Events

Who Will Speak for the Child? Human Rights at Home and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (December 7, 2009)

6:30-7:45 PM/ Tishman Auditorium, Vanderbilt Hall

The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, the PEN American Center, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law, and the ACS New York Lawyer Chapter hosted a cross-disciplinary discussion on "Human Rights at Home and the Convention of the Rights of the Child"

About the event:

In 1989, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a document that would ensure the legal rights and protection of children. To date, the United States and Somalia are the only two countries that have failed to ratify this document. Soon after the 20th anniversary mark of its UN adoption (November 20) writers and lawyers came together to discuss human rights for children and the importance of safeguards to ensure their safety. The key questions were what role can lawyers and policymakers play to protect the rights of children? and how can writers and the arts contribute to ensuring that we safeguard the rights of our most vulnerable and most valuable citizens?

The panel began with introductory remarks by Professor Philip Alston, CHRGJ Faculty Chair, and featured:

• Moderator, Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law, New York Law School
• Deborah Ellis, award-winning Author of Off to War, The Breadwinner Trilogy, and Three Wishes, among others.
• Uzodinma Iweala, award-winning Author of Beasts of No Nation
• Laura W. Murphy, President, Laura Murphy & Associates, LLC
• Walter Dean Myers, award-winning Author of Dope Sick, Amiri & Odette, and Sunrise Over Fallujah, among others
• Jonathan Todres, Associate Professor, Georgia State University Law School

Book Launch for "The Guantanamo Lawyers" (November 10, 2009)

6:00-8:00PM/ Lester Pollack Room, Furman Hall

About the Event

The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, the Center on Law and Security, and NYU Press hosted the book launch and discussion of "The Guantanamo Lawyers", featuring the editors of the book and several contributors. "The Guantanamo Lawyers" contains more than 100 personal narratives from attorneys who have represented detainees held at “Gitmo” as well as at other “black sites” such as Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

"This collection of stirring narrative, government data and testimony, edited by two of the lawyers for those detained by the Bush administration as unlawful combatants at Guantánamo, puts America on notice about the issues of civil liberties and constitutional freedoms. Denbeaux and Hafetz have edited together accounts from 100 other detainee advocates into a chronological narrative of legal battles: to gain access to their clients, to establish the detainees’ right to habeas corpus, to describe the occupants of “Gitmo” (at its peak, 750 from 40 countries) and the torture and mistreatment of detainees. They describe their clients as underlings, working stiffs and not the high officials of any terrorist group. Plowing through legal red tape, bureaucratic mumbo jumbo and political maneuvering, Denbeaux and Hafetz fight for the men who are isolated without diversions or outside contact. The desperate words, quoted here, of Gitmo detainees on torture grab the heart and do not let go. This compelling book on the American penal colony and its residents is a cautionary tale of overzealous executive wartime power and the awful mess it sometimes leaves behind."

Our Panelists:

Mark Denbeaux and Jonathan Hafetz, editors and the following contributors:

Baher Azmy, Professor of Law, Seton Hall

Ramzi Kassem, Asst Professor of Law, CUNY School of Law

Jayne Huckerby, Research Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, Adjunct Asst Professor at New York University Law School

Michael Ratner, President, Center for Constitutional Rights

With an introduction by Karen Greenberg, Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security

Event will be followed by a reception, at which copies of the book will be available for purchase. Please feel free to print and distribute/post the attached flyer.

For more about the book, see: guantanamo.fromthesquare.org

Peter Maass book presentation: “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil” (November 6, 2009)

4:00-6:00PM/ Lester Pollack Room, Furman Hall

The Institute for International Law and Justice and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice hosted the presentation by Peter Maass of his recently published book: Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil. In this new book Peter Maass examines the oil industry and the human, legal, and environmental impacts of oil on the countries that produce it. The presentation was followed by a discussion.

Peter Maass is a journalist who has reported from the Middle East, Asia, Middle East, Asia, South America and Africa. Currently he is in New York and contributes to The New York Times Magazine. He has written for The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Outside and Slate, among others. His first book Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1996, chronicled his experiences covering the Bosnian conflict and won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize (for nonfiction) and the Overseas Press Club Book Prize.

Panel Discussion with:

Robert Howse (Moderator) Rob Howse is Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law and Faculty Director of the Institute for International Law and Justice (IILJ) at NYU School of Law. He has published extensively on issues related to international trade and investment law, as well as on international legal theory.

Smita Narula is Associate Professor and Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. Before joining NYU in August 2003, Smita Narula spent six years at Human Rights Watch, first as the organization’s India researcher and later as Senior Researcher for South Asia. In this capacity, she oversaw Human Rights Watch’s work on India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, and helped coordinate the organization’s response to the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Narula has conducted numerous human rights investigations in Asia and has authored a variety of reports and articles on caste discrimination worldwide and the rise of religious nationalism in South Asia.

In 1997, Narula graduated from Harvard Law School, where she was Editor-in-chief of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. Before law school, Narula received a Masters in International Development from Brown University and worked on HIV and public health at UNICEF and the United Nations Development Fund. Narula has also taught human rights advocacy and documentation at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Human Rights. Her research interests include caste and racial discrimination, religious intolerance, human rights abuses in the "war on terror", social and economic rights, and the accountability of transnational corporations and international financial institutions for human rights violations.

Beth Stephens is a Professor at Rutgers School of Law. From 1990-1995, she was in charge of the international human rights docket at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, where she litigated a series of cases addressing human rights violations in countries around the world, including Bosnia, Guatemala, Haiti, East Timor and Ethiopia.

As a cooperating attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights and a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Justice and Accountability, Prof. Stephens continues to litigate human rights cases, including cases filed against U.S.- based corporations alleging responsibility for human rights violations committed in the course of their activities abroad.

She has published a variety of articles on the relationship between international and domestic law, focusing on the enforcement of international human rights norms through domestic courts. She co-authored a book analyzing U.S. enforcement of human rights norms, International Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts (second edition, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, forthcoming 2007).

Professor Stephens graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, received her J.D. degree from the law school of the University of California at Berkeley, and clerked for Chief Justice Rose Bird of the California Supreme Court.

Dan Firger is a joint J.D./Master's of Public Affairs candidate at NYU School of Law and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. His studies focus on international environmental policy and human rights. Prior to law school, Dan served as the national organizer of the Global Finance Campaign at Rainforest Action Network (RAN), a San Francisco-based NGO that focuses on corporate accountability campaigns related to deforestation, climate change, and indigenous rights.

As a law student, Dan spent his first year summer in Ecuador, where he served as part of the legal team representing 30,000 plaintiffs in a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against Chevron to seek remediation costs for widespread pollution across the Amazon basin following decades of oil drilling. The "David and Goliath" case, originally filed in 1993 in U.S. federal court and being carried on in a tiny Amazonian courtroom, was recently featured in an award-winning documentary film, "Crude." Dan continues to volunteer on the case, which is expected to reach a verdict in early 2010.

Nikki Reisch is a Root-Tilden-Kern and IILJ Scholar at NYU School of Law who has spent the decade since her graduation from Yale University working on human rights, economic, social and environmental justice in the context of international development and the global economy, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. After serving in the Peace Corps in Senegal, she was recruited to manage the Africa program of the Bank Information Center (BIC), a Washington DC-based non-profit organization that works to democratize development decision-making, safeguard rights and ensure accountability in the operations of the World Bank and other international financial institutions. She spent five years in this position and her work focused heavily on natural resources and international trade and development, with a particular emphasis on the impacts of oil, gas and mineral extraction in Africa. In this role, Nikki helped lead civil society input into the Extractive Industries Review, a three year review of the poverty impacts of World Bank support for oil, mining and gas, and co-authored a report on the World Bank-backed Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, called Chad’s Oil: Miracle or Mirage? Following the money in Africa’s newest petro-state.

She has traveled extensively throughout Africa, collaborating with local organizations in Ghana, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Chad, and elsewhere, to challenge the impacts of natural resource extraction and defend communities’ rights in those countries. Most recently, after several months as an independent consultant, whose projects included co-authoring a report on the climate impacts of the Iraq war, Nikki moved to London where she spent the past year working as the Policy Advisor on Forests and Climate Change at the Rainforest Foundation UK.

