{"id":9905,"date":"2014-11-12T06:24:27","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T14:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=9905"},"modified":"2014-11-10T11:27:15","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T19:27:15","slug":"bc-human-rights-activist-and-tedx-speaker-lauryn-oates-brings-afghanistan-issues-close-to-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2014\/11\/12\/bc-human-rights-activist-and-tedx-speaker-lauryn-oates-brings-afghanistan-issues-close-to-home\/","title":{"rendered":"BC human rights activist and TEDx speaker Lauryn Oates brings Afghanistan issues close to home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not many people divide their time between the BC coast and Kabul, Afghanistan, but human rights activist Lauryn Oates does just that. When the Vancouverite was 14, an article she read about Taliban cruelties inspired her to respond to the what she saw as a lack of action from the western world.<\/p>\n

She was horrified that civilized countries were making excuses for the unforgivable actions in the east and couldn\u2019t understand why they would turn their backs on women and children in Afghanistan when they were no different from herself. Now that she\u2019s older, she sees that physical proximity plays a role.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Lauryn Oates wants to educate about overseas issues (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe distance ourselves with people in places like Afghanistan, where it\u2019s easy for us to do that, because Afghanistan is literally on the opposite side of the planet from Victoria; you cannot get farther away,\u201d she observes (during an interview from Afghanistan). \u201cWe really exoticize people the further they are away from us when we should be focusing more on our similarities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The distance still acts as a barrier, it seems. Now, years after the Taliban fell out of power, Oates assumes most people still don\u2019t understand the impact the terrorist group had on the country. She was stunned when she saw the statistics on infant and child mortality rates.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverywhere in the world the human development indicators are slowly, gradually improving,\u201d she explains. \u201cThe trend is that they\u2019re on this upward climb. In Afghanistan, you see this slow upward climb and then this plummet exactly during the period of the Taliban, and then it recovers again as soon as the Taliban are out of power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oates recognizes the problem also comes from what she sees as misleading media reports about the situation overseas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real tragedy has been the warped narrative in Afghanistan that nothing\u2019s going well. I see headlines that say \u2018Women\u2019s situation is as bad as it was during the Taliban,\u2019 and \u2018Nothing\u2019s changed,\u2019 but that is absolute garbage,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is a completely different country than it was when I first started coming here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oates hopes to bring awareness and thought to this year\u2019s TEDxVictoria. She wants to close the gap of communication and make people start thinking about our global community. This is what TED events claim to do: give activists like Lauryn Oates a chance to motivate the people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to do a better job of listening to the voices in countries like Afghanistan rather than speaking for them and making assumptions about them,\u201d she stresses. \u201cI think if you actually talk to Afghans or Arabians or people in Libya or any of the countries that are struggling to get a functional democracy in place, you learn that people just want the same things that we want.\u201d<\/p>\n

TEDx Victoria
\nSaturday, November 22
\n$89 and up, McPherson Playhouse
\ntedxvictoria.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not many people divide their time between the BC coast and Kabul, Afghanistan, but human rights activist Lauryn Oates does just that. When the Vancouverite was 14, an article she read about Taliban cruelties inspired her to respond to the what she saw as a lack of action from the western world. She was horrified […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-november-12-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9907,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9905\/revisions\/9907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}