Accessible Podcasting

Anna: Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of our podcast PH-I Against the Odds, dedicated to sharing knowledge and practical experiences amongst human dignity defenders around the world. PH-I Against the Odds is produced by and for the Phoenix Initiative for Human Dignity, a collaborative platform that supports the building of sustainable, resilient human dignity projects and organizations.

At the Phoenix Initiative, we are convinced that learning from each other's experiences is often much more powerful than anything else. Today's topic is on the importance of supporting and nourishing each person's strengths to improve the impact of human dignity work. Providing those you work with or participating yourself in opportunities for training and capacity building is one of the mainstream ways to better identify and use your strengths.

But another way, still very much unexplored in the human rights sector lies in personal mentoring and coaching. We are very honored today to have Vicki Prais with us on the microphone. Vicki is an award-winning human rights lawyer and independent human rights consultant with over 28 years of experience stretching from working with civil society organizations such as Penal Reform International with international actors, such as the Council of Europe or the United Nations, or government actors such as the UK government. She is also an avid defender of the importance and value of mentoring and coaching and offers individual coaching sessions for human rights defenders. Welcome Vicki and we are very grateful to have you today with us.

Vicki: Thank you Anna and I'm really delighted to be here today. 

Anna: Let me start right away with my first question. Can you tell us more about the added value of mentoring and coaching for human dignity defenders and especially what is different in mentoring and coaching from continuous professional learning and capacity building as we know it today? 

Vicki: This is a great question and a great place to start because I think, as you say, this is a very sort of kind of type of work that we do in our sector, but mentoring and coaching play a hugely important role for human rights defenders and are not to be underestimated.It can be a very powerful and empowering experience for the individual and beneficial to them. I think it's safe to say that we all need a listening ear, a critical friend, and someone really to walk alongside us in the human rights sector. Otherwise, it can be a very lonely road, very emotionally draining, and challenging to go it alone. So, coaching and mentoring are really critical in that regard to support an individual. 

And I think I always talk about it in terms of building a board of advisors that we have our own personal board of advisors, people who we can call upon, be it a coach, be it a mentor to support us there. Basically, as mentors, we offer advice and insights, and guidance from our own lived experiences. Right, and that's often either a medium or a longer-term relationship. It's a lot more directive than coaching, and for human rights defenders, mentoring might be needed for confidence, for job support and advice, for promotion, for leadership. There are lots of ways and means that mentors can support their mentees in the human rights sector. 

As coaches, we are there to support human rights defenders, perhaps in a little bit more of a directive way, perhaps in short bursts, and it's a lot more task-focused. Also, we, as coaches, deploy specific techniques and exercises. And it's there, we're there to support human rights defenders with a particular issue. It could be motion, it could be a job application, helping somebody prepare for an interview, or perhaps a work-related issue that they need to work through. 

So to me, a mentor and a coach in our sector is part and parcel of the work that we do and, as I say, building and growing a board of advisors. In terms of the difference between coaching, mentoring, and professional development. To me, professional development feels more like a mandatory requirement for a specific profession. So, as a human rights lawyer, I know that if I were in practice, I would have a certain number of professional development hours I would need to do. Whereas mentoring and coaching are more of a..., let's say, voluntary endeavour on the part of the individual and something that they opt in to do rather than that they have to do, there, and it's usually that initiation by the individual and capacity building perhaps is of a different sort of vehicle together.

Anna: Excellent, I really like this idea of a board of advisors. I never thought about this way, but it makes it very tangible, so if I understand this, mentoring is more about a long-term relationship, and the coaching is more about very specific moments. How does a typical session look like or what does the typical mentoring part and coaching part look like?

Vicki: The mentoring, exactly as you say it's often a more kind of informal engagement that you would have with somebody, and it's you sharing your experiences, perhaps you're sort of further down the line. I have, as you said, 28 years' experience in the sector. You are sharing your experience, your lived experience of that with perhaps somebody who's closer to sort of starting out in their career or just starting out in their career there.

Mentoring really can take lots of different shapes and forms. It can be an online relationship or an in-person relationship. For me, it usually takes the form of more sort of periodic meetings, perhaps a bit more ad hoc, really to catch up on somebody's progress, to answer any questions they may have, to see how they're doing, and perhaps to introduce them to somebody in my network in that respect. But mentoring, you know, it can be for a shorter period of time, actually mentoring around a particular issue or something that an individual might need. So that's really how I see mentoring. 

