>>Kimberley Motley: At the age of 15, Gulnaz was raped by her cousin and became pregnant
as a result.
She talked to me about going to the police with her mother.
And when she went there, they didn't take her seriously.
She was ignored.
Unfortunately, she was in prison as a result of this rape.
When I met her in prison, she also described to me going to court and how when she went
to court, she didn't have an attorney that represented her, and that she wasn't allowed
to speak in court.
Without having legal representation, she was berated for being raped.
The judges decided to give her a 12-year sentence, but told her that if she married her attacker,
that she would be free.
I met her in the prison with her two-year-old daughter, Mushka (phonetic), and at the time,
she didn't know exactly everything that happened in court, but she knew she was entitled to
something.
And she knew she was entitled to some level of protection within the legal system.
So we talked about what her options were, and so we decided to take this case to the
Supreme Court.
And at the Supreme Court, the judges decided to give her a three-year sentence and told
her that she doesn't have to marry her attacker.
But this wasn't good enough, because Gulnaz had served two years with her daughter in
prison, and what that meant, she had one more year to serve.
So, basically, after everything was said and done, we decided to write a pardon application
to President Karzai.
In this application, we talked about how it was illegal for her to be charged with rape
as a victim, even in Afghanistan.
And we also talked about how we'd best present this to President Karzai.
Usually, with a pardon application, I think that it's a good idea to have letters from
family and friends.
But, unfortunately, Gulnaz did not have any family that supported her.
And so we decided to put on an online petition to people around the world to sign.
And after 6,000-plus signatures, I then took this document to the Presidential Palace,
to President Karzai.
And so when I showed up there, basically, his guards were kind of surprised.
And they were just, like, you can't just come up in here and drop off stuff for the president.
[ Laughter ] And so my response was, like, really?
You can't do that?
And so we kind of stood there and looked at each other for quite some time.
And I told them, I said, listen, I have something to give him, and he has to read this.
So I don't know what we're going to do here, but I'm not going anywhere until he gets this.
And so long story short, they finally accepted this document, and President Karzai received
it, and it became the first presidential pardon that an Afghan president gave to a woman for
a moral crimes case in Afghanistan.
In addition to this, we further lobbied to President Karzai, and then he decriminalized
running away as a crime in Afghanistan, a crime that for centuries women had been oppressed
with and that was illegal, he decriminalized because of Gulnaz.
And then in addition to that, the president, as well as the attorney general's office,
decided to create a unit within the attorney general's office where women could specifically
go to report if they were victims of violence.
And in a country where over 90% of the women are victims of domestic violence, this was
a huge victory not only for Gulnaz, but also for Afghan women throughout the country.
In 2008, I went to Afghanistan, and I went there to -- as an opportunity.
It was the first time that I had traveled out of the country.
And so I had to get my passport, obviously.
And I went there originally on a nine-month project to train and mentor Afghan defense
attorneys.
And so what became a job ended up being a mission.
And in this year that I was there, the first year that I was there, I went to different
prisons around the country, and I talked to hundreds of people.
And I talked to them about what happened to them in court.
And I found that many people weren't given a voice.
They didn't have a lawyer.
They weren't allowed to speak.
They didn't have legal representation.
They were being tortured, abused and, railroaded by the legal system.
And I also talked to many businesses that were operating in Afghanistan, many global
corporations.
And I heard stories of systematic extortion by persons within the government that were
working within Afghanistan, for people that just wanted to have a viable business in the
country.
And so I decided to open my own practice.
And, originally, with my practice, I chose to represent global companies as well as foreigners
that were charged with criminal offenses in Afghanistan.
And in doing this representation, I met people like Gulnaz.
And I realized the similarities between people not being represented from businesses to human
rights clients.
And so I decided to -- and I sort of developed a purpose.
And my purpose was what I call my justness.
And what this means to me is using laws in the ways that they're meant to be used to
protect people.
And so it was -- became my legal truth.
And I found that the best way for me to receive my justness for myself, as well as my clients,
was by working the system from the inside out.
And so, therefore, I became a global investor in human rights.
Ultimately, rule of law, if you build a system, it improves the economic and social development
of any emerging market, especially in Afghanistan.
There's some economic benefits to supporting human rights.
Basically, it's the best way to combat corruption.
And Afghanistan is the number one most corrupt country in the world.
An investment in rule of law improvements the transparency.
It makes people accountable to a legal system.
And there are consequences to people that abuse their power.
And I choose to do this by working the system from the inside out, which I think is very
important.
And by improving people's lives, you're not only improving their lives as individuals,
but you're improving the wider community's lives.
Religious oppression is another big issue that we've seen of late.
And so when you oppress someone's religion, it creates a very toxic environment for violent
extremism to take hold.
And when people are denied their right to practice their beliefs, they become more alienated,
more vulnerable, and they become more resentful of the system that they're in.
And sometimes they choose to join extremist groups which support very Draconian laws against
the wider community.
Baljit Singh was an Afghan sikh in Afghanistan.
In the 2000s, the Taliban targeted sikhs and were, unfortunately, killing sikhs, and so
him and his family decided to flee from Afghanistan.
And he eventually ended up in the United Kingdom.
When he was in the U.K., Baljit decided to seek asylum.
And, unfortunately, he was denied asylum.
And his basis was that his religious beliefs were being oppressed in Afghanistan.
After being unjustly denied asylum, the U.K. government flew him back to Afghanistan.
It's illegal for Afghanistan and the U.K. to send somebody back to a country if there
is a reasonable belief that they will be tortured for their religious belief.
But they did that to him nonetheless.
When he arrived in Afghanistan, he was immediately imprisoned, right from the plane.
