Scholarships that are helping to change the world
Part six: working to help the voiceless and the vulnerable
In this series, we continue to follow up with Oxford scholars who have gone on to create positive change in the world. Here we meet an Allan and Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust Scholar alumna who is using her skills to give voice to the voiceless — a thread that binds a career spanning art, journalism, policy-making and law.
Phyza Jameel completed her two-year master’s degree in international human rights law with the Department of Continuing Education while working in Iraq and, later, at the World Food Programme’s global headquarters in Rome. Her graduate course equipped her to look at what’s happening in the world through the lens of humanitarian and human rights law and to use it to make a difference to people’s lives.
In my family there was an obsession to send kids to engineering or medical school. I was the first one to study humanities and my family really didn’t like it. I did my first degree in visual arts in Lahore, Pakistan and my medium was film and TV. This got me into broadcast journalism and I started my career as a journalist at CNBC.
Within four years, I went from a junior reporter to Bureau Chief. I was reporting on issues relating to current affairs, politics, women and children, gender, safety and protection. This was during the Taliban era, and very soon after 9/11. It was day and night reporting and a high-intensity job. I had to resign from a senior position because of the way journalism in Pakistan at that time was practised — for me it was very unethical.
UNESCO were looking for somebody to lead a programme on freedom of expression and access to information and I took up the job. The next five years of my life were spent working on these two mandates. It might look a bit odd that I started in art school, became a journalist and then went to UNESCO as a development and policy strategist; however, the common thread is expression and communication, and being a voice for people who are unable to express themselves.
I started working for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Iraq in 2014, observing the accountability for the affected population. My role there was to set up systems and mechanisms that would allow people to contact aid-delivering organisations, lodge their complaints and ask questions to better understand their rights in a humanitarian setting. Then, in 2017, within one year of starting to study remotely at Oxford, I got the offer to work at the WFP’s global headquarters in Rome. Rather than a mandate for one country, this new role had a mandate that could be invoked globally in an emergency.
My current role is very exciting and challenging. I work as a humanitarian programme specialist in the area of communication and information. This means that when crises of conflict erupt, my role is to provide lifesaving communication and information such as connectivity on the phone as aid.
I had been saving money because I knew that I wanted to study internationally. When I applied to Oxford and got the Allan and Nesta Scholarship, that made such a day and night difference.
I did an MSc in International Human Rights Law, a two-year programme delivered both online and in person. In the first year, international criminal law was my main focus area. The late Robert Cryer was an amazing teacher and he inspired me to write an international criminal law case to prove the genocide of the Rohingya population in Cox’s Bazar. I was the first person to write a thesis exposing this. The next year my focus was international refugee law.
The scholarship has not only contributed to my pocket, but mentally, ethically and morally I think it brought me closer to my cause and purpose. I felt very strongly and still do about human rights.
Humanitarian organisations offer certain assistances that are life-saving, for example protection and safety, food, shelter, clean supply of water and access to healthcare. The World Food Programme is a humanitarian organisation working towards zero hunger and assisting people who are food insecure.
The WFP also offers communication as a form of aid, such as in wars and natural disasters, enabling people to contact help or family and friends. I started off working on access to emergency telecommunications — often in the most challenging environments. Then, three years ago, I took on an additional mandate, which was to pre-emptively prepare countries and governments for emergencies like natural disasters.
Information and communication is as crucial as food, water and shelter in a humanitarian setting.
Before going to Oxford I saw law as a very binary subject, but it’s a philosophical journey. There is no absolute right or wrong in a lot of things, and this world is full of dilemmas. I think initially I was very scared about this because I thought “there is a situation where one perspective has to be right and one has to be wrong in the lens of law”, and now I realise it doesn’t go like that. I also thought that perhaps law and justice should be agnostic to politics, but without understanding the politics, the culture and the context, we cannot treat the subject this way. Thirdly, I was happy to be challenging the way human rights are understood in Western societies versus in the eastern culture.
The most profound thing was that I was able to challenge my own perspective about politics, people, rights and about how rights are implemented. I was being challenged continuously in Oxford.
Just before I had to submit my first assignment at Oxford, my mother passed away. I was in Iraq at that time and was devastated. Of course, I couldn’t think straight and wrote to Dr Andrew Shacknove, Director of Legal Studies at the Department of Continuing Education at that time, saying: “I can’t do this”. An answer came back that was very interesting, and I still read that e-mail whenever I’m in a hard situation.
Dr Shacknove said that there are two ways to manage your grief. He said: “Some students find that carrying on with their studies is impossible, others find their studies an escape — each person is different.” His message helped me pick the second option, which helped me to make peace with my grief. I could also feel proud about doing something for myself and something that my mother would have been proud of too. I continued to study.
Oxford changed my perspective about my whole life, about the humanitarian and development sectors, and politics and people.
The whole experience around Oxford was just so profound, so amazing. I had really interesting classmates, some of whom are friends for life. Even now we have a WhatsApp group and, whenever I’m going to a country to work, I post a message to ask if there is anybody we know there. Often somebody will connect me to a lawyer or a humanitarian practitioner, so that network continues to build and flourish. That’s one of the lifelong experiences I have from Oxford.
From the very outset, even when I was a visual artist, my work has been about people whose voices are unheard. I think it’s just part of everything I do. I can alleviate their suffering either by advocating for it, solving it with tools and systems, providing assistance or aid, or, if nothing else, putting their voice on a platform where a number of people can at least acknowledge, empathise or understand the situation from their point of view.
I was born in a very safe environment but could easily have been born into an absolute nightmare.There are still kids being born right now in Yemen, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Syria, Palestine, CAR, DRC and Nigeria in the middle of war. I had an education and the cherry on the top is that I went to Oxford and that I could get a scholarship.
This all makes me an extremely privileged person and privilege comes with responsibility.