Whereas coaching, as you rightly say, is more structured. As a coach, I'm usually instructed by my client to help with a particular issue or task when I say they want to apply for a job with, you know, the UN, or they want to apply for a job with an NGO, I will help them put together their application materials. Or as I had just before Christmas, somebody asking for some support with preparing for an interview for the International Criminal Court, I would help them with that. 

So, it's a very task-oriented sort of engagement that I would have with the client for that particular piece of work. We would always start by having a discovery call. I meet them usually online, really to see whether there's chemistry between us and how we might work together. I want to learn more about that person, where they're at the moment in their career. And we know that working in the human rights sector can be up and down. It can be challenging there. I really want to understand where they're at professionally and where their direction of travel is. So, we have that. And then I share my options with that individual as to where and how I can support them. And then I leave it very much up to them to take a view whether or not they want to move forward.

I never put any pressure on anybody. I will walk alongside that person as and when they need that support. If they do want to work together, then we will set up a power hour session. I work through power hours. And usually there will be work in advance for me to do, be it preparing somebody's CV and cover letter for a particular role or preparing a personal brand audit as I do for my personal branding power hours. 

And then we hold our session, which is usually for about an hour, an hour and 15 minutes. It's a safe space. It's a confidential space, because often more comes out than just that particular issue so I'm there to be that kind of container and to be a listening ear and then following the session I'm always there for follow-up and support for the individual and I always want to hear how people are doing I want to kind of follow somebody's journey to hear those success stories, but also to be a support there if it doesn't go well or to commiserate, so I always invite somebody to tell me how their interview went or whether they got shortlisted for a job. So that's what a coaching experience would look like. 

Anna: And I think this last part is very important when we talk about learning from failures, right? Because I can see more and more that people understand that failure is actually a success because we can learn so much from it and we will learn much more from it when we have talked about it with somebody who can guide us in this learning, right?

Vicki: Absolutely, yeah. No, it's definitely so, you know, what didn't go so well. Okay, I know not to do that next time. I need to kind of improve on that particular technical skill or asset for the next time. So, there's always learning absolutely. There's always learning in those failures. 

Anna: Have yourself benefited from coaching and mentoring throughout your career? I mean, you have a very impressive impact on the human rights world. You have so much experience. You were in the sector for so long. Have you had a coaching experience or a mentoring experience and how has it helped you? 

Vicki: Yes, to both basically. I did have a coach help me when I left the foreign office. So, I was just to give a little bit of context, I was a human rights advisor at the foreign office here in the UK for three years where I was advising foreign office staff on any human rights issues affecting British nationals in detention overseas. And as you can imagine, it was a pretty exhausting draining. So, I left that role at the end of 2017, not quite knowing what next, where next.  And I worked with a coach for some time to kind of help me navigate my way through that, what next and where next. And it was hugely valuable. I have to say it really was. This individual, she helped to ground me, to advise me. And I really cherish the experience that I had with her. we did part company, we went our separate ways, but I think, you know, it was at the right moment and time and I kind of then launched myself into the world of independent consultancy very soon after that.

I have benefited from a coach in terms of a mentor. I talk about my human rights family, and I have people who are in my human rights family who I look up to who have guided me and who have walked alongside me and who I feel that I can go to for support, advice, insight, you know, and they might not know that they're their mentors to me, but they are, or I see them as my mentors. So, I have benefited from both and really, that's why I'm so keen and passionate about doing this work myself. 

Anna: But you said that you had left the foreign office, or it was more or less closer to your decision to leave the foreign office when you started to dive into coaching and when you had your own first coaching experiences for civil society organizations or any organizations or even government offices. Do you think there is. They should include this possibility for their staff or their ongoing advisor into their own professional learning, maybe also. How could this be done? Because in the end, we would like people to stay, right?

And in the end, we would like people to bring the best out of themselves to move the human dignity movement forward and not necessarily to leave. So how could an organization actually integrate this? What would your lines?

Vicki: Absolutely, and you raise a very important point there that in our sector, there is a huge level of attrition. There's a huge level of people leaving the sector leaving organizations through stress, through just the nature of the work that we do is so demanding there. So as organizations, you want to retain your staff. You want to keep them motivated, engaged there. I think the integration of coaches in organizations is a huge benefit and huge value to that organization. 

