human rights

Who knew writing a human rights report would take so long?? We are now on our 5-6 draft, and still going. I finished my part of the project - profiles and case studies for each argument (violations of the right to water, right to food, right to work and right to health) two days ago, so I am now on layout. I feel really badly for the "report" team, because they are in charge of basically all of the writing in the Human Rights Report - Overview, Synopsis, Regional context, National context, International context, Chronology, ICESCR overview (International Covenant on Human Rights is divided into the ICCPR and ICESCR), and then writing all of the arguments, then the notes and appendix. Basically a ton of writing. They finished their final draft yesterday, and we were supposed to put it into the layout, but we found out extra information yesterday when some of the villagers came to do fact checks with us. SO, at 10:30 last night, our teacher told us that we had to re-format, and therefore re-write basically all of it. And the deadline is today. So basically they started at 11 and did shifts of 2 hours, all of them sleeping in our classrooms. Hopefully we will be finished today so we can put it into layout and send it off to the printer tonight. I have free days tomorrow and on Friday, but I don't think I am going to be able to take them if our project needs to be revised tonight. 

I have never felt this invested in school work before. Ever. As a group we have been writing literally form 7 am to midnight or later every day, with multiple people sleeping in the classroom to keep writing as long as their bodies can handle it. We really want to write it well, but we also really want to get all of the information in there, since this has the potential of affecting our homestay moms and dads a ton. 

A couple of the photographers on our team went back to the village to get a cover shot for the report, and some pictures for case studies and profiles, and came back with pretty funny stories. While we were there this one man had a camera and was taking pictures of all of us and these random village members. He would drag us to different people, take a picture and then move on. Apparently these pictures have been posted all around the village, with paper-sized versions all over the walls of people's homes. Hilarious. They also saw my homestay mom, who had a picture of Tany and I in her pocket, and on her walls. So cute!!

Alright...back to work!