The Value of Practicing International Human Rights Law in the Global South

Can we truly become experts in international human rights law if we limit ourselves to studying and working in the Global North? Are international human rights truly international if, as practitioners, we never open ourselves up to perspectives from the Global South? Join Wasserstein Fellow Elisa Vari for a discussion on the importance of studying and working outside of the US, Europe, and other Global Minority countries to strengthen our understanding of international human rights law and the meaning of these norms in practice. Elisa will discuss her experience moving to the Levant to practice international refugee law and later to East Africa, and the impact this has had on her work and worldview. She will discuss the value of learning from Global Majority colleagues and ensuring those views are included and amplified in the practice of IHRL globally, as well as the importance of avoiding harmful stereotyping and white saviorism as US-trained lawyers.

Lunch provided. Please RSVP below. Open to the HLS community.

Elisa Vari is an international human rights lawyer and forced migration expert from Italy. Elisa works as an attorney for the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) Jordan office, where she provides legal assistance to refugees and displaced individuals throughout the region. Prior to IRAP, Elisa worked in administrative investigations for UN agencies including the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization, and, previously, she was a fellow with UNHCR’s Caribbean Protection Unit in Washington, DC, where she assessed protection claims of Venezuelan, Colombian, and Cuban asylum seekers. She has further collaborated with London-based NGO Reprieve on US death penalty issues, and US-based nonprofits and law firms focused on immigrants’ rights. Elisa holds a JD from the University of California Law, San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings), and an MSc in International Human Rights Law from Oxford University. She is bilingual in Italian and English and speaks Spanish and some French and Arabic.