First of all, it sends a signal from that organization, the management, that they value their staff, that they want to keep their staff as long as they can. And as you say, it brings a happier workforce. If you have that kind of coach, they're available to them. And I do think that some organizations already have coaches there or at least kind of go to them when they need them or if they need some leadership, you know they might send their staff on a leadership training course or something like this.

But it's interesting I was thinking about this as they're about models and ways to do it and one thing that strikes me as an option is having a coach in residence idea whereas the name suggests, you are attached to that organization as a coach there and then you provide that ongoing support to staffers, either on a one-to-one basis or in a group setting as well because there's a lot of value in that peer support there. So, if you, as a coach, can kind of facilitate that and bring that in. So, a coaching residence is an option that I thought about. Or you have it on a more ad hoc basis where a coach comes in, gives a workshop or one-to-one sessions as and when the civil society organization needs it and needs that support.

Or, as I said, the other option is that the organization sends out its staff to particular training for whatever it may be. I was looking at various different sort of models there, and for example, the Essex University has something called the Human Rights Leadership Lab, so that's done out of Essex University there and I know a lot of people have gone on this course there which you know supports leaders, would be leaders in our sector there and it's very highly regarded. 

So yeah, there are different ways and means but the one thing I will say is funding and finances and we know that for CSOs you know that's a challenge. Right, in terms of, you know, finding the funds for coaches that are nice to have, but is it, you know, something that they can actually find 

the funds for.

Anna: Yes, that is always the biggest challenge, I think, in our world. But I am personally convinced that if you have passionate and motivated people you work with, you also have much more success on the fundraising side because you can much better defend the cause and defend what you do and convince people why they should invest in yourself and in your organization which is what funding and fundraising is all about.

Thank you so much, Vicki, for sharing these insights and this knowledge with us. It's very exciting. I like the coach and residence idea very much. I keep wondering how this would work in terms of trust and confidence that, you know, information does not transgress any personal limits and I would love to explore this maybe in another episode. 

We are coming slowly to an end to this one and I want to thank our listeners for tuning in. I hope that you will make a lot of use of the takeaways from this episode and I'm very much looking forward to broadcasting the next one.

This is a machine-created transcript, it might not be perfect but it allows you to use machine translation, and for those who are hearing impaired, to read our podcast.

Anna: Hello and welcome to the Phoenix Initiative for Human Dignity podcast Against All Odds. The Phoenix Initiative is a collaborative platform that supports the building of sustainable and resilient human dignity projects and organizations. We have developed this podcast to share inspiring stories from around the globe on challenges and opportunities to successfully defend human dignity and to allow our audience to learn from each other. 

Today we are blessed to have with us Stephen Nyein Han Tun.

Stephen is an anthropologist and indigenous person from the Northern Shan State of Myanmar. He lived many months amongst the Rohingya people, marginalized ethnic communities and other vulnerable populations and helped local organizations with proposal writing, strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation, supervision and research training. He lives today in exile in Thailand, where he's working with an international human rights foundation on the topics of human rights in Myanmar. And he regularly publishes human rights research articles at Strengthening Human Rights and Peace Research at the IRD and the Tea Leaf Center in Chiang Mai. Welcome to this podcast, Stephen. 

Stephen: Welcome, yes. 

Anna: How are you doing? 

Stephen: Yes, I am fine and thank you for having me and thank you for this opportunity. So, and here I'm Steven. I'm ready to answer your question now. 

Anna: Perfect. Very good. How about if you start to tell us a little bit more about yourself and the work that you're doing at the moment? 

Stephen: Yes, and yeah, my name is Steven Nyein Han Tun. So, as you said, I'm from Northern Shaanxi, originally from Northern Shaanxi, and I'm an indigenous person, but I grew up in city and also to join a Master of Social Science and development study, which was an Indonesian Human Rights, Indonesian Social Science Program in Thailand, which was in 19 as I finished my degree in 2019 and after that I went back to Myanmar so and in the period of COVID -19 in 2020 and 2019 December, so it was a dirt time for Myanmar but at the time I tried to volunteer for my indigenous community not only my indigenous community but also for other indigenous people in Myanmar because they don't they did not know about COVID -19 and also did because COVID -19 only in the Myanmar language which was not indigenous language that is why most of the indigenous people they did not know about the what is COVID -19 and how to prevent COVID -19 and how to get medication.

