Interview with Zamira Djabarova
Lawyer / Labor Rights Advocate
Where are you from, and why there?
I am from Tajikistan and I am from New York City. I grew up in Tajikistan — my father had been an activist there for social equality and opportunities for working young people. Although he no longer was an active activist by the time I could understand things and converse (and possibly because of it), he was able to instill in me a sense of fairness and justice, emphasizing the importance of workers and their rights.
Tajikistan was a part of the Soviet Union then, which had an immense impact on women’s access to education and work. While I consider that as one of the positive achievements of the Soviet Union, access to education and work also resulted in new types of burden for women. Women work both at home and on the job while dealing with gender-based discrimination in both places and beyond — indeed, this is the experience of women virtually everywhere in the world, albeit to varying degrees. Growing up, I was acutely aware of this.
I am also from New York because I arrived there at a very young age and all by myself. I probably grew up as a person in New York. Being far from home, from everything that one is used to, contributes to the process of internal growth. When things are not the way you have always known them to be you are more likely to question them. Once you do that, you are also more likely to question the things that are the way you have always known them to be. And what better place to do that than New York, where many and contradictory things can be true at the same time.
Which issue(s) do you work on/care about, and why?
Workers’ rights, the right to organize, and the right to know. These rights are central to achieving decent quality of life for individuals and communities as well as to democracy.
It is also extremely important to not give up on corporate accountability. Naturally these issues are related, and it is not a coincidence that I work as a Legal Advisor for Labor Rights and Corporate Accountability for the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights. I think that the growing concentration of money and power at the expense of people and the earth can only be reined in if workers unite and then they unite some more with other civil society groups, including those who are fighting to save our planet.
One of our priorities at the Center for Human Rights is supporting realization of the right to freedom of association in partnership with unions and other worker rights organizations. I am also lucky that I get to play a facilitating role in building alliances between unions and other civil society groups. At the same time, through this work I see how the affront to workers’ rights, and especially their right to organize, is an attack on people’s ability to form those alliances to take on destructive forces.
How did you get involved?
I have been a human rights advocate my entire life. Initially, while still in school, it was as a young researcher for a small local non-profit organization in Tajikistan, fighting for women’s access to productive resources. Once I completed my studies, I joined the UN Agency on Women’s Rights (called UNIFEM at the time) in New York, working on issues ranging from women’s access to land to gender-responsive budgeting and planning.
After 10 years, I decided to go back to school and become a lawyer. I wanted to focus on root causes of injustices, and worked hard to secure an internship with the Center for Constitutional Rights and, subsequently, a fellowship at EarthRights International, working on nationally recognized landmark cases. Both of these experiences remain the highlights of my career, but they also taught me that we need all forms of human rights work. We need to work with victims of abuses and provide assistance; we need to document and raise awareness; we need to advocate to change policies and laws; we need to litigate to get compensation and remedies. We need it all, and we also need those who are not human rights advocates to think about human rights in their own work.
What’s the biggest challenge for the issue(s) today?
The extreme concentration of resources and power.
Who are your most frequent allies? Any surprises?
Unions and worker rights organizations. I wish I had a different answer to this question, but it is more surprising how often individuals and organizations who should be natural allies based on their values and interests take a long time to come to the same table.
What drives you?
It depends on a day, but these days, mostly, the feeling that giving up is not an option.
What do you want your career/advocacy to stand for?
I don’t really have grand ambitions to achieve a big milestone. And perhaps this is also in part an answer to the preceding question — I just want to support people fighting for their rights in whatever small way I can, and in doing that, fight for my own rights, too.