Fleeing the Jurisdiction

I’m writing this first entry as my last act in the employ of government. Appalling waste of public resources. As a taxpayer, I too am outraged. Nonetheless, this is necessary catharsis. Tomorrow I leave for Sierra Leone, to take up a legal role with a local human rights NGO. In part, I’ll be working on a war crimes case being heard in the United Nations-sponsored Special Court.

It’s a long way from the suit-and-tie, ivory tower law I’ve lately been practicing. Whilst the legislative reform for which I’ve had responsibility goes undoubtedly to the social good, the abstract and often detached nature of the process has increasingly chafed. Work in Cambodia, on a community justice project completed earlier this year, confirmed for me the appeal of a more engaged, albeit less assured, path.

For all its risk-averse, reactionary, rule-bound and rationalising ways, government has been an intellectually satisfying context in which to apply my skills to an end not driven by profit. I know I leave behind many colleagues whose integrity and commitment to principle helps maintain the creaky machinery of democracy. Time, though, for me to back myself in pursuing a different mode of service.

For all those to whom it all sounds ludicrously idealistic and naive, please feel free to assume this simply veils a desperate and quixotic attempt to garner female attention. Regardless of this transparent duplicity, I’ll do my best when commenting in this forum to project the image of a conscientious observer of and sometime contributor to the thorny and problematic process of development.