So, at the time in 2020, I was in Myanmar, and I have been the indigenous community and marginalized community. They are not indigenous, they are also marginalized groups. And after 2020 and in 2021, so it was a military coup in Yangon. I was in Yangon and at the time I worked with INGO for the possession of anthropologists so especially we work for the medical or medical action for the marginalized group which is also including indigenous people and also and other for instance, LGBTQIA and also some of the Rohingya group. So yeah, that is why in 2021 I was in the Rohingya area for many months and tried to learn about Rohingya people and also their behavior, especially their health -sick behavior and also their rights. 

After living in many months in Rohingya area, so in 2021, I joined with Equality Myanmar because I'm interested in human rights and justice and also documentation of human rights violations. So that is why I had to move to Thailand. Chiang Mai from Myanmar, I also brought my family and then 2021 to 2025 I am living in Chiang Mai and then late 2021. So, I'm especially I'm working for the position of plant development and mill, you know, and I work for donor reporting, and I work for proposal writing and also sometimes I work with international expert in proposal writing and also and monitoring evaluation and learning and accountability. And so, actually I like this position because I have only, you know, my skill is only writings and also games with the international donor. And also, i have some background of social science and political science. And i know about Myanmar politics and history. And, you know, in Myanmar we cannot say only Burmese politics. We can't, we should, we need to thought about the indigenous politics and also Burmese politics and also the regional dimensions of the Bawa dynamics and dimension of culture. Also we had different politics in Myanmar. So that is why Myanmar is, you know, is having over 70 years, the people are still fighting many armed groups and Burmese military hunger. is controlling the country since 1962 until now so over 70 years they are still controlling the country but in Myanmar, on the other hand in Myanmar we have a lot of ethnic armed groups, so and ethnic armed groups is also indigenous armed group so we have a lot of armed groups now so and after 2021 we had a lot of armed groups and so that is a pre-information about myself and about my journey since 2021.

Anna: Very exciting journey, actually. And you must have seen a lot of things that people have only heard about over these last years. So I'm very curious to hear, Steven, now from what you have done when you were still living in Myanmar and from what you're doing now. because the topic of our podcast on the topic of partnerships, and the importance of partnerships for human dignity work. And you are actually in a very good position to tell us about this importance of partnership for the work. What are the challenges that you encountered both while you were still in Myanmar and you are now? And did partnerships help? Did you have partnerships and how did it help you? 

Stephen: Yeah, so regarding partnerships, I want to say two things. So first is partnership, which is related to my work. So, we have international partnership, donor, and friends, and also international community. As we are human rights organizations, so partnership is very important now.  Because, you know, Since 2021, most of CSO from Myanmar, human rights defenders, individual human rights defenders and activists, they don't have a lot of Hanna shit. and some of the human rights defenders are facing very difficult situations. So they don't have international partnership. They don't have a local partnership. And also most of human rights CSO in Myanmar, from Myanmar, so because we are here in Germany and not outside the country, we have CSO partnership, but a kind of partnership and a kind of networking. We are still building our networking and working together with other CS organizations and also for especially for advocacy. Yeah, so that is one thing. And it's the way we stay value on partnership, and we stay fighting for the Luka and international partnership for human rights defense and your personality.

So for our personal and I'm an activist and human rights defender and also you know, social science and anthropology. And yeah, so for example, we have only partnership with us within our human rights defense groups and activists. So, partnership is very important because sometimes we need some help and we need some encouragement and we need some, you know, socialization. And that is very important for us. Because most of the human rights defenders and also activists living here, they are feeling lonely and also, their psychological, they are not going well. Yeah. So am I answer your question? If not, please repeat again. 

Anna: Yeah. No, there was already a very long answer actually to my question. I like this because what we would like to give to people who listen to this podcast is really an inside view of how the human dignity work looks like on the ground and how this notion of partnership can actually really help the human dignity work. Maybe you can give us a concrete example. something of maybe just the latest, concretes example of how you overcame a certain challenge thanks to a partnership or can you illustrate a little bit? 