Read more about “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil” here

NYT Review: Michael Hirsh, "The End of Oil?", New York Times, September 27, 2009.

Managing Trauma: Dealing with Secondary Traumatization, Work with Victims of Abuse, and Exposure to Atrocity (October 30, 2009)

3:00-5:30 PM/ Furman 214
By Invitation Only

CHRGJ hosted a special invite-only seminar discussion featuring Dr. Leanh Nguyen—a specialist in trauma and torture survivors—as well as several guests from the human rights profession who shared their personal experiences with managing trauma.

With this event, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) hoped to support those in the CHRGJ community by sharing coping mechanisms that are too often absent in human rights work. We hoped to provide a forward-looking, holistic resource that will benefit us all in our future work, enabling us to be effective, healthy, responsible, and safe human rights advocates. We shared in the personal reflections of our guest speakers, guided discussion with Dr. Nguyen, and an interactive seminar on coping mechanisms, typical symptoms of secondary traumatization, and understanding victims of human rights abuses.

About our Facilitator:

Leanh Nguyen, PhD, is a former refugee of the Vietnam War, and is now a psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. She holds a PhD in clinical psychology. Her clinical work is devoted to severe trauma and refugee/immigrant mental health issues.

Dr. Nguyen has been on staff at the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture since 2000, where she has been involved in the intensive treatment and forensic evaluation of victims of torture and persecution from all over the world. More recently, her clinical and advocacy focus has been concentrating on the oppression of sexual rights and human rights violations. Her psychoanalytic writings, in particular, focus on the ethical-cultural dimensions of evaluations and interventions in human rights advocacy.

Dr. Nguyen has extensive experience in providing “coping mechanisms” training courses and processing groups for human rights professionals, including Physicians for Human Rights, Human Rights First, International Rescue Committee, Witness, and the Innocence Project.

Engendering Counter-Terrorism and National Security (October 27, 2009)

6:00-8:00PM/ Vanderbilt Hall 218

Click here to hear the audio recording of the event

On October 26, 2009, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism presented his groundbreaking report on gender and counter-terrorism measures to the U.N. General Assembly. The report addresses the long-ignored impacts of counter-terrorism on women and LGBTI individuals, condemning patterns such as government bartering of these individuals’ rights to appease terrorists and the use of anti-terrorism laws to criminalize gender equality advocates.

To mark the presentation of the report to the General Assembly, the Center hosted a discussion with a distinguished group of panelists working on issues of gender and counter-terrorism. The panelists were: Karima Bennoune, Professor of Law and Arthur L. Dickson Scholar, Rutgers School of Law – Newark; Jayne Huckerby, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Clinical Law and Research Director, CHRGJ, NYU School of Law; Martin Scheinin, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism; and Malalai Joya, an Afghani women’s rights advocate and the youngest member ever elected to the Afghan parliament. Fareda Banda, Professor, NYU School of Law, moderated the panel discussion.

Martin Scheinin explained that he chose to present this thematic report on gender and counter-terrorism measures to the General Assembly in New York, rather than at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, because of the importance of mainstreaming gender into the U.N.’s counter-terrorism work. He reported getting negative reaction to his report from some states at the General Assembly. Nonetheless, he expressed his conviction that, with time, the U.N. will come to take gender into account in countering terrorism.

Jayne Huckerby then set out the drafting process of the report and the key questions it addresses. Most important, she said, was addressing what we understand as a gendered perspective and what the challenges and opportunities a gender and counter-terrorism approach presents. She pointed to several new patterns identified in the report, including the bartering of women’s and LGBTI rights to appease terrorist groups, the collateral impacts of counter-terrorism on women, and women’s dress as a focal point for profiling suspects in counter-terrorism policies.

Karima Bennoune said the Special Rapporteur’s report contributed to a holistic approach to counter-terrorism and terrorism and gendered abuses. She called women’s experience of terrorism a much-neglected topic and identified the need for a human rights account of terrorism and gender. She saluted Professor Scheinin for being forward-looking, emphasizing that his report should only be mark the beginning of an important process.

Malalai Joya described the catastrophic situation of women in Afghanistan. Despite the United States’ use of women’s rights as justification for military intervention in Afghanistan,, she said the U.S.’ actions had pushed women “from the frying pan to the fire.” She spoke of impunity, insecurity, corruption, and joblessness that characterize daily life and a false “democracy” that has privileged warlords and fundamentalists. She described her own experience of being elected to, and then expelled from, Parliament because she denounced the presence of warlords and criminals in Parliament; she now lives under constant threat of violence. Ms. Joya called on the audience to lend their support to Afghani women and to demand a change in US policy in recognition that peace will not be secured through war.

The panel then took many questions from audience members, which ranged from their appraisal of the role of the UN in Afghanistan to the rise of female suicide bombers. The panel was followed by a reception at which guests and panelists were able to discuss the issues further.

About the panelists:

Karima Bennoune, Professor of Law and Arthur L. Dickson Scholar, Rutgers School of Law - Newark

Jayne Huckerby, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Clinical Law and Research Director, CHRGJ, NYU School of Law

Martin Scheinin, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism

Moderated by Fareda Banda, Professor, NYU School of Law

Careers in Transitional Justice: A Discussion with Ruben Carranza of the ICTJ (October 22, 2009)

4:00-5:30 PM/ Furman 214

Click here to hear the audio recording of the event

What does the career trajectory look like from law school to a professional life in the field of transitional justice (TJ)? What role do lawyers play in that field and what are some of the typical job opportunities available to those with law degrees?

CHRGJ welcomed our special guest, Ruben Carranza, Acting Director of the Reparations Unit at the International Center for Transitional Justice here in New York, as he discussed his career path, his daily work in transitional justice, and options for law students seeking to enter the field.

About our speaker:

Ruben Carranza is the Acting Director of the Reparations Unit at ICTJ, where he works on reparations as a component of TJ in post-conflict and post-dictatorship countries, as well as the impact of economic crimes on TJ options. Mr. Carranza obtained his BA and LLB degrees from the University of the Philippines and his LLM from NYU School of Law in 2005 as a Global Public Service Law Program scholar.

Moderated by Veerle Opgenhaffen, Program Director, CHRGJ

CHRGJ Litigating Human Rights Series: The Task and Implications of Decriminalizing Homosexual Sex in India (October 22, 2009)

6:00-8:00PM/ Furman 216

Click here to hear the audio recording of the event

On October 22, 2009, CHRGJ hosted a panel event as part of its Litigating Human Rights Series entitled ‘The Task and Implications of Decriminalizing Homosexual Sex in India.’ The panel was moderated was Smita Narula, Associate Professor of Clinical Law and Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. The panelists consisted of Anand Grover, the Director of the Lawyers Collective HIV/AID Unit in India; Mario D’Penha, a queer feminist historian and activist; Vivek Divan, a lawyer from Bombay and a consultant with the UN Development Program cluster on Gender & Sexual Diversities within its HIV/AIDS Practice in New York; and Scott Long, the Director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch.

During the panel discussion, moderator Smita Narula asked a series of question of the panelists. The answers given to these questions tended to prompt a lively conversation about the relevant issues amongst the panelists. The panel considered a variety of topics, ranging from introductory and historical information about Section 377 to the actual litigation strategy employed by the attorneys in this case. Mr. D’Penha also provided an interesting background, in dialogue with his fellow panelists, about the history of Section 377 as a tool of harassment, stigmatization, and abuse.

The panelists’ conversation regarding the actual litigation itself dealt with two main areas. First the panelists looked at the legal issues concerning the grounds for the legal challenge to Section 377 and the venue issues that the attorneys had to consider in the litigation. Mr. Grover discussed the various Constitutional provisions that were invoked in the litigation. The panelists then considered the role of different standards internationally, in Section 377 litigation. They also discussed the fact that in India, legislative change at the time the action was brought was not available.

