Postcards from Abroad: Heather Axford

Postcards from Abroad, an occasional photo series on what our students are doing this summer.
Rising second-year law student Heather Axford is working at the headquarters for the U.N. World Food Program in Rome, addressing questions raised by the intersection of international human rights law and humanitarian relief work.

Posted June 23, 2005
On June 12 we had our annual "Walk the World" march to raise awareness about the problem of world hunger and to raise money for our work distributing food aid in times of both man-made and natural disaster. More than 200,000 people marched in 269 cities around the world. This photo is from our own march in Rome.

Walk the World march

I am working with the Development Policy Unit at WFP on a report addressing the questions that we have been getting from our staff in the field about how international human rights law affects the humanitarian relief work of WFP. In what has now become known as "Action 2," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called on all U.N. agencies to strengthen human rights protection and incorporate international human rights law into their work. The mandate has raised difficult questions for our country teams about the role of humanitarian aid organizations in protecting food aid recipients from human rights violations during crises and reporting human rights violations that they witness while distributing food aid.

Postcards from Abroad

Law Grounds News Index