And while in prison, he was forced to convert to Islam, he was denied the right to practice
his religion, and he was tortured and abused and enslaved within the system.
For almost two years, this happened to him.
And so when Baljit sort of came to my attention, he started representing him.
And we approached the Afghan government and asked questions, and asked why was he being
denied his right to freedom, which he was entitled to.
And so, ultimately, the Afghan government agreed with what I knew was right, which is
basically that he was unjustly imprisoned, and he was released as a result.
But that wasn't good enough, because it wasn't just the Afghan government that was the problem.
The U.K. government also had a duty of care to Baljit.
And so we then contacted the U.K. government and said, you know, he should not have been
denied asylum and he has a right to protection.
So, long story short, the U.K. government decided to give him -- to take him back, and
he was granted asylum.
And now he's in the U.K., going to school and working.
Now, I love my job.
But my job, there are some risks that are involved in it.
I mean, I've been called a spy; I've been detained; I've been accused of running a brothel.
I know.
It's just -- a brothel.
And then someone threw a grenade at my office.
Who throws grenades at brothels?
I don't know.
But that's what they did.
So but in my job, I find that the rewards far outweigh the risks.
And I know that the world is closing in on us and what were once individual problems
are now our problems.
I grew up in a world where my eight-year-old daughter, she only knows a Black president.
There's a great possibility that a woman will be the next president.
And no disrespect, Mr. Carter, but when my daughter becomes voting age, she will probably
ask me, "Can a white guy be a president?"
[ Laughter ] So what started in Afghanistan can translate
to other countries.
All these cases, they're all blueprints of the possibilities of what can be done if you
use your justness, if you use the laws in the way that they're meant to be used, which
is to protect individuals.
It's teaching the systems to respect their own laws.
And it's the best way to build justice, I believe, is by working the laws from the inside
out, in the ways that they are meant to be used, and to also become a global investor
in human rights.
A corporate investment in human rights is a capital gain on your businesses.
And I know this because I have a business in Afghanistan and also that's what I support.
I believe that we as a business community -- no, I know that we as a business community,
we need to be more vocal on rule of law issues, especially as it relates to human rights.
We have a responsibility to work collectively, to bring the leverage of the private sector
on governments, to make them accountable for what they do against individuals, because
it doesn't just affect them.
It affects all of us.
UNICEF just reported in July that currently there are over 700 million women under the
age of 18 who are married.
700 million.
That's double -- more than double the population of the U.S. right now.
Statistically it's been shown that girls that marry under the age of 18 are more likely
to be uneducated, they're more likely to be victims of domestic violence, and they're
more likely to have health issues as it relates to childbirth.
Sahar Gul, at the age of 12, was married to her 30-year-old husband.
Her brother sold her for $5,000.
When she went into her in-law's house, they asked her -- they wanted her to prostitute.
And so she refused to do that.
So as a result of her refusal, she was tortured, she was beaten, she was burned, she was starved
to death, she was tied up in the basement for hours, and they did this for months and
months and months.
At one point in time, Sahar was able to escape from her house to the neighbor's house, but
instead of protecting her, they dragged her back to the house and she was tortured even
more.
When the Afghan authorities found out about this, there was a big media frenzy in Afghanistan
and they came hard -- they pretended to come down hard on the mother-in-law, the father-in-law
and the sister-in-law.
However, once the cameras went away, then they released people and they basically didn't
feel there wasn't a need to protect Sahar.
When we sort of got connected, we talked about what her options were again, and what her
justness was.
And so we decided to take this case to the Supreme Court because she has a right to be
protected.
And at the Supreme Court, we wanted her in-laws to be punished for what they did to her.
We wanted the in-laws to be punished, we wanted her husband to be punished for what he did,
as well as her husband -- excuse me; her brother to be punished for selling her.
And so a girl who was once too shy to look me in the eye when I first met her found her
justness and she found her voice.
In the Supreme Court, we spoke up together about what she was entitled to as a victim.
And it was beautiful, because this was the first time in Afghanistan that a woman, or
any person for that matter, had an attorney to represent them in court, despite the fact
that there was a law on the books for years and years.
In addition to asking for criminal punishments, we also asked for civil compensation because
as a victim, she again had a right to that but it was another law that was sorely underutilized.
So in front of 12 justices, me as an American woman, her as a teenage Afghan woman, we talked
to them, and we talked to them about how she was entitled to be protected and they agreed.
And they re-arrested people, and now they're being prosecuted for what they did to her.
Ultimately -- [ Applause ]
Thank you.
Ultimately, these cases are not just about, you know, one girl that was raped or a girl
that was a victim of domestic violence over here or about a religious persecution case.
They represent so much more.
All these cases are blueprints that can translate anywhere in the world.
And we node to use these blueprints to show others how they can achieve their justness.
And while these are legal victories and they're, to a certain extent, anomalies, they represent
the possibilities; the possibility that even in the number one most corrupt country in
the world that you can use the laws in the ways that they're intended to be used, which
is to protect.
Instability of laws perpetuates the inability of emerging markets to compete in a global
economy.
And I'm not telling you what I think.
I'm telling you what I know.
And what I know is that I'm a global investor in human rights, and you can be a global investor
in human rights.
And by working together, we can really make changes.
Because through businesses and individuals using law as our common thread, we can collectively
work together to bring the leverage of the private sector, the public sector, and the
people sector on governments to make them more accountable to following their own laws
so they can protect people in the way that they were intended to be used.
By doing this, we help Gulnaz, we help her daughter Mushka, we help Baljit, Sahar Gul,
and so many more people, including ourselves, and we can improve these global markets and
the global human rights economy, and we can all achieve our justness together.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]