Another interesting issue that arose in the panelist conversation was the interplay between the attorneys and the community action that mobilized around the Section 377 litigation. Mr. Divan mentioned that when the action was filed, the attorneys were criticized by the queer community because the queer community felt like it had not been consulted. Mr. Divan then described the rise of protest to support the case and the Voices intervention that came through this. Mr. Long concurred with this, describing what had become a unified movement. Out of this process, he stated, came a “teachable moment” about the wealth of grassroots, community-based movements inserting themselves into national politics.

The panel concluded with a brief conversation on the role of nationalism in the Section 377 case and other similar litigations. The panelists then fielded questions from the audience concerning litigation strategy, the role of the women’s movement in the gay rights movement, and the ultimate reach of the decision. The event was attended by attorneys, academics, and other interested members of the NYU community and the public.

About the panelists:

Smita Narula (moderator) is Associate Professor of Clinical Law and Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. Both her scholarship and clinical work focus on key human rights issues including: discrimination on the basis of caste, race, religion, and gender; counter-terrorism and human rights; economic and social rights; and the accountability of corporations and international financial institutions for human rights abuses. Professor Narula has conducted numerous human rights investigations in Asia and authored a variety of reports and articles on caste discrimination worldwide and the rise of religious nationalism in South Asia, including her award-winning book Broken People: Caste Violence Against India’s “Untouchables.” In 1998, she helped form the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights in India. In 2000, she co-founded the International Dalit Solidarity Network, which brings together international organizations, donor agencies, and non-governmental groups to build a world-wide movement against caste discrimination in Asia and Africa. The North American South Asian Bar Association awarded her the Public Interest Achievement Award in 2008. Her recent publications include: "Law and Hindu Nationalist Movements," in The Cambridge Handbook of Law and Hinduism (Donald R. Davis, Jr., Jayanth Krishnan and Timothy Lubin, eds., Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) and "Equal by Law, Unequal by Caste: The 'Untouchable' Condition in Critical Race Perspective," 26 Wisconsin International Law Journal 255 (2008).

Anand Grover is the Director of the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit in India, which he co-founded in 1981 with Ms. Indira Jaising. He is a pioneer in the field of HIV and has handled several HIV/AIDS-related litigations in India. He has successfully argued several patent oppositions to make medicines accessible to patients. Mr. Grover has also served as lead counsel in various public interest and human rights matters. He has been particularly active on the rights of marginalized populations such as men who have sex with men, drug users, and sex workers. His latest success was in the gay rights case decided by the Delhi High Court in Naz Foundation v. Government of NCT, Delhi and ors, which held that the 160 year-old Indian Penal Code provision criminalizing “unnatural sex” between consenting adults in private was unconstitutional.

Mr. Grover was appointed as the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest standard of physical and mental health for a three-year term starting from August 1, 2008. He also serves as member of various renowned health boards, including: the Reference Group on Human Rights to Peter Piot, Executive Director, UNAIDS, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, the World Care Council, the Board of the International Council of AIDS Service Organizations (ICASO), the National Board of AVAHAN, the India AIDS Initiative, Gates Foundation, the Core Group of NGOs representatives in the National Human Rights Commission of India, and the National Advisory Board on HIV and AIDS set up the Prime Minister of India.

Mario D’Penha is a queer feminist historian and activist. As part of his PhD in History at Rutgers University, he researches eunuchs and other forms of queerness in 18th century southern India. He was a founding member of Anjuman, New Delhi's first queer student organization and is a member of Nigah, a community-funded queer arts and activist collective. Both Anjuman and Nigah are part of Voices Against 377, a coalition of progressive organizations party to the case against Section 377 in the Delhi High Court.

Vivek Divan, a lawyer from Bombay, is currently a consultant with the UN Development Program cluster on Gender & Sexual Diversities within its HIV/AIDS Practice in New York. As Coordinator of the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit in India from 2000 to 2007 he oversaw and was involved in the legal aid, advocacy, research and legal literacy work of the Unit. In that time he was part of the team that drafted legislation on HIV/AIDS for India and strategized campaigns and lobbying on law and human rights issues related to sex work and treatment access. He was also closely involved in the public interest litigation related to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. This included legal research and strategizing, and most significantly community mobilisation around the case. He has been an outspoken activist on queer rights in India, having written in the press and participated on television talk shows on the issue. Since 2000 he has been on the International Advisory Board of the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

Scott Long is the Director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. For almost two decades and on several continents, he has documented and advocated against human rights violations based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and HIV status. In his career first with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) and later with Human Rights Watch, he has campaigned against human rights abuses in countries including Albania, Egypt, Hungary, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and the United States. In 2004, Long’s work documenting the brutal torture of gay men in Egypt helped end a crackdown that had seen hundreds or thousands of arrests. For five years he lobbied the United Nations on sexual rights issues; his work led to U.N. human rights mechanisms agreeing publicly for the first time to take up gay and lesbian concerns. Long has also produced a widely-used manual introducing grassroots activists to international human rights systems.

“Managing Identity Conflicts in Africa” (October 7, 2009)

5:00 - 7:00PM/ Greenberg Lounge, Vanderbilt Hall

Click here to hear the audio recording of the event

The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and NYU’s African Law Association welcomed Dr. Francis Mading Deng, Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, to the law school. Professor Ryan Goodman introduced Dr. Deng and moderated the discussion that followed the presentation.

In his remarks, Dr. Deng addressed the role of identity in conflict and discussed his experiences and scholarship developed at the Brookings Institute, as Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons, and as Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. He then took questions from audience members related to his work on identity and conflict.

Dr. Deng raised the issue of the enduring impact of colonial models of political rule—which were premised on homogeneous cultures—in African contexts, which are marked by diversity. He argued that this model had aggravated identity-based divisions already fostered by colonialism by pitting groups against one another in the struggle for political voice and visibility. He related his experience meeting with internally displaced persons, who have been marginalized based on their identities and do not feel their government represents them, and meeting with government officials who do not view internally displaced persons as “their people.”

Dr. Deng described the nuanced balancing act he feels he has to play in order to be effective, both getting leaders to listen to him about their duties, as sovereigns, to protect their people and reflecting the needs and grievances of the populations affected by human rights abuses. He also touched upon the difficulty of dealing with counter-terrorism, which he feels is sometimes used as a legitimating excuse for persecuting particular populations and is an identity and conflict issue we will increasingly see.

To hear the full audio recording of the talk, click HERE.

Introduction: African Law Association, NYU School of Law
Moderator: Professor Ryan Goodman, Faculty Director and co-chair of CHRGJ

About our Speaker:

Dr. Francis Mading Deng was appointed Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide in 2007, of which he has said:

“This is an impossible mandate that must be made possible. Genocide, nearly always the result of identity-related conflicts, is one of the most heinous of crimes on which humanity must unite to prevent and punish. However, for the same reason, it evokes denial from both the perpetrators and those who would be called upon to intervene to prevent or stop it. This is why our strategy focuses on prevention, by responding to situations before positions harden into denial.”

Dr. Deng holds an LL.B from Khartoum University and an LL.M and J.S.D from Yale Law School. He has authored or edited more than 40 books in the fields of law, conflict resolution, internal displacement, human rights, anthropology, folklore, history and politics.

About the Sponsors:

The NYU African Law Association (ALA) was founded in the spring of 2009. It is a vibrant and diverse community of students and faculty that seeks to support, encourage and inspire interest in African laws, societies, cultures and institutions. Members of the ALA community come together to engage each other in discussion and debate on current legal and political issues and developments in Africa. ALA also works hard to enhance opportunities for law students to connect to the African continent through various initiatives, from Africa-related advocacy projects to building a strong network of students, alumni and faculty with a commitment to sharing their knowledge of and experiences in Africa. To get involved contact Elizabeth Ashamu at: eashamu@nyu.edu.

The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) was established in 2002 to bring together and expand the rich array of teaching, research, clinical, internship, and publishing activities undertaken within the Law School on issues of international human rights law. The Center aims to generate substantive, cutting-edge and sophisticated contributions to human rights research and legal scholarship on the part of faculty, staff, students, fellows and visitors; and to actively engage in public affairs and make original and constructive contributions to on-going policy debates relating to human rights on such issues as extrajudicial executions, caste discrimination, the right to food, and accountability for the “War on Terror,” among many others. For more, see www.chrgj.org.

