Human Rights in Prague!

Chelsea Casabona Start Date: Jan 18, 2020 - End Date: May 17, 2020
  • Prague, Czechia

My Travel Story

by: Chelsea Casabona Start Date: Jan 18, 2020 - End Date: May 17, 2020
I stare into lifeless eyes, the two seventeen-year-old girls crossing their arms protectively in front of their frail bodies. They sit center stage, their translator off to the right. Lights dim in the auditorium, but my eyes are about to be brightened by their experience growing up in West Africa. While I do not understand what they are saying until their translator speaks, their body language tells an entire story in itself - a story of survival, or barriers, and of trauma that will take their entire lifetime to learn to live with. After watching their parents get murdered, they were kidnapped and taken back to the camps of Boko Haram. One of the girls clenches her stomach while the translator explains the sexual abuse the two seventeen-year-old girls faced in the camps - that is when a picture of the young girl and not just one, but three children, shows up on the screen behind them. I choke back tears, taken aback by the strength the girls show despite their adversities. 

At seventeen years old, I sat as a Florida student delegate to the United Nations 62nd Commission on the Status of Women, but in front of me were girls the same age who endured female genital mutilation, were kidnapped by and escaped from Boko Haram, and now serve as advocates for the trafficking of women and girls in West Africa. They wake up every day and confront the demons of their past because they do not want girls facing the same adversities that plagued their childhoods. Their tenacity inspired me to band side-by-side with them for the rest of the week and lobby UN representatives from a wide variety of countries. While I came back to my school educated on the topic of human trafficking after the conference, I felt defeated by the powerlessness the leaders at the United Nations displayed through their inaction. 

When I travel to Prague next summer, I will be studying human trafficking and the effective and ineffective responses of the international community. Meeting the survivors of Boko Haram invigorated my already passionate stance against global human rights violations across the world, especially those committed against women and girls. I want to study abroad to network with leaders working towards the global movement for gender equality, specifically when it comes to eliminating human trafficking. Furthermore, it is imperative to understand the historical nature of unjust systems in order to enter my career fully aware of the challenges perpetuated through historical reinforcement. Studying abroad will broaden my scope of the way I interpret global events, allowing me to revert back to my travels and think about the way different communities I lived in and people I have met would be affected. Whether I become an international human rights lawyer, a member of the United Nations, or a CEO of a non-profit that helps educate girls worldwide, traveling is integral to expanding my global perspective. 

Sitting in a classroom at Florida State University is a privilege that not everyone is able to do, and for that, I am grateful - studying abroad is an educational enhancement that is beneficial to breaking down my ethnocentric walls and allow me to be a productive member of the global community. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “the world in which we live has become a single neighborhood.” I want to understand the grievances that plague my neighbors across the world in order to gain a more dynamic perspective on the challenges rooted in different societal structures. I hope to graduate college with a robust affinity for not only traveling to different countries but cultivating relationships with citizens of the world so that one day we may come together and expel the similar evils seen across borders.


  • Prague, Czechia

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