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Fatema Haji-Taki

Fatema Haji-Taki
Spring 2005 Fellow
Citizens for Global Solutions
Fatema Haji-Taki
Spring 2005 Fellow
Citizens for Global Solutions

Major Fellowship Activities: Haji-Taki focused on peace operations, UN reform, the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She helped prepare materials for several Congressional staffers on the situation in Darfur and wrote several articles for the CGS website including “What Next for the African Union in Darfur?” “Time For A UN Emergency Capacity,” “The United Nations Responds to Sexual Abuse by Peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” and “UN Management Reform In Progress,” and co-authored “Towards A Comprehensive U.S. Agenda For UN Reform” and “Gingrich-Mitchell Report: A Viable Approach to UN Reform.” She also wrote news summaries and updated web articles on several UN reform proposals, the UN Oil For Food Program and the Convention on Nuclear Terrorism. She interviewed the UN Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations and wrote about Kofi Annan’s plan for the UN for the Summer 2005 issue of Global Solutions Quarterly.

She attended numerous policy briefings and meetings at the Arms Control Association, Brookings Institution, Center for American Progress, Georgetown University, State Department, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, U.S. Institute for Peace, and the Woodrow Wilson Center, and has participated in coalition meetings with other peace and security groups. She regularly helps prepare materials for the monthly meeting of Partners for Effective Peacekeeping.

Current Activities: Haji-Taki is a legislative liaison for the health care administration at the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS). As a legislative liaison, she helps DHS’s health care legislative team introduce, monitor and analyze health care legislation. She focuses on helping DHS connect with stakeholders and legislators to offer guidance and recommendations on bills. She assists in making sure that all of their policy and budget priorities are coordinated with the governor’s office and the legislature.
She was previously Outreach and Assistance Coordinator at the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. Her job was to provide policy and technical expertise on the intersection of health law and immigration law. She also conducted presentations and outreach events to immigrant communities throughout Minnesota about Minnesota’s health insurance marketplace, and planned, coordinated, and executed  enrollment assistance. During her second year of law school she was a Legal Intern at the Office of the Attorney General – Civil Rights Division in Boston, and a Judicial intern with the Honorable Judge Carol Ball in the Massachusetts Superior Court in Boston. In Fall 2011 she was a Legal Intern with Mid-Minnesota Legal Assistance – Immigration Law Project in Minneapolis. She previously worked as a Program Associate for Civil Liberties with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.  The key focus of the civil liberties program is to defend individual rights, freedoms, democratic processes and institutions threatened and eroded by the so-called global war on terror.  They work with partner organizations both nationally and internationally in pursuit of their goals of defending civil liberties as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and other similar national charters. She worked with the Program Manager and assisted in program development; partnership development; and programmatic responsibility for administrative tasks.  She was profiled in the Boston Globe and wrote an op-ed in that newspaper in May 2009 regarding organizing and participating in workshops in Morocco for thirty young professionals from Middle Eastern countries who are all involved in working for civil liberties and interfaith community programs. She also co-led UUSC’s first Building Bridges for Civil Liberties Workshop in June 2009 in a Chicago suburb where thirty Unitarian Universalists and Arab and Muslim Americans met to discuss how Arabs and Muslims in this country have seen their civil liberties eroded by policies adopted after 9/11 and how UUs can work in solidarity with Arab- and Muslim-American communities to restore those rights.  In Fall 2009 she will begin law school at Northeastern University. She previously worked as a Program Coordinator for Peace & Security at Citizens for Global Solutions. She primarily focused on the crisis in Darfur and the broader impact of failed and failing states on global security. She also worked on the “Campaign for a 21st Century UN” and tracked the following reform taking place at the UN: responsibility to protect, the Peacebuilding Commission, management reform and mandate review.  She was co-director of The Qunoot Foundation, an organization based in Washington, DC to provide a platform for marginalized Muslim voices, and was a Policy Coordinator for SustainUS, a U.S. youth network that works on sustainable development.  Prior to that she served as an Edward Rawson Fellow at Citizens for Global Solutions.