Book Launch: “Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy” (September 30, 2009)

6:00 - 7:15PM/ Vanderbilt Hall 210

On September 30, 2009, CHRGJ and the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre co-hosted a book launch for Professor David Kinley’s new work “Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy.” The event consisted of a conversation-style discussion between Professor Kinley, who holds the inaugural chair in Human Rights Law at Sydney University, and Professor Philip Alston, the John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Questions from the audience were interspersed throughout the conversation.

The event began with a brief introduction by Andrew Goledzinowski, a career diplomat presently serving as Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of Australia at the United Nations. He delivered brief comments on the parallels between globalization and global warming, and then introduced Professor Kinley’s book.

Professor Kinley then introduced the three main questions he posed in the book:

1. What is the relationship between human rights and the global economy?
2. How do we make the global economy meet human rights ends?
3. Who is responsible for making this process happen?

He concluded this introduction by asserting that the responsibility ultimately rests with States, given their jurisdictional hold and the fact that they were the ones that created our international entities.

The conversation between Professor Kinley and Professor Alston dealt with several themes. Professor Alston asked Professor Kinley about the specific approach to his globalization focus; corporations and human rights; the human rights-based approach to development; and the extent to which the emerging political philosophy of liberalism is not necessarily assured in all countries.

Additionally, questions from the audience dealt with a range of topics, including the role of trade law, the World TO and the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism; the impact of bilateral treaties on the strength of multilateral treaties; recommendations for a program to civilize globalization; and where and which states we should put the onus on in terms of state leadership in growing the relationship between business and human rights.

Professor Kinley made several main points in the very sophisticated discussion. He spoke about how both the corporate community and the human rights community had to engage in the business and human rights discussion. In that vein, he challenged the human rights community to present human rights in a more accessible manner. Professor Kinley also discussed how the human rights-based framework for development has a value in and of itself. He asserted, however, that the main focus should be on the development ends, regardless of the framework employed.

A large audience attended the book launch, including representatives of various NGOs, diplomats, academics and other interested members of the NYU community and the public.

David Kinley holds the inaugural chair in Human Rights Law at Sydney University. In addition to his academic posts, David has worked for 15 years as an adviser to governments, corporations, NGOs, the UN and the World Bank on international and domestic human rights law in Australia, Burma, China, Indonesia, Iraq, Laos, Nepal, South Africa, Thailand and Vietnam.

Pascal Lamy, Director General of the WTO, said of "Civilising Globalisation": “Professor Kinley offers a thoughtful assessment of two indispensable elements in our society today: global economic progress and human rights.” The book explores how human rights standards can guide international trade, aid and business.

Philip Alston is John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, and Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. He is currently Special Adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Millennium Development Goals, and UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. From 1991 to 1998 Philip was Chair of the UN Committee on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights.

Co-hosted by:
Business & Human Rights Resource Centre: an international non-profit organization, tracking the human rights conduct (positive & negative) of over 4500 companies worldwide

CHRGJ Brown bag Lunch Series Presents: “International Supervision of Human Rights—A Threat to Democracy?” (September 29, 2009)

12:00 - 2:00PM/ Furman Hall 316

On September 28, 2009, Professor Geir Ulfstein and Professor Andreas Follesdal, from the University of Oslo, presented their research on the impact and legitimacy of human rights conventions in the discussion “International Supervision of Human Rights–A Threat to Democracy?” The event was organized as part of CHRGJ’s Brown Bag Lunch Series, and was moderated by Professor Ryan Goodman, Faculty Director and co-chair of CHRGJ.

The discussion took place in two parts. First, Professor Follesdal, a professor of Political Philosophy, outlined their research proposal, examining whether states should ratify human rights conventions. The project examines three main questions:

1. Motivations–Why do governments take on international human rights obligations?
2. Effects–How do human rights conventions affect states?
3. Assessment–Are such constraints on sovereign democracies legitimate?

The research also has four focal points: The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR); The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); and, ILO Covenant 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples.

Professor Follesdal then engaged in a discussion about the theory of normative legitimacy concerning human rights conventions. A particularly interesting part of his discussion that evoked many comments and questions from the audience involved his discussion of Assurance Games. Assurance Games, in this context, enhance a government’s governance ability by bolstering citizens’ willingness to comply with government legislation. He concluded by considering the potential empirical implications of his research, including what we can expect if Assurance Game considerations have an actual causal impact on the way states negotiate human rights conventions.

The second part of the discussion was led by Professor Ulfstein, a professor of international law, with a focus on the legal aspects of the project. He began by outlining some of the major critiques of human rights conventions, including the vagueness of the obligations, dynamic interpretation, the composition and procedure of human rights courts, and the difficulties in amending or denouncing human rights conventions. He then led a discussion about four major forms of legitimacy: consent, legality, output, and constitutional legitimacy. His focus for the subsequent discussion was on constitutional legitimacy. In this discussion, he examined various topics concerning constitutional legitimacy, such as the character of decisions by human rights courts; procedural guarantees; “subsidiarity”; and the possibility for amendments to human rights conventions.

The event was attended by many NYU law students and faculty members, as well as by members of NGOs and the public. Attendees raised questions about the democratic/undemocratic nature of courts and human rights bodies, Assurance Games, and the contingent compliance of citizens with regard to other citizens, other bodies of enforcement, and the contribution of human rights bodies to their own illegitimacy. Professors Ulfstein and Follesdal fielded these questions in relation to their current research.

To read their report, “Should States Ratify Human Rights Conventions?” please click HERE.

Moderator: Professor Ryan Goodman, Faculty Director and co-chair of CHRGJ

About the Speakers:

Geir Ulfstein is professor of international law at the University of Oslo. He was Director of the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights 2004-08 and has published in different areas of international law, including the law of the sea, international environmental law, international human rights and international institutional law. Ulfstein edited the book ‘Making Treaties Work: Human Rights, Environment and Arms Control’ (Cambridge University Press 2007) and has recently co-authored a book on ‘The Constitutionalization of International Law’ with Anne Peters, Basel and Jan Klabbers, Helsinki (forthcoming Oxford University Press October 2009). He is currently the director of one of the ‘work packages’ in the project ‘Detection Technologies, Terrorism, Ethics, and Human Rights (DETECTER)’, with the EU 7th Framework Programme and is co-director of the project ‘Should States Ratify Human Rights Conventions?’, at the Centre for Advanced Study, Oslo.

Andreas Follesdal is a professor of Political Philosophy and Director of the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo. He studied psychology, sociology and philosophy at the universities of Oslo, Bergen and Uppsala (Sweden), before obtaining a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1991 as a Fulbright Fellow.
Follesdal publishes in the field of political philosophy with a focus on issues of international political theory and Human Rights, particularly as they arise in the wake of changes in Europe. He has written on distributive justice, federalism, minority rights, deliberative democracy, subsidiarity and European citizenship, in such journals as Journal of Political Philosophy, Law and Philosophy, Journal of Peace Research, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, Metaphilosophy, and Global Society. He has published books on democracy in the EU, on the welfare state in Europe, animal ethics, and on Consultancy in Europe. He has also contributed to a broad range of anthologies on the political theory of Europe, and his writings for a general audience have appeared in Norway, Finland, Iceland, Portugal, The Czech Republic, and China. Follesdal participates in several European Union research projects, is a regular Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Center for European Studies, and has served on advisory boards in Norway, Sweden and the United States.

Report: Should States Ratify Human Rights Conventions?

Enforcing Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: The Hope and Challenge of the Optional Protocol (September 23, 2009)

5:00 - 7:00PM/ Furman Hall 212

On the eve of the signing of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (OP-ICESCR), CHRGJ and the NGO Coalition for an OP-ICESR hosted a discussion among three international human rights experts who were pivotal in moving the Optional Protocol forward. Philip Alston, Chair of CHRGJ and former Chair of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, moderated a discussion with Catarina de Albuquerque, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to water and the Chair of the Group that drafted the Optional Protocol and Bruce Porter, member of the Steering Committee of the NGO Coalition for an OP-ESCR.

