Aminta Ossom

Aminta Ossom is a Lecturer on Law and Senior Clinical Instructor in the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School. Her work focuses on how international law operates on the ground, especially in responses to economic inequality. She develops and analyzes lawyering strategies that use human rights norms in areas such as labor rights, housing, climate change, and corporate responsibility, and examines how those strategies interact with broader political and economic structures. She is also associated with the Carr‑Ryan Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she co‑hosts Justice Matters, a podcast featuring in‑depth conversations with scholars and practitioners to explain how human rights ideas play out in the real world. Ossom’s recent clinic collaborations have addressed the rights of workers in informal and precarious forms of employment, the relationship between climate change and socio‑economic inequality, and accountability for abuses in global supply chains. In addition to her economic and social rights work, her research and practice interests include human rights diplomacy, the role of identity in advocacy, and the connections between civil rights and human rights movements. She works closely with students and partners to translate international human rights norms—alongside lessons from scholarship and casework—into concrete litigation and advocacy strategies. Prior to joining the International Human Rights Clinic in 2019, Ossom was a human rights officer at the United Nations, where she supported the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and the special rapporteurs of the Human Rights Council in fact‑finding, advocacy, and training in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Europe. She returned to the United Nations in 2022 to staff the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent in advance of its inaugural session. Earlier in her career, she taught at Fordham Law School as a Crowley Fellow in International Human Rights and Adjunct Professor of Law, and worked in international criminal justice, including as a Satter Human Rights Fellow with Amnesty International. She holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.A. in African Politics from SOAS, University of London, and a B.A. from the University of Oklahoma.