If you refused to visit countries with problems, where would you go?

A blog post by Adam. As we sat with a group of Haitian Dominicans in Guaymate, the words of an Israeli we had shared lunch with just one week prior suddenly came back to me. We were discussing our hesitancy to visit Israel given its long list of human rights abuses. The man, a Scottish Israeli who had helped save thousands of Ethiopian Jews, acknowledged Israel's problems but also asked how many other countries we had decided not to visit because of human rights abuses. Aside from my Hawaii and Safeco Field boycotts it was hard to come up with many other places on the no fly (and land) list. Still, who compared to Israel in the human rights abuse column? Sudan? North Korea? Maybe China? We weren't planning to visit those countries....

We are now in the Dominican Republic and what we learned on just our second day here is that human rights catastrophes know no borders. The four twentysomething Haitian Dominicans Melissa and I met work for the grassroots non-governmental organization 180 Degrees (http://www.180grados.info/). They were all born in the Dominican Republic and have lived here their entire lives. And while they all had official Dominican identification cards, the State has refused to renew their IDs since 2007 because of their Haitian roots. Without valid identification they are essentially stateless people, who can't go to high school or university, can't marry, can't open a bank account, and can't get legal work. There are tens of thousands of previously documented young people across the DR today who face this predicament. Amazingly, all four of the people we met were hopeful that the government's policy would change in the near future. Of course there were likely hundreds of thousands more Haitian Dominicans who have never had official identification, that may never be eligible for the simple ID cards that have so much power over one's life opportunities. It was a quick and harsh welcome to our new temporary home.