In a largely informal and lively conversation—which drew extensively on audience participation—the panelists discussed the drafting of the Optional Protocol, the advocacy efforts that had proved successful or difficult in moving it forward, and the next steps needed to ensure the success of this new international mechanism.

Catarina de Albuquerque explained her role in the diplomatic process in the Working Group on the Optional Protocol. She discussed the dynamics involved in negotiations and the efforts that made the adoption of the Protocol, previously viewed as impossible, a reality.

Bruce Porter described the tremendous amount of work done by NGOs at the national and international levels to ensure the Optional Protocol would be an effective tool for justice. He talked about the successful advocacy of NGOs against efforts of some countries to limit the Protocol to principles of non-discrimination or to the most egregious violations of core obligations of economic, social and cultural rights.

The panel concluded by discussing the challenges and strategic decisions that lie ahead as the campaign for ratification and use of the Optional Protocol’s procedures begins.

Background on the Optional Protocol

Countless people around the world suffer violations of their economic, social and cultural rights, including violations of their rights to adequate housing, food, water and sanitation, health, work and education. Discrimination in accessing public services such as health, education or food distribution systems, working without any labor protections, and forced evictions are only a few examples of the abuses faced by many people. Access to justice is a right of all victims but in many parts of the world, individuals are unable to hold governments, companies, and others accountable for violating their rights. In many countries, most of the economic, social and cultural rights are not recognized or enforceable by law, leaving people with little hope of an effective remedy. Existing remedies may also be ineffective or inadequately enforced.

The United Nations has created a new international mechanism through the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to address these shortcomings. The Optional Protocol aims to enable those whose economic, social and cultural rights are violated—and who are denied a remedy in their countries—to seek justice at the international level. It also stands to influence decisions by judicial bodies at the national and regional levels and create more opportunities for people to advocate for the enforcement of economic, social and cultural rights within their own countries.

On September 24th, 2009, the Optional Protocol will be opened for signature and ratification at a ceremony at UN headquarters in New York. It will not come into force until ten states have ratified it. Victims of violations of ESC rights can only utilize the procedure after their state has ratified the Optional Protocol.

How the Optional Protocol works

• States Parties to the Covenant joining the Optional Protocol recognize the competence of the UN Committee on ESCR to receive and consider communications from individuals or groups of individuals alleging violations of the economic, social and cultural rights recognized in the Covenant on ESCR.
• The Optional Protocol provides for the possibility of interim measures by providing that the Committee may transmit to the State Party concerned for its urgent consideration a request that the State Party take the necessary steps to avoid possible irreparable damage to the victims of the alleged violations.
• The Optional Protocol also creates an inquiry procedure, setting out that if the Committee receives reliable information indicating grave or systematic violations of the Covenant, the Committee shall invite that State Party to cooperate in the examination of the information and to this end to submit observations with regard to the information concerned. The inquiry may include a visit to the territory of the State Party concerned.
• The Optional Protocol requires that States take all appropriate measures to ensure that individuals under its jurisdiction are not subjected to any form of ill-treatment or intimidation as a consequence of communicating with the Committee pursuant to the Optional Protocol.

About the Panelists

Philip Alston is the Faculty Director and Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law, where he also serves as John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law. He is currently the Special Adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Millennium Development Goals, and UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. From 1991 to 1998 Philip was Chair of the UN Committee on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights.

Catarina de Albuquerque is a Portuguese lawyer, currently working as a senior legal adviser at the Office for Documentation and Comparative Law (an independent institution under the Portuguese Prosecutor General’s Office) working in the area of human rights. She is an Invited Professor at the Universities of Lisbon and Coimbra in her country. For more than ten years she has represented her country in international negotiations and conferences in the area of human rights at the UN, Council of Europe and European Union.
From 2004-08 she was the Chairperson-Rapporteur of the Working Group on an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In September 2008, she was appointed Independent Expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation by the Human Rights Council.

Bruce Porter is a human rights consultant, researcher, and well-known advocate for the rights of poor people in Canada and internationally. He is the Director of the Social Rights Advocacy Centre and the Co-ordinator of the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues (CCPI), for which he has co-ordinated 11 interventions at the Supreme Court of Canada. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of the NGO Coalition for an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which led the campaign for a complaints procedure under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 2008.

CHRGJ Human Rights Community Welcome Reception (September 9, 2009)

The Center's Faculty Directors and staff--alongside students from the Law Students for Human Rights, ACLU, and Voting Justice groups--toasted to a new semester and welcomed our newest Faculty Director and co-chair, Professor Ryan Goodman.

The reception ws be held on Wednesday September 9th, from 5-7PM, in the D'Agostino Faculty Club

Aid Haiti Can Believe In: A Human Rights-Based Approach to Foreign Assistance (April 15, 2009 )

10:00 am - 12:00 noon/ 2105 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC

• Paul Farmer, Founding Director, Partners In Health
• Donna Barry, Advocacy and Policy Director, Partners In Health
• Margaret Satterthwaite, Faculty Director, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU School of Law
• Monika Kalra Varma, Director, Center for Human Rights, RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights
• Brian Concannon Jr., Director, Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti

On April 15, a coalition of organizations working for human rights in Haiti convincingly presented the need for transparency, donor accountability and local participation in the panel discussion “Aid Haiti Can Believe In: A Human-Rights Based Approach to Development.” The event was organized to follow the international Donor’s Conference on Haiti held the day before at the Inter-American Development Bank. Speakers from the five host organizations—Partners In Health (PIH), the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ), the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights (RFK Center), and Zanmi Lasante—addressed an overflow crowd on maximizing the impact of international assistance to Haiti. The event was co-sponsored by Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and Maxine Waters (D-CA).

The panel discussion focused on the need to ensure that aid empowers the Haitian government to be a true caretaker of its citizens’ rights. The five organizations work in coalition to improve the human rights situation in Haiti, including efforts to track and monitor foreign assistance, from initial pledges of aid through the implementation of projects. Donna Barry, Advocacy and Policy Director of Partners In Health kicked off the event by reading a statement by Loune Viaud, Director of Operations for Zanmi Lasante, who was unable to attend in person. Viaud, recipient of the 2002 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, synthesized the problem. “It is frustrating to say the least to hear about the millions and even billions of dollars being committed to the country but to not see the benefits on the ground.” Her statement emphasized the importance of recognizing economic and social rights as equal to civil and political rights, and the dire need for basic health and social services in Haiti, a need her organization fulfills in partnership with Haitian government institutions. She further urged that aid be given directly to the Government of Haiti, which could then partner with organizations in the model of Zanmi Lasante.

Monika Kalra Varma, Director of the RFK Center, spoke about the shortcomings of the 2004 Donor Conference and how the lack of transparency or accountability mechanisms doomed the implementation of that Conference’s development plans. Over a billion US dollars was pledged in 2004, yet the results on the ground have been extremely disappointing. In order to ensure that the goals of the 2009 Donors’ Conference are met, Varma stressed that pledges must be fulfilled within the priority sectors laid out by the government of Haiti. In addition, the Haitian people should be involved in every step of an open and transparent process, which begins with setting project priorities with the Haitian government through to implementation and oversight of projects. Finally, a system must be created that allows civil society groups to track the disbursement and use of funds.

Meg Satterthwaite, Faculty Director of CHRGJ, argued for recognition of the right to development and discussed how using a human rights-based approach can improve the on-the-ground effects of development assistance. Using the example of the right to water, Satterthwaite outlined how a rights-based approach would empower Haitian communities to participate fully in all stages of a water project, from initial decisions about where community water sources should be placed, to ensuring that pledged funds actually result in new systems that serve the most needy communities.

Brian Concannon, Director of IJDH, contextualized the current situation in Haiti, pointing out the role that foreign governments have had in creating the fragile state. He reminded the audience that Haiti is not a blank slate to be recreated each time the international community comes together, but stressed instead that we must draw upon the lessons of the past and hold governments accountable for their actions.

