Human Rights

On Nov. 20, Harvard Law School and Facing History and Ourselves co-sponsored a conference, “Hope, Critique & Possibility: Universal Rights in Societies of Difference,” to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

IS THERE a legal basis for the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan for genocide?

“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
Those words, written by noted death penalty lawyer Bryan Stevenson ’85, were very much on the mind of Katie Wozencroft ’09 this summer, when she made the four-hour drive from Atlanta to an Alabama prison where condemned prisoners are executed.

Lawyers and leaders must do a better job of recognizing the intermeshed dilemmas posed by an overcrowded planet and an increasingly interconnected globe. That was the message delivered by world renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs in a recent lecture at Harvard Law School.

The international legal community needs to make “lawlessness” a top priority, said human rights scholar Samantha Power ’99 during a speech at Celebration 55: The Women’s Leadership Summit at Harvard Law School.

Four HLS students found themselves sitting across a table from Carlos Menem, president of Argentina from 1989 to 1999. It was their opportunity, said Ariella Shkolnik ’09, “to ask poignant, difficult questions” about his controversial administration, widely accused of corruption and indifference to human rights abuses.

Christina Greenberg’s client was labeled disruptive and was sent home from elementary school every single day last spring. The 8-year-old—who is mentally disabled, has hydrocephalus, seizures and is in a wheelchair—then lost summer services because his school district failed to submit the necessary paperwork. His mother—struggling to care for her son and his disabled twin on $1,000 a month—was desperate when she reached Greenberg, a summer intern with Massachusetts Advocates for Children.

The graffiti started appearing in mid-February: “Aba Lavichè!” Lavi chè was Creole for la vie chère—the high cost of living. I should have realized. Rising prices for gas, basic foodstuffs and school fees had been the talk since I’d arrived last August to work for a small NGO that does human-rights law.

Navanethem Pillay LL.M. ’82 S.J.D. ’88 is expected to become the next United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon will announce Pillay’s nomination, which requires the approval of the General Assembly, early this week.

This January, when the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor resumed in The Hague, much of the world was watching. So were 11 Harvard Law students—from about 20 feet away.

On May 16th, two HLS students, René A. Pfromm LL.M. '08 and Ines Wu '09, together with Stephan Sonnenberg '06, Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Program (HNMCP) clinical fellow and lecturer on law, delivered a one day workshop on negotiation in the context of genocide and mass atrocities.

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.

Harvard Law grads share prestigious Gruber Foundation Prize for International Justice

Deborah Anker, director of the HLS Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program and a clinical professor of law, received the Elmer Fried Award for Excellence in Teaching on June 28 at the annual meeting of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) in Vancouver.

Yash Pal Ghai LL.M. ’63 has spent his professional life quietly advising countries ravaged by war and colonialism on how to use the law to build democratic societies. Recently, though, his work has received extensive coverage, particularly in Asia, for his sharp criticisms of Cambodia’s current human rights record—and the even sharper response of that country’s prime minister, Hun Sen.

When threatened in court by the leader of a death squad known for killing its victims with chainsaws, Brazilian prosecutor Raquel Ferreira Dodge was undeterred.

On world refugee day in June, Kofi Annan and Angelina Jolie urged the world to keep hope alive for millions of refugees. In a camp in eastern Africa, Scott Paltrowitz ’08 found that hope is often all that refugees have.

HLS students learn the lessons of Nuremberg in Cambridge, Arusha and The Hague.

When Navi Pillay LL.M. '82 S.J.D. '88 was growing up in South Africa, there was no international court in which apartheid could be prosecuted as a crime against humanity. Now there is--and she's on it.