Stephen: Yeah, so before talking about partnership, let me mention about dignity, human dignity. So, for Myanmar, we don't have human dignity, and we lost our dignity and we also lost our identity. And you know, let me go to the partnership and it is a great challenge for us for regarding partnership. So and individually, it is difficult situations, and we cannot have new friends. and new areas and also a new society because you know living in Thailand is not you know it's like you know we cannot go to the public and also we need to avoid that kind of thing we need to avoid the first labor we don't go to the first labor and also when we use Facebook so it's very difficult for us to turn on the public mood so and yeah It is a challenge for us. 

For CSO, so let me talk about CSO. Within the CSO, we already have partnership with other CSO who are in HCI. not inside the country but outside the country so we had a good partnership and we now in 2024 we started celebration human rights days and also, we invite many CSO and we celebrate in Germany, but we are worried a lot for our safety and security yeah. 

Anna: Even now that you are in exile?

Stephen: Yeah. So, I think thank you. So, I think you need to ask me your question with simple English, not academyic language. And I'm so worried that I'm not answering your question.

Anna: Yeah. You are doing really well. Don't worry. Everything is good. I am curious, what would you advise to others who could find themselves in your position? What would be the best way? For others to deal with the situation, both as a person, but also as an organization? 

Stephen: It's for persons, so I think, because I will be different from other human rights defenders, because I brought my family in Chiang Mai, and I sold out all my property in Myanmar, so since 2021, and I am living in Thailand with my wife and a son but it is very difficult for me and my son and my wife because we you know we cannot afford my son education here in Thailand because it is very expensive that is why so, but I am trying to find another way, an alternative way and I tried to find online English class for my son and also other cheaper education system in Bangkok and a kind of predicate and other trainings for my son. And yeah, my wife, she doesn't have any job, so she only lives in the house and waiting for me when I go to the office and walk in so and the life is not easy yeah, but you know we cannot stop here, and we cannot complain our life and because we are fighting for human rights defend for human rights and also You know, we are the voice and we need to amplify the voice of the people in Myanmar who cannot, who are facing difficult situations.

And yeah, for me, I'm also a researcher and I see different ways from other people and other human rights defenders. But I just want to, you know bring their experience and writing something and also sharing to the Indonesian community. So that is why I can do that. And there is individually and individual experience. So for the organization.  I think it is very difficult for now. Because of DL and USA Gram, it's cut out a lot of projects in our organization and also all the organization in Chiang Mai and CSO in Myanmar who live in Chiang Mai and Thailand. 

Anna: So, we had a lot of CSO here, they are facing very difficult situations. I think I have to interview again. on the topic of how human rights organizations do in exile in general, because there are so many there, not only in Chiang Mai, but also in other countries, right? And from other countries. And I think there's a lot to explore how these organizations can actually cooperate with other and learn from each other. It was very moving to talk to you, Stephen, actually. And we will definitely broadcast

this. And I hope we will get a lot of reactions from our audience. And who knows? Wherever a door closes, there is a new door that opens up again. We can just hope for this. And that brings me to my very last question, actually, because we are coming to the end. of this podcast, usually we only have 10 to 15 minutes, and we are already a little bit over time. but my last question is maybe a personal one. Because at the Phoenix Initiative, we are fully convinced by the unbeatable power of dream. So what is your biggest dream? Do you want to share your biggest dream with us? 

Stephen: Yes. Yeah, so that is a great opportunity for me. Let me share about my bigger dreams. And I want my country, not for me, not for my family first. I want my countries and also indigenous people and also the people from lowland Myanmar. And all the people from Myanmar. And I don't have any boundaries, religious boundary. I don't have politics boundary. But yeah, so I just want to say all the people in Myanmar. And also, I just want to include all the people in Myanmar to have peaceful situations and peaceful family and peaceful society and community in Myanmar because we are living under the military counter force over seven decades and we witness human rights violations and instead of using we so let me say I so I have a very bad situation. I have a very bad experience that

human rights and also military hunters and their forces are killing the people and also beating the people and torture the people because I can say that because I had that kind of experience I was one of them and my biggest dream is I want to study and I want to finish my PhD and I want

to work for my community and it means all the community in Myanmar so for human rights education and I want them to know about their rights and talking about address about their rights and human rights education, we don't have human rights education in Myanmar, and we don't know how to address our problem where we can address our problems so we don't know that that is why I just want to be a kind of a volunteers or medians for the community and international governments or international community and the people and bring their voice to them and you know, but that is very important. So peace, education and human rights. Yeah, that's all and development.

