Fletcher Features
Theo Yakah & Hurst Hannum
Growing up poor in Ghana, under a military regime, there were certain things Theo Yakah took for granted: police brutality, hunger, insecurity, the impossibility of ever attending college. When his father died, just as Yakah was graduating from high school, he was more convinced than ever that life would be difficult—and that higher education was out of the question. He focused on the need to help support his family and found a job as an HIV-education coordinator at a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Ada, a small town at about 65 km east of the Ghanaian capital Accra.
Now a master's degree candidate at The Fletcher School, Yakah looks back on those days with a mixture of wonder and hope—wonder because of the luck that has led him here, hope because of his determination to return to Ghana and help improve life there.
Yakah was working at the NGO when he was befriended by an American Peace Corps volunteer who convinced him to apply to the University of Ghana and helped pay his first year's tuition. Later, because his friend pressed him to, he took the GRE and applied to graduate school at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. There, on a full scholarship, he learned about The Fletcher School, knowing instantly that he wanted to apply but realizing that he would be able to attend only if offered financial aid. The Board of Overseers Scholarship—created during Beyond Boundaries: The Campaign for Tufts—made Fletcher a reality for Yakah. "When I learned from Fletcher that I received full aid, I couldn't believe my luck. I was just so grateful."
As grateful as he was for his good fortune, he knew that luck should not be enough: "The only reason I'm at Fletcher is because I met one person who wanted to help me. That's not how the world should be." Yakah was fueled with a sense of desire to help create new systems in Ghana, systems that would reward hard work no matter how fortunate, or unfortunate, anyone may be.
He remained uncertain about the avenues for change. Despite his positive feelings about the job he'd had, he was skeptical about Western humanitarian aid organizations, questioning whether such groups can make a large-scale difference. "I thought that there are a few people with good intentions and good plans, but it's impossible for them to achieve real change. I worried it was all just rhetoric."
It was Hurst Hannum's class on human rights law that helped restore optimism. Professor of International Law at Fletcher and a foremost scholar in international human rights law, Hannum has served as counsel in cases before the European and Inter-American Commissions on Human Rights and the United Nations; he also has been a member of the boards of several international human rights organizations. In his classes, he challenges students to shed their emotional prejudices about human rights work.
"Many students come in with unrealistic expectations about what human rights law can achieve," he explains. "I engage them in a way that encourages more critical thinking." At the same, he conveys a historical understanding of the successes in the human rights field. "Knowing what the constraints are doesn't mean you have to accept them," he says.
Hannum's particular mixture of realism and hope has been powerful for Yakah, who now wants to run for public office in Ghana and, among other things, try to foster meaningful conversation about human rights protections there. "Professor Hannum took away the despair for me," says Yakah. "He made me see that the struggle between ordinary people and state power is a long one, but any incremental way you can push back helps."