“There is a crisis happening at the border, and there needs to be something done about it,” junior Izzy Markel said. On February 14, the entire Upper School received an email from Markel and junior Caroline Polsky regarding the opportunity to join a new club called the Student Task Force in partnership with the Human Rights Watch. The purpose of the club is to “educate students on how they can get involved in the fight for human rights,” Markel said. “Through this student-led club, it is our goal to be advocates for those who need our support.” 

The Human Rights Watch is an organization that investigates and reports on human rights abuses happening throughout the world, utilizing the media to tell their stories. The organization is made up of roughly 550 people who are lawyers, journalists, and experts on various countries. The Human Rights Watch was founded in 1978, then called the Helsinki Watch, as a way to monitor the Soviet Union’s compliance with the 1975 Helsinki Accords. 

The advocacy of the Human Rights Watch involves meeting with governments, the United Nations, rebel groups, and corporations to ensure that laws and policies are enforced, and that justice is served. They fight to protect those most at risk, such as vulnerable minorities and civilians in wartime, refugees, and children in need. The Human Rights Watch has worked on some of the world’s biggest crises, such as the Russia-Ukraine War, COVID-19, the Rohingya Crisis, and Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

The Human Rights Watch Student Task Force (STF) was launched in 1999 with the purpose of bringing high school students together in a youth leadership-training program that empowers them to advocate for the human rights issues that concern children. The STF is dedicated to raising awareness in participating schools and communities, while working to support the Children’s Rights Division of the Human Rights Watch through their advocacy projects. 

Every semester, a new human rights topic is picked for all of the Student Task Force chapters to work on. This semester, the topic is immigration at the southern border. “The end goal for us is to collect a lot of signatures and then bring them to a meeting with our Congressman Mike Quigley. It shows him that constituents really care about this topic, and that, as a representative, he needs to do something in Congress for the people he represents,” Polsky said. 

A large part of the Student Task Force’s focus is influencing policy. Title 42 is an example of a deadly deterrence policy that impacts asylum seekers and was put in place by the Trump administration at the start of COVID. It says that, out of concern for public health, a lower number of immigrants are allowed into the United States monthly. It enacts stricter quotas, ones that went away 60 or 70 years ago.

The two co-heads have their own opinions on the current immigration crisis and policies. “There’s a lot of great things that Biden has done for immigration, but he has been terrible with asylum policies.” Polsky said. “I think that a lot of people are looking past the fact that Biden has not done anything to help in this important area, which impacts vulnerable people.” 

“I think it is becoming a political thing instead of a humanitarian effort,” Markel said. “We watched an informative video in our last meeting and it was showing how New York and other cities are struggling to accommodate so many people, but at the same time, these people have no other choice than to cross the border to escape the horrible situations that they are in.”

Polsky first became involved with the Human Rights Watch when Andrew Bigelow, an Upper School history teacher, sent out an email about a workshop that Polsky ended up attending on human rights violations. “I thought it was really cool since there was a lot of information covered that we just don’t talk about at school,” Polsky said. She got in contact with a liaison from the Human Rights Watch Organization and started the Student Task Force at Parker in collaboration with Markel. “Izzy and Caroline have done everything they can to get people to join, participate, or at least find out about what they’re doing. They also gave a fantastic presentation in front of the entire junior class,” Bigelow, the faculty advisor to the Student Task Force, said. 

Polsky and Markel said that joining the Human Rights Watch Student Task Force is a way to educate yourself and others, and to humanize the people who are being affected by these deadly deterrence policies. It is an opportunity to stand up for human rights, which are important. 

Since this club is a part of a bigger organization, it means that it has a responsibility to that organization. Joining this club is important because it has historically been able to enact real change, by meeting with representatives and making policies for the UN. 

“The crisis at the Southern border is something that needs to be dealt with,” Markel said. “Our club is just one stepping stone of what we can attempt to do to help defend people’s civil and human rights.”