Anna: There's no better way. to close this podcast, Stephen. Thank you so much for having been with us. I hope that we can talk again, maybe in another episode. And I hope that our audience enjoyed this podcast as much as I did now talk to you. So thank you so much, Stephen. 

This is a machine-created transcript, it might not be perfect but it allows you to use machine translation, and for those who are hearing impaired, to read our podcast.

Anna: Hello and welcome to a new episode of our podcast, PH-I Against the Odds, dedicated to share knowledge and practical experience of human rights and dignity defenders from around the world. In this episode, we would like to explore the possibilities and opportunities to defend fundamental human rights and human dignity in a country that has imposed strict foreign agent law on its civil society. For this, I'm very grateful to talk today to Madhurima Dhanuka, who I first met a few years ago when she was still the program's head of the prison reform program of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative in India. She left the initiative in 2024, was consulting the National Legal Service Authority and is currently consulting the India Justice Report on all issues around the criminal justice system and legal aid in India. Madhurima, welcome to this podcast.

Madhurima : Hi, glad to be here.

Anna: How are you doing?

Madhurima : I'm doing well. I hope you are as well as two.

Anna: I am. Thank you very much. Madhurima, you have been with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative for over 16 years. Can you tell us a little bit more about the work and the impact during all these years?

Madhurima :  I joined CHRI back in 2008 after returning from the UK, having completed my LLM in criminal justice. My work has been centered around prisoners' rights and prison reforms, and it has had a deep focus on pretrial detention and access to legal aid. In my early days, I visited prisons frequently, interacting with prisoners and prison staff, and that really enhanced my knowledge of the system. This grassroots experience really helped, and soon I was able to understand systemic issues and, more importantly, I began strategizing on the solutions. I engaged with the state authorities and later with central government bodies that provided inputs to a number of provisions, policies, training modules, etc., in the area of prisons and legal aid. 

I carved out work for securing rights of vulnerable prisoners, such as menstrual hygiene for women prisoners, consular access, and repatriation facilitation for foreign national prisoners. And while these were more localized and individual-focused, at the level of policy, initiatives that led to nationwide impact. The foremost for me will be my work in streamlining the under-trial review committees. These committees are district-level bodies that are mandated to review cases of unsentenced prisoners regularly. And these have resulted in the release of nearly 0.1 million prisoners since their inception. Overall, I have made meaningful contributions to the criminal justice system. And that is what has and continues to drive my passion.

Anna: 0.1 million - very impressive. 

India has introduced the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act in 1976 and during your time at the Commonwealth Initiative, you have lived through several amendments. The regulation has been tightened several times, and the last important ones were in 2020. Can you tell us more about the law, who was most impacted, how the regulation changed over the years, and why?

Madhurima : The FCRA regulates the acceptance and use of foreign contributions, such as donations, grants, and funds, by individuals, associations, and companies in India, while acknowledging the need to have such legislation. However, over the years, the government has introduced stringent reforms to the Act, which have severely impacted the functioning of NGOs in particular. 

Now, in 2020, for instance, they introduced a ban on sub-granting or transferring of foreign funds. What this effectively meant was NGOs could no longer pass funds to other organizations, even those that had FCRA registrations. What this meant for grassroots organizations that were working with communities situated a number of times in remote locations, they could no longer get the funds to do that work. For larger organizations that were working with other organizations on projects together, they were no longer able to do the same as they could not transfer the funds to others. So that really led to the shutdown of a lot of grassroots organizations and organizations such as Oxfam, Save the Children, others really felt the brand because they could no longer do the meaningful work that they were because they couldn't transfer the funds down to smaller entities.

Similarly, there was another amendment where they capped the administrative expenditure from 50% down to 20 percent. Now this really limited the capacity of NGOs to manage their staff's salaries and other institutional aspects of running an organization. So this really impacted organizations such as CHRI or other policy think tanks because a major chunk of the portioning of the funds goes into human resources. Because when you do research, part of the funds are actually allocated for salaries and for research, field visits, et cetera, which were now severely limited. So that really impacted how organizations could work, especially organizations that were not delivery-based or service-oriented. So organizations that were working with systems really felt the brunt of this type of amendment.

Further, they also brought in a lot of regulations on reporting, on how the money moved around, how the money came into the country, and other related things, which was fine as long as they were trying to tighten the process. However, when you are strategizing, I think you need to also have a good, clear understanding of how this would impact, not just organizations that were doing the good work, but also the people for whom they were doing the good work.