Paul Farmer, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Partners In Health, discussed how much he has learned working in Haiti for the past 25 years. He promoted the benefits of engaging with the government of Haiti as opposed to allowing aid to channel through NGOs or other parallel systems. The relationship between Partners In Health and the Government of Haiti can be a model of cooperation that allows NGOs to use their expertise and energy to assist in building the capacity of the Government, rather than creating an unsustainable shadow state.

The briefing was attended by many Congressional staff members from both the House and Senate as well as staff of NGOs, businesspeople, and other interested members of the public, including the Ambassador of Brazil. Attendees raised questions about governance in Haiti, mechanism to improve state-NGO interactions, the potential for involving Haiti’s worldwide diaspora, and diversifying Haiti’s global image to include positive depictions.

Cindy Buhl, Chief of Staff for Congressman Jim McGovern, closed the briefing with a promise to work with all parties to improve how aid is programmed and delivered in Haiti and to promote a rights-based approach to development through their offices.

For more information about these organizations, please see their websites: Center for Human Rights and Global Justice www.chrgj.org, Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti www.ijdh.org, Partners In Health www.pih.org, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights www.rfkcenter.org, Zanmi Lasante http://www.pih.org/where/Haiti/Haiti.html.

Emerging Human Rights Scholarship Conference (April 10, 2009 )

1:30-5:30 PM/ Furman Hall 608

The Center will host its sixth annual Emerging Human Rights Scholarship Conference on Friday April 10, 2009 from 1.30pm - 5.30pm. The conference, open to current NYU School of Law JD, LLM, and JSD students, will provide an opportunity for presentation of papers, discussion, and debate on key human rights issues. For more information on the conference, see: http://www.chrgj.org/opportunities/conference.html. Several students have been selected to briefly present their papers and will receive comments from a NYU faculty member and/or human rights expert, who will lead discussion and debate following presentations. In addition, the best submission will be selected for inclusion in the Center's Working Paper series (see http://www.chrgj.org/publications/wp.html). Please email questions to: Lama Fakih at fakihl@exchange.law.nyu.edu

Transnational Corporations and the Right to Food: Featuring Professor Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (Monday April 6, 2009)

7:00-8:30 PM/ Furman Hall 210

The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Professor Olivier De Schutter is convening a multi-stakeholder consultation to examine the contribution of the private sector to the realization of the right to food. In advance of this consultation, CHRGJ and NYU Law Students for Human Rights are preparing a briefing paper for Professor De Schutter to inform the consultation. On Monday April 6, 2009 at 7:00 pm the LSHR team presented the findings of their research and Professor De Schutter discussed how the research fits into the global agenda.

Center for Human Rights and Global Justice Alumni Reception (April 3, 2009)

By invitation only

Reception for friends and alumni of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Please contact Kelly Ryan, ryank@exchange.law.nyu.edu, for more information.

Seminar on the Prohibition Against Torture, featuring Sir Nigel Rodley, Professor of Law and Chair of the Human Rights Centre University of Essex, member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, and Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists; former UN Special Rapportuer on Torture (April 1, 2009)

7:00-8:30 PM/ Furman Hall 332

Professor Rodley conducted a special seminar for NYU law students. He was joined by Joanne Mariner, Director of the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program at Human Rights Watch, who acted as the commentator and Professor Margaret Satterthwaite who moderated the event. Students had an opportunity to hear Professor Rodley discuss the legal development of the prohibition against torture and the historic and contemporary parallels in human rights advocacy around torture. Particular attention was given to the extent to which human rights challenges and advocacy are ever really "new."

The Challenges of Human Rights Fact-finding: Featuring Dr. Anna Neistat, Dr. Ben Majekodumi, Professor Philip Alston, and Professor Margaret Satterthwaite (March 31, 2009)

6-8PM/ Furman Hall 212

Investigations are a crucial and challenging part of human rights work. Are there standard methodologies for human rights investigations and if so, do they differ by discipline and institution? What types of evidence and fact-finding do investigators rely on and how do they confirm the reliability of their information? What are some differences between long-term investigations vs. brief country visits? How do investigators ensure their own security as well as that of NGOs, victims groups, and witnesses? How do investigators engage with government officials, police, national human rights commissions, and NGOs?

Panelists:

Philip Alston, Faculty Director and Chair, CHRGJ; UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions.
Ben Majekodunmi, UN Special Adviser to the Secretary General on the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, Specialist on Human Rights Monitoring
Anna Neistat, Senior Researcher, Human Rights Watch (Emergencies Division)
Margaret Satterthwaite, Associate Professor of Clinical Law and Faculty Director, CHRGJ

Moderated by CHRGJ Program Director, Veerle Opgenhaffen

CHRGJ welcomed a distinguished panel of experts as they discussed the challenges of conducting human rights investigations from a diverse range of contexts and experiences.

Gender, National Security, and Counter-Terrorism: Expert Consultation Meeting (March 20-21, 2009)

By invitation only

This Spring, the Center launched a new project on the issue of Gender, Counter-Terrorism, and National Security. As part of our work in this programmatic area, the Center hosted an expert consultation on this topic in support of Professor Martin Scheinin’s mandate as UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. The purpose of the consultation was to provide input into the project and to advise the Special Rapporteur on this topic.

Human Rights and the International Court of Justice (March 10, 2009)

On March 10, 2009, CHRGJ hosted a lecture by Justice Bruno Simma, a judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In his lecture, Justice Simma discussed human rights principles and their relevance and impact on the work of the ICJ since its inception in 1946, including a brief discussion of the era of its predecessors, the Permanent International Court of Justice and the League of Nations.

Speaking in his personal capacity, Justice Simma provided an overview of four categories of ICJ cases that have grappled with human rights issues—or cases in which human rights questions have at least played some role—reflecting currents and tendencies of both the ICJ as an institution and human rights as a set of legal issues that have evolved over time.

Justice Simma started by highlighting the perception of the ICJ as a “non-human rights based” institution, asserting from the outset that despite this impression there have, in fact, been a wide array of cases in which human rights have played a role. To illustrate this point, Justice Simma assessed the role of human rights law in ICJ cases by breaking them into four separate categories:

• Cases in which human rights considerations were incidental to the case but nonetheless became strong enough issues to be reflected in the ICJ’s decision statements (for example, the “Corfu” decision—incidentally the ICJ’s very first case—which dealt with war ships and passage, but which ultimately led to “considerations of humanity” and a decision statement about “rights that create obligations erga omnes”).
• Cases centering around questions of self-determination, such as those dealing with contested territories Namibia (1970) and the Western Sahara (1974).
• Cases in which international legal questions were raised with direct consequences for—or reference to—human rights, ranging from the cases of Special Rapporteurs (1995) being hindered in their mandates by their own or other states, to one of the most recent cases, that of Belgium v. Senegal (2009), initiated on the allegation that Senegal has failed to fulfill its promise to prosecute Chad’s former dictator, Hissene Habre, for massive violations of human rights, while hosting him in exile.
• Cases of straightforward human rights applications, such as the Georgia v. Russia case (2008, ongoing) dealing with issues of racial discrimination and the advisory opinion on the use of Nuclear Weapons (1995) during armed conflicts.

While Justice Simma acknowledged that a “pure human rights case” has yet to come before the ICJ, he also addressed the fact that states have tended not to bring human rights issues to the Court. In this respect, he concluded that because the Court has been perceived as a “non-human rights based” institution, it has tended not to get many cases on the issue and since it can only realistically be expected to adjudicate on issues brought before it, this perception has been reinforced over time. While Justice Simma felt it likely that countries would remain reluctant to bring human rights issues to the ICJ for adjudication, he also suggested that the Court might be more willing to engage with human rights issues if the disputes brought before it are in accord with traditional international law and its corresponding legal arguments. He considered that the area of advisory opinions also offers a place where the ICJ might be less hesitant to take up human right based opinions, because in this context submissions could be heard by other parties.

