Welcome to Global Majority Voices

The below is a transcript of the first episode of the Global Majority Voices podcast. You can listen to the episode, in full, here. 

Hi, my name is Dunya. Welcome to Global Majority Voices, a podcast by Equidem, a global human rights organization that's rights-holder-centered and representative of the Global Majority. What does that mean?

Well, we centre marginalised communities throughout our work, ensuring projects are not extractive and hiring people from communities with lived experience of the human rights abuses we're fighting against. Our team of worker activists, investigators, and policy experts expose injustice, provide solutions, and work closely with other grassroots and global civil society to empower the individual and the community. Our work is split across four areas, from climate change to corporate accountability.

This podcast is fundamentally grounded in the stories of the migrant workers that we speak with, that have been exploited and faced abuse and are brave enough to speak out. They've trusted us to share their story and we want to make sure that we always, always do them justice. It won't necessarily be stories from migrant workers every time, but you can rest assured that aside from this introductory episode, our focus will always be on sharing stories from marginalized communities directly and authentically.

But first, to kick things off, we want to introduce ourselves a little and tell you a bit more about who Equidem is and what we do. The voices you hear in this episode are from members of our team who come from all over the world.

One of the main things that makes Equidem unique is that our team of researchers and our field investigators are from communities themselves. Our team, some more than others, have been impacted by the harmful systems in place that lead to the kind of exploitation human rights organisations like ours and others are fighting to stop.

So myself are Vipitha Vijayan. So, I am working as an assistant researcher at Equidem. When I think about the passion of working with the human rights cause, then I should look inward. I should look into my family, because my father was a migrant worker who actually died around 20 years back. But I still remember how he died impoverished after almost 16 years of being a migrant in one of the Gulf countries. I believe that the kind of life the migrants live abroad, especially in the Gulf countries, I still believe that there is an intergenerational transfer of the kind of poverty they experience in every stage of their life.

Geoffrey Owino, our researcher in Kenya was a safety officer in Qatar prior to working for Equidem.  

After experiencing labour rights violations himself, and noticing that others around him lacked awareness of basic labor laws and their human rights, he began to create awareness amongst his colleagues.  

Because I am a migrant worker myself, I work with these people every day. We stayed in the same accommodations. We lived the same conditions. I ride on these company buses. So these are things we discuss as if we are sharing experiences. For me, I think it’s not even about the law. But most workers don’t even know that law exists. So the biggest challenge is awareness. That’s why if you see what I do, on my social media pages, it’s about awareness. Because I think between 70-80% of the problems are because of awareness. Somebody has a problem, she or he doesn’t know what to do.

Rameshwar Nepal, our Nepal director and one of the most respected human rights activists in the country, believes that migrant workers are the ones best positioned to fully grasp and convey the pain experienced by their colleagues and those living in similar circumstances. 

So the rights holders includes those communities who have faced different challenges, that includes those workers who are not paid, who are deceived in the condition of the contract, who are provided different than promised. So, they are the experts, because they are the ones facing those abuses, and they are the ones facing challenges and also talking to their own community. So they are the ones who have deeper understanding compared to others. For example, we have a Nepali investigator in Qatar who himself has faced different types of challenges, including non-payment. So, he himself is the right holder. He himself faced challenges. He himself has faced abuses of labour right violation and human right violation. So, the person who is working with us and he himself is very familiar with the pain of the other worker in his community. So it is very prominent for him to go and document the case, and also he understands the pain of other colleagues, like the pain he has. 
 

Before joining our team, these investigators are often already doing this incredible work, advocating for other migrant workers and informing them of their rights. Here is Deepika Thapaliya, a project manager on our Nepal team.

One thing that's really amazing is that they're already people who are already working in this advocacy kind of thing. They're speaking up for people who are not able to for themselves. So, luckily Equidem has these advocates, with migrant workers themselves in the team. So, that's always a plus point, and we're very lucky to have them. Most of our field team, they have this kind of experience. They were already working and speaking on behalf of migrant workers. They're trying to find solutions for the problems they're facing. And while they're doing so, they're kind of speaking for the community.

The work that we do at Equidem is only heightened by having a dedicated staff that truly believes in our vision. Hear from our Program Manager, Namrata Raju talking about what Equidem means to her.  

It is where I find community when everything seems to be crumbling. Organizations like Equidem are where change really comes from. I think given the dire conditions the world is facing everywhere, we need to have a movement that is premised on equity and equality, that is premised on the actual people who are impacted by this being represented in the organizations that talk about human rights and labour rights work. And we need organizations that think innovatively in the face of very complicated challenges and I think Equidem is that organization.

Every organization has a captain steering the ship. Mustafa Qadri, created Equidem 6 years ago and has since seen his team grow, taking on some of the most powerful entities in the world, and grappling with some of the biggest issues of our time. 

Equidem is actually a Latin word. It means rigorous. And that came out of my own work as a human rights researcher for over 20 years now, where the power of exposing injustice was so significant in knowing who to target, to understand why there are these issues there, and then also to work out what the solutions are. But if you're not rigorous, if you don't follow the facts, if you're not objective, if you don't do everything you can to work out what's happening, you can't develop solutions, and then you can't build a human rights movement beyond that. So for us, being rigorous means everything. It's about having discipline, being thoughtful, and being the best at what we do. You know, it doesn't really matter where you come from. You could be a worker with very limited formal education. You could be an expert from an Ivy League university. But if you share that same vision of making society better, where everyone has respect for human rights, then your passion for rigorous, genuine work is the same, no matter who you are. And that's what we're about.

So, there you have it. A quick introduction to the team, an idea of what Equidem stands for as an organisation, and, hopefully, if we’ve done anything right, it’s convincing you that this is a special kind of podcast, and one that might give you a different perspective. Our next episode will be covering our investigation into Stark Security, a company whose broken promises led to the deportation of hundreds of former FIFA World Cup Security Guards.  

You’ve been listening to Global Majority Voices. Jason Nemerovski, a researcher with Equidem,  produced and edited this podcast. From myself and the Equidem team, thank you until next time.