International Human Rights Clinic

The special rights guaranteed to First Nations receive inadequate attention in British Columbia when compared to mining interests, the International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) at Harvard Law School said in a report released on June 7.

Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of a petition for certiorari in a major corporate Alien Tort Statute case, Presbyterian Church of Sudan v. Talisman Energy, Inc. The Clinic served as counsel on behalf of international law scholars and jurists to argue that those who knowingly aid and abet egregious human rights violations can be held liable under customary international law.

The HLS International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC), under the direction of Clinical Director Tyler Giannini and Lecturer on Law Susan Farbstein, recently filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case Samantar v. Yousuf. 

At the southwestern tip of the Amazon, in Porto Velho, Rondônia, Brazil, stands Urso Branco, a prison notorious for deadly human rights violations. It’s nowhere anyone would choose to be. But it was into this dank, dark, and volatile world that Clara Long ’11, Fernando Delgado ’08, and James Cavallaro, executive director of Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program, insisted on going.

The U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida has ruled that the claims for crimes against humanity and extrajudicial killings could move forward in two related U.S. cases against former Bolivian President Gonzalo Daniel Sánchez de Lozada Sánchez Bustamante (Sánchez de Lozada) and former Bolivian Defense Minister Jose Carlos Sánchez Berzaín (Sánchez Berzaín). The International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School is part of the legal team that filed the two complaints against Sánchez de Lozada and Sánchez Berzaín.

In commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the UN’s Human Rights Program, the UN’s highest human rights official, Navanethem Pillay, LL.M. ’82 S.J.D. ’88, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, came to Harvard Law School to discuss her current position as a human rights diplomat and how it differs from her previous roles as a judge and an impassioned activist.

In February 2007, Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program issued a report on gang violence in El Salvador, "No Place to Hide: Gang, State, and Clandestine Violence in El Salvador."

Last year, Matthew F. Wells ’09 traveled through Sierra Leone visiting more than two dozen artisanal diamond mines, under the auspices of the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School.

“From 2007 to 2008, the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan’s ongoing conflict rose 40 percent, according to U.N. figures.” So begins the report co-written by Erica Gaston ’07, with Rebecca Wright, during Gaston’s Henigson Fellowship year in Afghanistan, which started in January 2008.

A new report issued by the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School calls for the UN Security Council to act on human rights abuses in Burma. The report, “Crimes in Burma,” comes in the wake of renewed international attention due to the continued persecution of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi.

The International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program has been working since 2005 on corporate Alien Tort Statute (ATS) litigation involving human rights abuses committed in apartheid South Africa. 

Christopher Rogers ’09 has spent the better part of the past year in HLS’s International Human Rights Clinic working on issues related to cluster munitions, particularly surrounding the creation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

There are now 16 clinics at HLS, enabling students to do fieldwork at home and abroad. Here are stories from three of them, taking students inside inner cities and inner sanctums.

The International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) at Harvard Law School and the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) have joined together to release "Prosecuting Apartheid-Era Crimes? A South African Dialogue on Justice," a report examining recently intensified questions about prosecuting crimes committed during apartheid.