Justice Simma also noted that respect for sovereignty was very much alive within the ICJ and that this was largely based on the fact that the jurisdiction of the Court is strictly consensual. On that point, he posed a question about whether states might be put off by the forum of the ICJ if human rights were taken up by the Court. Finally, Justice Simma concluded by suggesting that the best way to make human rights part of the rhetoric and work of the Court is to make such ideas professionally respectable by, in effect, mainstreaming or “domesticating” human rights law within the larger framework of international law.

For more about the ICJ, please click HERE.

About the Speaker:

Bruno Simma has been a judge of the International Court of Justice since 2003. He was previously Professor at the Director of the Institute of International Law at the University of Munich (1973-2003) and a member of both the International Law Commission (1996-2003) and of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1987-1996). He is an external Professor at the University of Michigan Law School and has written very extensively in the field of international law.

Forensics Science for Human Rights Advocates Training (February 27-28, 2009)

By invitation only

The “Forensics Science for Human Rights Advocates Training Course” was designed for senior human rights investigators, researchers, advocates and scholars by CHRGJ and the Human Rights Program (Harvard Law School) in conjunction with the Center for Modern Forensic Practice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY). The course taught the forensics aspects of serious human rights abuses – extrajudicial executions, rape, and torture. The course also examined the best ways to pose questions to witnesses to human rights abuses, police and military officers and other Government authorities. Each of the course components was led by a forensics expert in that field – e.g., ballistics, toxicology, sexual assault, and witness testimony.

Careers in Human Rights Series: In the Field with the OHCHR (February 26, 2009)

As part of its Careers in Human Rights series, CHRGJ welcomed Eric Mongelard, an Associate Human Rights Officer at the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, to discuss his work and career trajectory with law students. Mr. Mongelard discussed what a career in the human rights field looks like and his personal trajectory from law school to a professional life.

About the Speaker:

Mr. Mongelard is a member of the Quebec Bar Association and holds an LLM in international humanitarian law from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. As Associate Human Rights Officer at the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, he is currently supporting Professor Philip Alston's mandate as Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. He previously worked in the Cabinet of the President of the ICTY in 2001 and 2002 and in the Legal Division of the ICRC from 2003 to 2006.

About the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR):

OHCHR is the principal United Nations office mandated to promote and protect human rights. As such it provides a forum for identifying, highlighting and developing responses to today’s human rights challenges, and acts as the principal focal point of human rights research, education, public information, and advocacy activities in the United Nations system. OHCHR also assists Governments and other entities responsible for protecting human rights by providing expertise and technical trainings in the areas of administration of justice, legislative reform, and electoral process. For more information on OHCHR’s work see: http://www.ohchr.org

Transitional Justice Series Presents “Economic Crimes, Corruption, and Transitional Justice” (February 24, 2009)

Where does accountability for economic crimes, including large-scale corruption, intersect with accountability for human rights violations and what role—if any—should these crimes have in transitional justice mechanisms?

As part of its Transitional Justice series, CHRGJ welcomed Ruben Carranza, a senior associate at the International Center for Transitional Justice, in a public presentation addressing questions about the role of economic crimes and corruption in transitional justice mechanisms. To date, transitional justice has largely compartmentalized legacies of abuse into those based on a narrow set of human rights violations and those based on economic crimes. Our guest argued that this is an inadequate way to address both sets of abuses and will discuss possible solutions for the field going forward.

To read more about this topic in advance of the lecture, please read Carranza's recent publication: “Plunder and Pain: Should Transitional Justice Engage with Corruption and Economic Crimes?”

CHRGJ’s Transitional Justice Lecture Series Presents: “Does Transitional Justice Work? Challenges to Assessing the Impacts of TJ Mechanisms on Democracy and Human Rights.” (February 12, 2009)

Do truth commissions contribute to democracy? What role do prosecutions play in building respect for human rights? Do amnesties for perpetrators help or impede a society’s transition toward democracy?

On February 12, CHRGJ welcomed scholar and expert Leigh Payne as she addressed these and other questions concerning the challenges of measuring and assessing the impacts of truth commissions, prosecutions, reparations, amnesties and other mechanisms on societies in transition.

While measures have been developed to evaluate relative levels of democracy and human rights in the world, assessing the relationship between TJ interventions and their far-reaching goals poses a range of empirical challenges. How can we evaluate whether truth commissions contribute to democracy; what role prosecutions play in building respect for human rights; whether amnesties for perpetrators help or impede a society’s transition toward democracy; when enough time has passed to assess the efficacy of TJ mechanisms; and whether particular combinations of TJ interventions have greater impacts on democracy and human rights than others?

Over the past few years, Payne has been analyzing aggregate data on the achievements and limitations of transitional justice in contributing to the field’s goals of advancing democracy and the rule of law, particularly through improvements in human rights. In this fascinating presentation, Payne will present some of the key issues and surprising results of her research, challenging assumptions about transitional justice and broadening the dialogue on what mechanisms appear to facilitate or harm a country’s chances at recovering from periods of mass atrocity or prolongued repression.

To read more about this topic, please read Payne’s recent publication: “Does Transitional Justice Work?” and visit the Transitional Justice Database project at www.polisci.wisc.edu/tjdb.

About the Speaker

Leigh Payne is a professor at Oxford University (St. Anthony's College) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her most recent book Unsettling Accounts: Neither Truth Nor Reconciliation in State Perpetrators’ Confessions (Duke University Press, 2008) analyzes the politics and performance of perpetrators’ public confessions in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and South Africa. Ms. Payne also recently published a book chapter in H. van der Merwe et al., Assessing the Impact of Transitional Justice: Challenges for Empirical Research (USIP 2009) and, together with T. Olsen and A.. Reiter, established the Transitional Justice Data Base Project that has generated a book manuscript summarizing their findings (Engaging the Past to Safeguard the Future: Transitional Justice in Comparative Perspective, currently under review). She has other books, book chapters, and articles that focus on the challenges to the democratization process primarily in Latin America.

International Criminal Justice: Does It Work?: A Public Lecture by Judge Theodor Meron (February 11, 2009)

The Institute for International Law and Justice and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law presented a public lecture and moderated discussion with Judge Theodor Meron of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The event was co-hosted by NYU Professors Margaret Satterthwaite and Robert L. Howse.

About Judge Meron

Since his election to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) by the U.N. General Assembly in March 2001, Judge Meron, a citizen of the United States, has served on the Appeals Chamber, which hears appeals from both the ICTY and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Between March 2003 and November 2005 he served as President of the ICTY. A leading scholar of international humanitarian law, human rights, and international criminal law, Judge Meron wrote some of the books and articles that helped build the legal foundations for international criminal tribunals. A Shakespeare enthusiast, he has also written articles and books on the laws of war and chivalry in Shakespeare’s historical plays.

Judge Meron has been a Professor of International Law since 1977 and has been the holder of the Charles L. Denison Chair at New York University School of Law since 1994. In 2000-01, he served as Counselor on International Law in the U.S. Department of State. Between 1991 and 1995 he was also Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and he has been a Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard and at the University of California (Berkeley). He received his legal education at the Universities of Jerusalem, Harvard (where he received his doctorate), and Cambridge. In 2006, he was named Charles L. Denison Professor Emeritus and Judicial Fellow at the New York University School of Law.

Open to the public. Please RSVP to ryank@exchange.law.nyu.edu. Those attending from outside NYU must bring a picture ID.

Book Launch: Human Rights Advocacy Stories (February 3, 2009)

CHRGJ launched "Human Rights Advocacy Stories" at a public panel featuring the book's co-editor and authors of four of the book's chapters.

Book Contributors and Event Panelists

Margaret Satterthwaite (moderator and co-editor, "Human Rights Advocacy Stories"): Associate Professor of Clinical Law and Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, New York University School of Law

Jayne Huckerby: Adjunct Assistant Professor of Clinical Law and Research Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, New York University School of Law

Aziz Huq: Justice and Deputy Director of the Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law

Beth Stephens: Visiting Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School 2008-2009; Professor of Law, Rutgers-Camden Law School. Cooperating Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights

On February 3, 2009 the Center launched the book Human Rights Advocacy Stories at a public panel featuring the book’s co-editor Margaret Satterthwaite (Associate Professor of Clinical Law at NYU School of Law and Faculty Director of the CHRGJ) and authors of three of the book’s chapters, Jayne Huckerby (Adjunct Assistant Professor of Clinical Law and Research Director of the CHRGJ, NYU School of Law), Aziz Huq (Deputy Director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law), and Beth Stephens (Visiting Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School 2008-2009, Professor of Law, Rutgers-Camden Law School, and Cooperating Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights).

