Human Rights Essay Prize 2024
Editorial #13
When read as a whole, the essays were a raucous mix of literary styles and human rights perspectives. In memoir, peer review, poetic ways they presented views on sexuality, war, suffering, neurodivergence, indigeneity, and so many other topics. Reading them together felt like a beautiful kaleidoscope upon our world as a whole and often with joy, celebration and uplifting answers no matter the trauma.
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Singapore Will Always Be At War
KIRSTEN HAN
Singaporeans are told from a young age that we can’t be soft. There’s always some threat, whether foreign or domestic, that hovers over our tiny country. We have to always be on high alert and can never let our guard down. This is a zero-sum game: we must “steal other people’s lunches” before they come for ours.
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Read as a boy
DANI NETHERCLIFT
Life is made up of fragments. Memory is recalled in this way, and forgetfulness—and all the things we tuck away or don’t want to know, the thoughts we chase from our heads at 3AM. Fears for the future. And hope too comes in fragments that we piece together.
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Wild Mohini
ATUL JOSHI
Mohini’s legends confirm for me that gender is unstable, undefinable, untameable and hence wild. Because in the space between male and female, there appears a vast expanse of power that isn’t subject to control, and only needs new imaginings to explore its possibilities.
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Blood-red Tags: Red-tagging and ruling by fear in the Philippines
DOMINIC CARPIO
Fear is the antithesis of freedom. It stands against the very life, liberty, and security of a person. Thus, the mere presence of fear is symptomatic of a fundamental flaw in any democratic society.
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Feathered on the Breath of Chance
EJ CLARENCE
But around the table we all know the truth, that we were not delivered from the womb into the arms of new love. We were shelved in hospital cribs and foster homes. Often for many months.
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Atlas, Rats, and Writing the Candle
ELLA T HOLMES
When Atlas took the heavens on his shoulders and held them above the world, he did that for everyone on Earth, disabled folks included. But no one person, no one group of people should have to carry the weight of the world.
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Here I Am, Disempowered
GRACIA AYNI WARELLA
Some remain scattered across foreign lands, haunted by the traumas of their past…they continue to grapple with a sense of being perceived as ‘less Indonesian’.
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How (Not) to Talk About Colourism
KELETSO MOPAI
Being Black is my currency and, on the other hand, a defect in the world, depending on the environment. While being dark-skinned has always and unflinchingly affected my entire being, humanity, and overall social life – interracially and intraracially
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Justice and Human Rights in the Age of Surveillance
SALIL TRIPATHI
But companies like NSO and products like Pegasus, ensure that we are not safe from surveillance: not our computer hard-drives, not the data we store in the cloud, not the conversations we have on the phone, nor our password-protected emails.
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Trans Rights are Human Rights
STEVIE LANE
I always thought my biggest enemy was myself, but it turns out, there are many people and groups who hate me more than I have ever hated myself, even at my lowest low.
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When sandwiches and fish feed peace
ELAINE PRATLEY
I wonder: perhaps we are inextricably joined together by our guts? When we deny an Other food, we deny ourselves. When we feed an Other, we feed peace.
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Legitimately Ill
SARA GINGOLD
I tried to tell her about my symptoms. It’s an odd challenge, to describe the sensations of the body in a way that is comprehensible to others. No words fit quite right.