movement—rights, courts, lawyers and activists—address underlying issues of power and make a real difference on poverty? Alejandro Rustom/Demotix (All rights reserved) The hand of a homeless man who sleeps on the streets of Santiago, Chile. Can rights, courts, lawyers and activists actually make a difference on poverty?
No shortage of international complicity with Israeli occupation
Aid to Palestine is essentially palliative, intended to maintain a status quo. From that vantage point, aid seems to be remarkably complicit with continued Israeli occupation. How can funders and recipients break the cycle? In Funding Cannot Stop Rights Abuses, Lori Allen concludes that international aid to Palestine should not be falsely posited as a means to curtail Israeli human rights violations.
Can corporate campaigners tap corporate largesse? Unlocking millions for human rights advocates
Human rights advocates are loathe to accept corporate funding, even in pursuit of worthy initiatives. But companies facing human rights challenges are eager for credible NGO guidance and ready to finance it. How can these corporate funds be tapped to support watchdogs without compromising their independence? The discussion on these pages around human rights funding underscores a critical challenge facing many advocates -- how to mobilize funding, while maintaining independence.
Building a domestic human rights constituency in India
To fight the chilling effect created by new laws on foreign funding, Indian human rights NGOs need to develop support for funding among citizens. Though difficult, in the long run groups that have public legitimacy will be more difficult for governments to control and suppress. As head of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, Ravi Nair has first-hand knowledge of the Indian government’s oppressive behaviour towards human rights organizations critical of the state.
Funds and civil liberties
Dependence on institutional funding has depoliticized, monetized and corrupted much of the human rights work in India. While state-control of human rights funds is objectionable, rights movements will be durable and effective only when independent of big sponsors. Through the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), the government uses its powers to control flow of funds, policing what is essentially a financial transaction.
Strengthening Land Rights Will Curb Migration | by Chris Jochnick
What the US faces on its southern border is not a security problem, but a humanitarian crisis, and punishing attempts at deterrence cannot resolve it. Enabling people to stay where they are requires, first and foremost, strengthening their right to be there. SEATTLE – The world’s food supply is under threat. That was the stark warning contained in a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on climate change and land. The signs are already ubiquitous.
Land Rights Pose Opportunities, Not Just Risks, to Companies and Social Justice
In 2004, the Newmont Mining Corporation hired me to investigate human rights accusations facing its gold mine operation in Peru, despite the company feeling like it had done everything right. It got the necessary government approvals, made legal land purchases, and launched various philanthropic initiatives, yet widespread protests continued to disrupt its efforts.
10 Signs of an Impending Global Land Rights Revolution
The development community has experienced various ‘revolutions’ over the years – from microfinance to women’s rights, from the green revolution to sustainable development. Each of these awakenings has improved our understanding of the challenges we face. Each has transformed the development landscape, mostly for the better. We now see the beginnings of another, long-overdue, revolution: this one focused on the fundamental role of land in sustainable development.
Land reform for the modern era
After World War II, land reform programs in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan redistributed vast swaths of land to poor tenant farmers and agricultural laborers. The efforts helped end extreme poverty and hunger — changing the course of these countries’ histories. Land reform was referred to as the “secret sauce” that sparked sustained and broad-based economic growth.
Missing the Big Picture in Challenging Africa’s “Land Grab” Narrative
Who walks away from fertile agricultural land available to lease for as little as $1 per year per hectare? Recent reports indicate international investors are doing just that across sub-Saharan Africa. Investors began pouring into the continent with pockets full of cash and get-rich-quick dreams built on cheap, fertile, and readily available land during the food crisis of 2007 and 2008. What followed were heart-wrenching stories of conflict and displacement.
Land Rights and Global Development
In 1967, an article about land reform in Latin America by the law professor Roy Prosterman caught the attention of the U.S. military, which was struggling to support South Vietnam’s faltering government and to keep poor Vietnamese farmers from abandoning their fields to join the Vietcong. Prosterman’s article argued that secure land rights offered farmers a stable path out of poverty and a reason to stay on their plots.
Secure land rights and climate change resilience go hand in ...
* Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation. Without secure land rights, most people are reluctant to make the kinds of long-term investment and improvements to their land that fosters community environmental resilience. The current drought in India , the worst since the country declared independence more than half a century ago, illuminates the critical connection between land tenure and climate change.
Pauvreté et droits de l’homme : les tribunaux, avocats et militants peuvent-ils faire une différence?
Nous savons depuis longtemps que la pauvreté est liée au pouvoir et cependant les approches traditionnelles de la pauvreté faisant abstraction du pouvoir restent prédominantes. Le prisme des droits de l’homme et les outils traditionnels du mouvement (les droits, les tribunaux, les avocats et les militants) peuvent-ils s’occuper des problèmes sous-jacents du pouvoir et faire une véritable différence quant à la pauvreté? The hand of a homeless man who sleeps on the streets of Santiago, Chile.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Chris
Contact Chris, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack