About the Center
Highlights from the Center
Where we can share when the CHRGJ faculty, staff, students and fellows participate or are recognized in areas unrelated to our Center's main projects.
HIGHLIGHT FROM THE CENTER
Women Turn Spotlight on Haiti's Silent Rape Epidemic
March 29, 2011-Some 14 months after Haiti's earthquake, activists say there is an ongoing epidemic of rape and gender-based violence (GBV) in the country's more than 1,000 squalid displaced persons camps, where nearly a million people are still awaiting permanent housing. According to Annie Gell, Bureau des Avocats Internationaux's coordinator of the Rape Accountability and Prevention Project in Port-au-Prince, "The lack of lighting, the lack of patrols, the inability of women to lock their doors" contribute to the "incredibly insecure situation for women and girls" in the camps.
HIGHLIGHT FROM THE CENTER
Faculty Director Meg Satterthwaite and Research Director Jayne Huckerby featured in the Washington Post's "African commission asked to take case challenging CIA rendition program"
February 28, 2011-A case filed before an African judicial body could open a new front in efforts by human rights groups to hold the CIA and its partners accountable for what they allege was the torture of innocent victims in secret "black site" prisons around the world. The case involves Mohammed al-Asad, who said he was arrested in late 2003 at his home in Tanzania, blindfolded and flown to a secret prison in Djibouti. He said he was subjected to two weeks of torture and inhuman treatment in a clandestine CIA rendition and detentions program designed to nab suspected terrorists. From Djibouti, human rights activists say, Asad was dispatched into a network of secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan and Eastern Europe, before being jailed in his native Yemen. In 2006, Asad was released, without being charged with a terrorism-related crime.
HIGHLIGHT FROM THE CENTER
Faculty Co-Chair, Philip Alston, Interviewed in the Oxford Journal:"The Challenges of Responding to Extrajudicial Executions"
January 5, 2011- In our continuing series of reflections by human rights practitioners on their work, Philip Alston reflects here on his six-year term as UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, completed in July 2010. In the interview, Professor Alston addresses some of the methodological challenges faced by UN Special Procedures in their work – and in particular, highlights the need for greater context-specific analysis in reporting. He also speaks about some of the key themes that feature prominently in many of his country visit reports – including impunity, corruption, witness protection, police accountability, targeted killings, and election-related violence and killings.
HIGHLIGHT FROM THE CENTER
International Human Rights Clinic Alum, Rajeev Goyal, featured in The New Yorker: "Village Voice: The Peace Corps Brightest Hope"
December 20, 2010- Jay-Z loves the Peace Corps. He's never said so publicly, and there's no reference to volunteerism in any of his two hundred and twenty-four songs. But Rajeev Goyal believes that he knows the rapper's true heart. 'Jay-Z and Beyonce are both very interested in helping the Peace Corps," Rajeev told me once. He said that last year he was on the phone with somebody who claimed he could arrange for Jay-Z and Beyonce to speak at a Peace Corps rally that Rajeev was organizing in Washington, D.C. But their appearance fell through, which sometimes happens to Rajeev's most ambitious plans. He was unable to get an audience with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala to request a letter from His Holiness asking Congress to give more money to the Peace Corps. Once, he asked Maureen Orth, a writer for Vanity Fair and Tim Russert's widow, to contact Senator Barbara Mikulski, of Maryland, in a manner so roundabout that it was like driving from D.C. to Baltimore via the Deep South. "He asked me to ask James Carville to ask Bill Clinton to call Senator Mikulski," Orth told me. "And that's just one of four e-mails that I got from him in a day!" Orth didn’t telephone Carville, but on another occasion she called a senator on his cell phone in the middle of a meeting. "It was outrageous, but I did it for Rajeev," she said like everybody, she used his first name when talking about him. Orth admired Rajeev's willingness to try anything, especially since he had appeared in Washington as if" he was dropped in there from a cloud." She said, 'Who else would fly on miles all the way to Hawaii to try to see Obama's sister? And get it done! I wish he had been a reality series."
Rajeev Goyal is thirty-one years old, but he could pass for a college student. He stands only five and a half feet tall, with dark skin and long-lashed eyes. He has the portable confidence of the second generation immigrant-no matter where he goes, he knows there are benefits to being an outsider. In the part of eastern Nepal where Rajeev served as a Peace Corps volunteer from 2001 to 2003, people sometimes weep when his name is mentioned. Locals refer to him as Shiva, the god who is also the source of the Ganges River. Old folks tum on a tap and say, 'This is what he gave us." In the halls of Congress, most people have no idea what to make of him. For the past two years, he has approached the place as if it were just another Nepali settlement with a caste system to untangle. He figured out the Washington equivalent of village-well routes-hallways, hearing rooms, and coffee shops where anybody can hang around and meet a member of Congress. "He just picked off Democrats and Republicans one by one," Sam Farr, a Democratic congressman from California, told me. "I don't know lobbyists who are that persistent." Others complained that his unorthodox approach was too personal, but even critics acknowledged the results. During the past two years, funding for the Peace Corps has increased by record amounts, despite partisanship in Congress and a brutal economic climate. 'Tve been in the Congress for seventeen years, and always lobbying for the Peace Corps, but I've never been as effective as I have in the last two sessions," Farr said. "And I would attribute that to Rajeev."
HIGHLIGHT FROM THE CENTER
International Human Rights Clinic Alum, Brian Concannon Jr., featured in the Boston Globe: "US Will Pay for Haitian Vote Fraud"
December 15, 2010- The decision last Thursday to recount the votes in Haiti’s disputed elections is like rearranging the chairs on the Titanic. As this week’s continued protests demonstrate, it will not avoid the catastrophe. Resolving Haiti’s election woes requires the financial backers of the flawed election process — especially the United States — to reverse course and insist on new, inclusive elections run by a new, inclusive electoral council.
Tweet 4 people Tweeted thisSubmit to DiggdiggsdiggYahoo! Buzz ShareThis Haitian voters see the fraud and disorganization of the Nov. 28 election as part of a long campaign to reduce competition to President René Préval’s INITE party in both presidential and legislative elections. The Provisional Electoral Council, which ran the election, was hand-picked by Préval, and excluded 15 political parties from the legislative elections, including Haiti’s most popular, Fanmi Lavalas, whose leader, former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, remains in forced exile. The electoral council also excluded 15 candidates from the presidential race without issuing a comprehensive explanation. During the months preceding the elections, Haitians complained about the voter registration program. In the end, over 100,000 voters who had registered did not receive their voting cards. More than 75 percent of voters with cards stayed home on election day.
HIGHLIGHT FROM THE CENTER
Arthur Helton fellow, Beatrice Lindstrom, featured in NY Daily News: "Haiti Must Have Fair, Democratic New Elections - and the Ravaged Nation Can't Wait"
December 8, 2010- Haiti's democracy suffered a double blow last week. The first was on Sunday, Nov. 28, when pervasive fraud denied hundreds of thousands of Haitians the right to participate in electing a new government.
The second occurred when observers from the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Community, both founded on the noble principles of supporting democracy, security and development, dismissed the widespread outcry of both candidates and voters and validated the elections.
HIGHLIGHT FROM THE CENTER
Professor Philip Alston presents final reports to the UN Human Rights Council, receives worldwide media attention
Professor Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, presented 10 reports this week during his annual presentation to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on 3-4 June 2010. Alston is mandated by the UN to investigate allegations of unlawful killings in all countries around the world.
The reports presented by Alston, who is also John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at NYU, included his annual report, which assesses the key activities over the six years of his mandate, proposes wide-ranging reforms, and reviews the law and policy of unlawful killings, as well as country reports on his fact-finding missions (on Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Albania) and follow-up country reports (on Brazil and the Central African Republic). He also presented a report of all the communications he engaged in with Governments over the last year, and three in-depth reports on targeted killings, election-related killings and police accountability. All of these reports, and the accompanying press statements and extensive media coverage, are available at www.extrajudicialexecutions.org.
In his statement to the Council, Alston began by referring to his many years of work promoting the importance of independent investigations into unlawful killings, and asserted the “compelling need for an objective and impartial international investigation” into the attack on the humanitarian flotilla off Gaza, as well as into “allegations that as many as 30,000 persons were killed in Sri Lanka in the closing months of the conflict.”
In his report on targeted killings, Alston acknowledged that they may be lawful in the limited context of armed conflict, but he strongly criticized the use of such killings “far from the battle zone”, and the lack of transparency and accountability in targeted killings operations. He especially questioned the use of CIA-operated drones, because the US does not disclose, “when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals who may be killed, how it ensures killings are legal, and what follow-up there is when civilians are illegally killed who is killed, why the attacks were launched.” Alston said that “Intelligence agencies, which by definition are determined to remain unaccountable except to their own paymasters, have no place in running programs that kill people in other countries.”
In his report on election-related killings, Alston noted that it was a phenomenon that received far too little attention. He carried out a detailed study of most of the countries that had experienced such killings over the last 3 years, proposed the first detailed typology for how to understand them, and reforms to reduce their occurrence. His police accountability report found that one of the major causes of police killings was the failure of many Governments to hold police perpetrators to account, and he proposed best practices for creating effective police oversight mechanisms.
In his report on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Alston strongly criticized a UN supported Congolese army operation that led to brutal killings of civilians, and he called for significantly stronger civilian protection by both the Government and the UN. Alston said, “The alarm bells that I have sounded have been largely ignored. We have continued to see poorly planned and under-resourced military operations, reprisal attacks by rebel groups on unprotected civilians, the failure to arrest war criminals serving in the Congolese army, many hundreds of civilians killed, and many more displaced and gravely injured, often at the hands of the very troops whose duty it is to protect civilians.”
Alston also called attention to the death this week of Floribert Chebeya Bahizire, a human rights defender with whom Alston met in the DRC, and who Alston described as “a hugely respected human rights leader” who was “killed in Kinshasa in circumstances which strongly suggest official responsibility.”
In his follow-up report on Brazil, Alston noted that while the Government had been very cooperative and had implemented some important reforms, police continued to kill at alarming levels, and that in some areas, the phenomena of “resistance” killings by police had actually worsened.
Alston’s reports to the Human Rights Council are the last ones he will submit to the Council as Special Rapporteur, as his 6 year Special Rapporteur term will end in July 2010. In his statement to the Council, Alston said, “In reviewing my six years as Special Rapporteur I would suggest that the broad range of activities I have been mandated to undertake by the Council have mattered a great deal. Lives have been saved, lethal practices have been abandoned, greater caution has been shown, and awareness of the issues has grown at many levels.” Alston thanked, the “many State representatives who have been extremely supportive of my work” and the “officials of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.” He also said that he wanted, “to thank my extraordinary colleagues at New York University’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice who have provided invaluable assistance to me.”
He closed by saying, “Most of all, I thank those human rights defenders in the many countries in which I have worked, without whose amazing courage and dedication to the cause my own work would have achieved very little. Many face death on a daily basis in struggling to protect human rights.”
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For further information, please contact Sarah Knuckey, Director of the Project on Extrajudicial Executions at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU School of Law at sarah.knuckey@nyu.edu; or visit www.extrajudicialexecutions.org. The Project on Extrajudicial Executions provides support and advice to the mandate of the Special Rapporteur, and carries out legal and policy research on unlawful killings.
HIGHLIGHT FROM THE CENTER
NYU makes final round in 2010 Jean-Pictet Competition on International Humanitarian Law
NYU’s team in the 2010 Jean-Pictet Competition on International Humanitarian Law made its way to the final round, for the first time since 2000. The competition took place in Orford, Quebec, Canada, and finished on March 27. The NYU team of Colin Gillespie (’11), Graham Dumas (’11) and J. Benton Heath (’11) were among only three teams to make it through to the Final Round. Eighty-seven teams from 47 countries had applied to compete, out of which 45 participated. The teams are divided into two English-language sections and one French-language section, with one team from each section being selected to compete in the Final Round. The winner this year was the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya of Israel.
The Jean-Pictet Competition is one of the most challenging and prestigious of the various moot court competitions in the field of international law. Its focus is on international humanitarian law (IHL), and the event is hosted each year by an independent organization and sponsored by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Canadian Red Cross, the Canadian and Swiss foreign ministries, and others. The challenge is to “take law out of the books” by using simulations and role plays to allow the jury to evaluate both the theoretical knowledge and practical understanding of IHL. The situations revolve around a fictitious, but nonetheless realistic scenario of armed conflict.
Philip Alston, one of the Directors of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, which, together with The Hauser Global Law School Program, supported the Team, remarked that “this is a terrific performance by a really dedicated group of students. The Pictet Competition is one of the very best of the moot competitions and for Colin, Graham and Ben to have excelled in it is a great achievement.”
STUDENT HIGHLIGHT
Reena Arora (JD ’08) received the Arthur Helton Global Human Rights Fellowship to work with Migrant Assistance Program (MAP Foundation) in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Student Highlight: Reena Arora, Recipient of the 2008-2009 Arthur Helton Global Human Rights Fellowship
After graduating with my J.D., I received the 2008-2009 Arthur Helton Global Human Rights Fellowship to work with the Migrant Assistance Program (MAP Foundation) in Chiang Mai, Thailand for a year. Prior to attending NYU School of Law, I worked with the MAP Foundation in Southern Thailand, assisting Burmese migrant workers after the tsunami wreaked havoc and destruction in the area. I am enormously grateful for the opportunity the fellowship has provided by allowing me to return to work for the MAP Foundation. With my newly acquired skills from law school, I now feel I can really contribute to the organization that generated my initial interest in labor migration and migrant worker rights to begin with.
As a fellow at the MAP Foundation, I primarily work with the Act against Abuse project on labor rights, as well as one known as the POSH project, which promotes occupational health and safety. Overall, I help to manage the legal casework, utilize the information from this casework for advocacy efforts, and prepare domestic and international campaigns. I also recently had a chance to interview migrants for Human Rights Watch, gathering accounts of restrictions being placed on their basic liberties by the Thai government. I also have the opportunity to conduct capacity building workshops for MAP Foundation staff and volunteers on international human rights law as well as human rights investigation and documentation.
In addition to these projects, I work with a regional organization, Mekong Migration Network, of which MAP Foundation is a member. This organization seeks to examine the issues of migrants within the Greater Mekong sub region—which consists of Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Yunnan Province of China. Through the Network, I have helped to develop the curriculum for a three-week training course on labor migration management for government officials in partnership with Mekong Institute, an academic training institute at Khon Kaen University. The Mekong Migration Network also produces an annual resource book on migration; this year’s theme is the impact of cross-border economic zones. I’ve assisted them on this book by helping them develop primary research questionnaires and secondary research to help to analyze the results of the questionnaires using the framework of international human rights law.
At the MAP Foundation I am considered a full-time staff member and have already been offered an opportunity to join the staff after completion of my fellowship, which would allow me to continue my work. I am deeply grateful for the opportunities this fellowship has given me and strongly encourage other law students with a passion for human rights to pursue the fellowship.
Read more about the Arthur Helton Global Human Rights Fellowship and other student opportunities here.
FACULTY HIGHLIGHT
CHRGJ Directors Margaret Satterthwaite and Paul Van Zyl Recognized for Career Achievements
Professor Satterthwaite Receives “Pioneer of Justice and Equality for Women and the Law Award”
On Saturday, March 14th, 2009, CHRGJ’s Faculty Director and Associate Professor of Law Margaret Satterthwaite was publicly honored by the Women’s Association of Law Students at Pace University School of Law, who awarded her with the “2009 Pioneer of Justice and Equality for Women and the Law Award.” At a private awards ceremony, the Dean of Pace Law School, Michelle Simon, and the President of the Women’s Association of Law Students, Carly Lynch, addressed an audience gathered to honor Professor Satterthwaite’s for her dedication to human rights issues throughout her distinguished legal career. Past honorees of the award include Catherine MacKinnon (2008) and Congresswoman Nita Lowey (2004).
Van Zyl will also be honored the weekend of April 3rd, when the law school holds its 2009 Alumni reunion, at which he will receive the “Recent Graduate Award” (For more information see, here)