The discussion highlighted the numerous ways human rights advocacy can be pursued, a diversity that is reflected in the book’s fifteen chapters. Professor Satterthwaite opened the discussion by raising some of the challenges inherent to the task of defining the scope of the book, given the vast breadth of the human rights field. She explained that the editors had aimed to ensure that the stories would be geographically diverse, that they would encompass cases decided by courts as well as case studies of non-litigation advocacy, and to that they would include both judicial and non-judicial approaches to human rights advocacy.

Professor Stephens discussed her work with the Center for Constitutional Rights and her involvement in the Doe v. Unocal case, in which a group of Burmese men and women filed a lawsuit in the Central District of California against the now defunct U.S. oil company Unocal, French oil company Total, and the Burmese military regime seeking redress for the human rights abuses associated with the Yadana pipeline project in Burma.

Professor Huckerby highlighted the ways in which non-governmental organizations, including Amnesty International, have been instrumental in advocating for the establishment of international legal norms. In particular, Professor Huckerby discussed Amnesty’s role in advocating for the creation of the U.N. Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and illustrated the way Amnesty’s advocacy position could be used as model for current advocates in their recent campaigns against the U.S. administration’s use of coercive interrogation techniques.

In another example of the broad possible range of advocacy as a human rights tool, Mr. Huq discussed the role human rights advocacy has played—or failed to play—in the state-building process in Afghanistan since 2001. He also emphasized the important complementary roles played by different human rights organizations in addressing very specific needs. For example, he highlighted his experience with the International Crisis Group in the organization’s early days, when it formed in part to fill a gap in the human rights field by devoting itself to providing extremely thorough backgrounds on particular crises in order to engage more meaningfully in that context.

By making real the stories behind human rights advocacy, the panel discussion on Human Rights Advocacy Stories and the book itself illustrate the dynamic interactions between advocacy and legal doctrine.

CHRGJ’s Litigating Human Rights Series Presents: “Jessica Gonzales v. United States of America” (January 27, 2009)

As part of CHRGJ’s Litigating Human Rights Series—which once a semester features a panel discussion on a specific case that uses litigation as a tool for redressing human rights violations—on January 27, 2009, the Center hosted a panel discussion on Jessica Gonzales v. United States of America, a case currently before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR).

The panel, moderated by Amna Akbar (IHRC Fellow), featured Ms. Lenahan (formerly Gonzales), the first woman in the United States to sue the government for its failure to respect the human rights of battered women, alongside her attorney Carrie Bettinger Lopez, Deputy Director of the Human Rights Institute and a Lecturer in the Human Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, and Christina Brandt Young, appellate attorney for the Domestic Violence Appellate Representation Project of the New York Legal Assistance Group.

The discussion focused on the significant challenges, themes, and tactics involved in litigating cases in which domestic litigation is one part of a broader international strategy to seek redress for human rights abuses. The panel also examined the how the legal movement for greater recognition of battered women’s human rights has manifested in the United States.

The discussion with Ms. Lenahan was a forum for encouraging students, and those within the wider human rights community, to think creatively about pursuing human rights in the United States and to ensure that these strategies are responsive to the concerns of victim-survivors and not just human rights advocates. Particularly enlightening in this regard was Jessica Lenahan, herself. Ms. Lenahan passionately articulated her struggle for the recognition of her rights and the rights of other women who are threatened by domestic violence and are inadequately protected by the State. Jessica related how the process of filing a case before the IACHR gave her, as an aggrieved individual, a forum to sue the United States government after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that she had no constitutional right to police enforcement of her restraining order.

During the discussion, Ms. Bettinger Lopez highlighted the implications the case would have on both U.S. law and international human rights law and Ms. Brandt-Young explained the ways in which international human rights law can be woven into domestic family law cases through the use of amicus briefs, footnotes, and evidence.

Background Materials

Testimony of Jessica Lenahan before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, October 22, 2008

Timeline: Gonzales v. United States of America and the State of Colorado before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Petition No. P-1490-05

Clearing House Review: International Human Rights Law for Everyday Legal Cases

Five International Human Rights Citations to Use in Your Next New York State Domestic Violence Brief

Panelists

Jessica Lenahan and Caroline Bettinger-López listen to questions from the audience

Jessica Lenahan: is the first woman in the United States to sue the government for its failure to respect the human rights of battered women. In June 1999, Jessica Gonzales’ three young daughters, ages seven, nine and ten, were abducted by her estranged husband and killed after the Colorado police refused to enforce a restraining order against him. Although Gonzales repeatedly called the police, telling them of her fears for her daughters’ safety, they failed to respond. Hours later, Gonzales’ husband drove his pick-up truck to the police department and opened fire. He was shot dead by the police. The slain bodies of the three girls were subsequently discovered in the back of his pickup truck.
Gonzales filed a lawsuit against the police raising due process claims, which worked its way through the federal courts, until eventually in June 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that she had no constitutional right to police enforcement of her restraining order. She then filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, asserting that the police’s failure to protect her and the Supreme Court's failure to provide her an adequate remedy violated her human rights.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights returned an admissibility decision on October 5, 2007, in favor of Ms. Lenahan, affirming that she had exhausted all domestic avenues in her search for justice. A merits-based hearing took place before the IACHR on October 22, 2008. The case involves the affirmative obligations of law enforcement to respond to domestic violence and to provide adequate protection for victims and protected classes particularly vulnerable to abuse, as well as the United States’ responsibility to provide a remedy when those obligations are not fulfilled. At the hearing the Commissioners asked questions about the State’s due diligence obligation to protect victims of domestic violence and their children, about the factual record, and about the U.S. legal and programmatic response to domestic violence, among other issues.

Caroline Bettinger-López: is the Deputy Director of the Human Rights Institute and a Lecturer in the Human Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. Caroline focuses on international human rights law and advocacy, including the implementation of human rights norms at the domestic level. Her main regional focus is the U.S. and Latin America, and her principal areas of interest include domestic violence and violence against women, gender and race discrimination, and immigrants’ rights. At Columbia, Caroline helps to coordinate the Human Rights in the U.S. Project and the Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers’ Network. Prior to joining Columbia, Bettinger-López clerked for Judge Sterling Johnson, Jr. in the Eastern District of New York and worked as a Skadden Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, Women’s Rights Project. At the ACLU she focused on employment and housing discrimination against domestic violence victims and low-wage immigrant women workers.



CHRGJ's Amna Akbar, and appellate attorney, Christina Brandt-Young

Christina Brandt-Young: graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 2002, and has worked for Human Rights Watch in New York, Interights in London, the Cambodian Women's Crisis Center in Phnom Penh, and the Commission for Gender Equality in Cape Town, South Africa. She was an Equal Justice Works Fellow at Legal Momentum (formerly the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund), where she worked on employment discrimination and participated in the New York City Human Rights Initiative, which seeks to implement the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) into New York City law. Currently she is the appellate attorney for the Domestic Violence Appellate Representation Project of the New York Legal Assistance Group.

Panel Moderator

Amna Akbar: is the CHRGJ’s International Human Rights Clinic Fellow for 2008-09. Prior to joining the Center, she oversaw the Asian Battered Women's Project at Queens Legal Services Corporation, where she represented Asian immigrant battered women in civil and immigration matters; and worked with community-based organizations to address the non-legal needs of local Asian battered women. In conjunction with Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, she coauthored a chapter of a New York City-centered Shadow Report to the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, documenting the failures of New York’s courts, legislature, and police to satisfy human rights obligations to battered immigrant women and women of color.
After receiving her law degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 2004, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Law Review, she clerked for Gerard E. Lynch, United States District Court, Southern District of New York. Prior to law school, she worked for former Democratic Whip David Bonior (D-MI), advising him on international affairs and human and civil rights.