Applications for this Spring’s LIDS projects are now live! The deadline for submitting an application to join a project is Friday, January 25, 2019 at 11:59 PM. Below you will find some key details regarding project applications. All those interested are encouraged to apply. We look forward to receiving your application!
If you have any questions, please reach out to the LIDS Project VPs: Joao Marinotti, Catherine Yang, and Anzhelika Ishkhanyan.
How to Apply to Join a LIDS Project
LIDS is currently recruiting project leaders and project members for our exciting roster of projects. The application can be found here.
Project Descriptions
Defense Based Act
Work with supervising attorneys from private public-interest law firm Handley Farah & Anderson to analyze the the scope and applicability of the Defense Based Act on different types of international US-government-funded projects. The Defense Base Act (DBA) provides workers’ compensation protection to civilian employees working outside the United States on US military bases or under a contract with the U.S. government for public works or for national defense. Typically, American workers employed abroad have used the DBA to file claims, but third-country migrant workers far exceed American employees in numbers. This project will produce a legal memo, assessing what types of claims migrant workers can bring under the DBA, that will aid the litigation strategy of our client. Project participants will also receive legal orientation from supervising attorney Matthew Handley.
Transparency International – Russia
Sextortion is the term coined to combine sex and extortion in explaining sexual abuse and exploitation. Sextortion as a form of corruption is a global phenomenon, but it often goes unreported and the impunity is common for perpetrators. How do the universities from G20 address this issue? We expect the LIDS team: to conceptualize the term sextortion; to find the best university practices combating sextortion (ethic codes, advocacy); to find and analyze the sextortion cases in G20 countries; to create and implement the surveys for the students of the G20 universities about sextortion regulation; to create the universities index based on sextortion regulation and advocacy. We expect the LIDS team to deliver a research report that would contain the analysis of the best practices and their own innovative policy recommendations. The final deliverable is a research report with a mandatory presentation on Skype. The research findings will be presented for GRECO and C20 (Civil Society 20 Summit) during the summer 2019. The analysis will be used for policy recommendation on regulation sextortion in ethic codes. Timeline: February 15th for the first draft of the paper; March 30th for the second draft of the paper; April 15th for the final paper and presentation on Skype.
Open Development Mekong
The proposed project looks at infrastructure investment in the Lower Mekong Countries, and three main issues: The role that China plays in this development; What accountability mechanisms are available; How this development ties into the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (especially UNESCAP’s regional roadmap for sustainable development), and ASEAN’s plans for developing their economic community. The project should highlight any adverse impacts on vulnerable groups such as women and ethnic minorities (particularly related to migration and abuse of rights). Specific tasks include: Update existing Aid and Development page on ODM (https://opendevelopmentmekong.net/topics/aid-and-development-assistance/) to include commercial financing terms, not only development aid terms, as this is crucial to understanding China’s influence and impact in the Lower Mekong Region (LMR) – also will make it easier to link to SCS/China (https://www.scsglobalservices.com/china) pages. Existing Chinese Financial Aid profile (using data from AidData) should be expanded upon to include additional data from other bilateral donors from the region and west to increase comparison. Develop page on infrastructure financing mechanisms – common financing schemes, issues specific to this type of financing, trends in LMR, numbers/$$$ in LMR. Develop pages on Infrastructure financiers – major players in LMR and their policies (two sub-pages/sections – one on China and one on everyone else). Develop pages on Infrastructure policies (planning and agreements) – general treatment of policies in LMR, preferred investment in LMR, how this matches with financiers – this will be a good link to SCS/China pages. Develop pages on Infrastructure regulation – project lifecycle, and how assessments, financing, and other regulatory procedures fit into the project lifecycle. Develop pages on Infrastructure – Relevant Laws. Develop pages on gender impacts of infrastructure development, and a presentation on concerns at each stage of the project lifecycle including specific examples of issues where this has occurred in the region (this is where we can introduce the idea of corporate chain mapping as well and potentially provide an example of a major player in the LMR). Develop relevant blog posts to complement information presented in the above Pages. Develop compelling data visualizations and data stories to convey the messages related to infrastructure development. We would like the following: A series of user-ready briefings, written at an appropriate reader level, based on the above topics (“Pages”, 1500 words each; exact delineations to be determined dependent on the information and with the assistance of a Mekong Region-based ODM editor); A series of relevant blog posts, data stories or other data driven presentation (1000 words if written, intended to supplement the neutral information presented in pages); A presentation in Sway (https://sway.office.com/) or other tool compatible with our system.