Warwick Amnesty sleepout lights up piazza

On Friday, Warwick Amnesty teamed up with Engineers Without Borders (EWB) to design and build a slum on the Piazza which kicks off Warwick Amnesty’s flagship project, ‘Protect the Human Week.’

Warwick Amnesty aimed to raise awareness of the billion people across the world who live in slums, which Amnesty International claims denies them basic human rights. The event focused on the slums around Nairobi, the inhabitants of which are in danger of being evicted and left destitute, as the land is bought up by private interests.

The slum was an eclectic mix of cardboard, rope and canvas structures, including the ‘Hexayurt,’ a novel shelter design in which none of the material is wasted.

The EWB Society were joined by Vinay Gupta, a ‘technology activist’ who invented the Hexayurt, describing his design as an “incredibly cheap shelter for those in need.” Gupta, founder of the ‘Bucky-Gandhi Design Institution,’ has made his design freely available for use in disaster areas and impoverished slums, citing the Haitian earthquake disaster as an example of a situation where the Hexayurt could be used to provide, cheap, efficient and essential shelter.

A group of engineers and Amnesty members slept in the slum on Friday night, after a montage of candles lit the Piazza with the words ‘End Forced Evictions’ and the Amnesty logo.

In a fashion infrequently experienced by slum inhabitants in Nairobi, the main problems for the protestors were the severe cold and the inebriated attendees of Top Banana, although one Amnesty member commented “people seem to care a lot more about forced evictions when they’re a bit intoxicated.”

Protests against forced evictions have been traditionally very successful for Amnesty International, which none having taken place since protests started in 2008, according to the Vice President of Warwick Amnesty, Francis Wight, who told the Boar that “we are petitioning to stop the Kenyan government enacting these forced evictions … we’re here to try and keep up the good work of Amnesty International.” Ethan Fowler, the President of Engineers Without Borders Society, praised the campaign and claimed that “it was great to work with Amnesty today, and we’re looking forward to cooperating on other campaigns in the future.”

Protect The Human Week is a campaign to promote human rights, and aims to raise awareness of abuses in many countries all over the planet. Each day of the Week will focus on a different campaign, with events dedicated to ‘Terrorism and Security’, ‘Individuals at Risk,’ ‘Refugees and Asylum,’ and ‘End the Death Penalty,’ with last Friday’s events dedicated to ‘Poverty and Human Rights.’