Anna: Do I understand correctly that organizations in India can still receive foreign contributions, foreign funding, etc., but the internal regulations in India make it hard to use this funding?

Madhurima : So what has happened is that over the past few years, there's been a lot of crackdowns on foreign funds that are being received by certain organizations. Particularly, the crackdowns have affected funds coming from specific organizations abroad that were not ... if I may say so, in the good books of the government, and the crackdowns meant that any organization that was funded by that at any point in time, they ended up losing their registrations or their license to receive foreign funds. So now what it essentially means when you've lost your license, it doesn't mean you can't function. But it means that you are no longer able to get or receive foreign funds. So you have to look or scout for local funds, local funders, and find other ways to continue your operations.

Anna: What does this mean for the Indian population? I mean, a lot of these organizations that work on systemic reform, I imagine, have received quite an important part of foreign funding. So what does this mean now? What does this mean for the future of the Indian population?

Madhurima : So this increasing focus on control and traceability of foreign funds, in my view, has been extremely regressive. It has led to the closing or downsizing of several prominent organizations, including Oxfam, the Center for Policy Research, the Human Rights Law Network, and also CHRI, not to mention the thousands of grassroots organizations that are working with the marginalized and vulnerable communities. One would argue that funding can be secured locally. However, with most of the prominent NGOs scaling down operations, because what was lost was knowledge and experience. The local funding that is being made available it's not for NGOs who've lost their FCRA. So effectively, it's been a double whammy for organizations and for people like me who've spent years, who've devoted their years to the sector, because before we can't get foreign funds and the local funders won't fund us. 

But who loses? Of course, it's the people. It's the people who've lost the experience and the knowledge that people like us brought to the system. The work that was being done, which was at a higher policy and systemic level reform, is no longer being done in the same way. 

When your grassroots organizations are no longer in existence, it is the common man who suffers because they no longer have anybody to support them. If it's a victim of rape who goes to the police station, they don't have that support that they had earlier, because someone who had a legal problem, they don't have the paralegal to support them anymore. So the biggest loss is to the, it's to the people.

Anna: But what do you think organizations should change to be able to receive more funding or donations from within India? I mean, I do understand that this is a huge change in culture also, right? Because a lot of human rights and dignity organizations were used to receive this funding from bigger international foundations, for instance, or other entities. So what can organizations do now who still work in India to be able to get this maybe stronger buy-in from the population that channels into funding? Also, what would be a way to approach this?

Madhurima : What should have happened but didn't happen was that the sector didn't come together. In our bid or our struggle to survive, we became competitors, and we didn't become collaborators. Collaborators who could have approached the local funders and explained to them why funding, you know, the older organizations or the organizations that had experience and knowledge, is important. I think that never happened. And I think that's something I feel has led to where we are now, where we have a lot of new organizations coming up and mushrooming, and this there is a support that goes to them. However, they don't have the knowledge and experience that we spent years building through our work.

As I said in the beginning, I think my entire learning is based on my initial experiences of going to prison, interacting with people, interacting with the prison officers, and the prisoners. And I learned a lot about what works, what won't work. But then the new person who's trying to do the same thing will have to go through it all over again. So essentially, what you've done is, in my view, what has happened is that access to justice work has gone back in time. And it will take another decade or two decades for the people who are in it right now to come to the same level of experience and expertise as people like us are.

And then, you know, do meaningful contributions, which would have just, you know, so it's like a 20-year lag, in my view, of what has happened. And when one could reinvent, one could, you know, there were always suggestions about having a new organization, you know, starting afresh. It's not easy to start afresh. It's not easy to bear the burden of what's happened. I've been following a lot of LinkedIn since the US aid crisis happened. And I strongly, you know, I could relate to a lot of the posts that talked about the years of work just being taken away from them one day. And I get sentiment, and I think that's also what's happening. That's to me is worrisome because, you know, you can see something and say, oh, this is not sustainable, this is not going to work. But then you have this whole range of funders in India who are, they do shy away from funding the access to justice space because access to justice doesn't give you quick results.

And for a lot of the corporates, so there's this whole thing around corporate social responsibility where companies are mandated to give certain companies, they're supposed to give a specific amount of money that they're earning to social causes. And then you have, of course, you have local funders and local industrialists and other groups who are funding. But they shy away from funding access to justice. They shy away from funding, say, police reforms or prison reforms because these are very systemic for them in nature. They don't see things changing. It's not very tangible.

You know, change in access to justice isn't tangible. They want the numbers. They want to know who you released. So for instance, if I look at the context of prisoners, if I go to a local funder, they want to know how many prisoners I released from prison by my intervention. They don't want to know what I changed in the system to ensure that nobody in prison stays without a lawyer? What did I change in the system to ensure that the people who are at least part of the system intervention, it's not an individual intervention, right? I think that's the very fundamental, you know, difference in understanding the access to justice work. 

So research, policy, and advocacy are still new concepts to this space. I feel that's the conversations I've had with the funders. I find myself in a different, you know, in a different mind space altogether, when I'm conversing about system change, then where they are, they are still at the point of finding or documenting problems. With my peers, we've gone to the point of finding solutions. We know what the solution is. We know how to engage with the system. We know how we can bring that, you know, how we can work and do that. But it's difficult to make the local funder understand, because they are still not there in experience and expertise yet. 

Anna: But they still have to learn actually. They go through the same learning cycle that other funders have gone through decades ago, right? 

Madhurima :  It's a regression because you've lost those 20 years of experience somewhere in between.

Anna: From all this experience and from everything you see that is now happening in India, what would you advise to other civil society to civil society sectors in other countries and in particular those who are now facing themselves the so-called foreign agent laws which are on the increase, right? What would you advise to the sector and what could be done to either counter the effect or based on your experience that you have now, minimize maybe the effect or mitigate even the effect?

Madhurima :  I think the crucial thing here is to be collective, to work together. If we continue to compete for the same pool of resources without trying to make an effort to change the way the pool of resource or the funder is thinking or understanding the issues, then we're not doing justice. You know, you're not going to go much far if, you know, and it's some things I've learned at CHRI was to do a thing because it makes sense, but not to do it because the funder says so. And that needs to change for organizations, for people. People need to be confident to do or strategize or innovate or take initiatives that are meaningful,but not initiatives that are to be done because the funder thinks they are supposed to be done. Because the funder believes that their board would be happy if you do it. You do it. That is not the criteria. And people working in this sector need to be confident to say this out aloud, to make those arguments when they need to be made, to advocate for the system.

 If I promised the funder 10 meetings or 10 trainings, but I know that those 10 trainings are meaningful only if I do XYZ. So to be able to convince that, okay, you know, doing the XYZ is more important than doing those 10 trainings. Your 10 trainings will get you nowhere if you're training them about a policy, which itself is flawed. So all your energy should actually be in changing the policy, and then you do the training. Then it would make sense. But that kind of gutsiness is missing, in my view, because there are a lot of things like, oh, no, the funder wants this, so you put it in. And that's where I really differ. The funder isn't the system expert. I am. I can argue, I can convince, I can put things on evidence why I think like this, but that space, that needs to be there. But right now, in a haste to survive, we are not looking at that.

So if the funder says no, take a project that helps you release prisoners. I'm sorry to say that the project is undermining the system. It is leading to more. It is actually, you know, a disadvantage in the system because you have now put in parallel mechanisms that will only hinder the functioning of the actual system. Just for example, so that kind of thing is, I think, for NGOs and anywhere in the world, I think that's really important is to be working together to fight for these things and not just compete over the same pool of funds.

Anna: Very interesting. I mean, we have these discussions all the time on the international funding level, where organizations also compete for the same pool of funds. But I can see how difficult it must be on the national level, especially when this understanding is not yet there. It's very interesting to see and to understand that the national sector should come together. I wonder how this could be organized, you know, or who would be the ideal actors to do so. But I think it's something that a lot of organizations need to hear. And I'm very glad that you said this, Madhurima.

It was amazing. It was really good to talk to you. We will close our podcast with this. Thank you so much for having been with us, and I wish you good luck for your future endeavors. And if there is anything the Phoenix Initiative community can do to help you spark these discussions and these conversations, please come back to us, and let's see how we can talk and how we can cooperate. Thank you so much.

Madhurima : Thank you so much for having me here. And well, I hope things will change. Well, that's what's driven me all these years. I'll make sure things do change. 

Anna: And we shouldn't lose this hope because this is what keeps us going.

Thank you, Madhurima. Have a nice day.