Archbishop Desmond Tutu, during a visit to the law school.

Research and Projects

The Center provides legal analyses that inform policy debates and advocacy efforts. This engaged scholarship falls into a few main areas, and we highlight some major activities below.

Detainees & Counter-Terrorism

The Center’s reports and legal memoranda on extraordinary rendition, disappearances, and detainee abuse have been cited in the Council of Europe’s major report on secret flights and prisons in Europe, distributed to members of the U.K. Parliament, and used by numerous non-governmental organizations.

We are currently conducting a joint project, with Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First, to provide the first comprehensive accounting of credible allegations of torture and abuse in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. The U.N. Committee Against Torture made use of a preliminary report on our findings.

Read more on projects on Detainees and Counter-Terrorism

United States and Gender, National Security, and Counter-Terrorism Project

CHRGJ’s United States and Gender, National Security, and Counter-Terrorism Project asks: What are the gendered impacts of U.S. counter-terrorism measures in the United States and abroad, and how can it be ensured that such measures promote, rather than hinder, gender equality? The Project considers both the ongoing gendered impacts of post-9/11 policies that have been discontinued and the gender effects of current counter-terrorism measures, particularly in the areas of U.S. immigration and asylum, terrorist financing laws, development, and foreign policy. This encompasses impacts on women and men, as well as the ways in which counter-terrorism measures use and affect gender stereotypes, including those relating to sexual orientation and gender identity.

Read more on projects on United States and Gender, National Security, and Counter-Terrorism Project

Gender-based Violence and Economic and Social Rights in Haiti

As part of its work on economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR)—and in response to needs expressed by partner organizations in Haiti, shortly after the January 12, 2010 earthquake, the Center launched its Project on “Gender-based Violence and Women’s Access to Food and Water in Post-Earthquake Haiti” in fall 2010. Supported in part by a grant from NYU’s Global Public Health Research Challenge Fund and the Center’s Global Justice Clinic, this project built on the Center’s many years of previous work in Haiti, which has often been situated at the intersection of ESCR and gender issues.

Read more about our work on Gender-based Violence and Economic and Social Rights in Haiti

Racial Profiling & Counter-Terrorism

The Center’s work explores the widespread use and impact of discriminatory profiling against South Asian, Middle Eastern, Arab, and Muslim community members in the context of counter-terrorism policies.

We are currently producing a documentary entitled Americans on Hold: Profiling, Prejudice, and National Security that explores the discriminatory profiling that is at the heart of citizenship delays and border-crossing detentions and delays.

Read more about our work on Racial Profiling and Counter-Terrorism

Caste Discrimination We provided new insights into the conflict in Nepal with a report that focused on human rights abuses against Dalits (so-called untouchables). The reports findings have been cited by key actors, including the head of the UN human rights monitoring mission in Nepal. Read more on projects on projects on Caste Discrimination

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

We have brought together in the same room high-level representatives from Amnesty International, the International Monetary Fund, Human Rights Watch, and the World Bank, leading to several published volumes that bridge the divide between the development and human rights communities.

We have also given testimony before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Commission on the rights of migrant domestic workers in the US and on the role of the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti.

Read more on projects on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Project on Business and Human Rights The Center works to raise global awareness about the relationship between business activities and human rights and to promote accountability for business-related abuses.Business activity has a profound influence on the lives and livelihoods of people around the world. Yet responses to the negative effects of business activity on human rights often emerge in response to specific controversies, cover a limited set of rights, or apply selectively to individual companies or industries or particular regional contexts, such as conflict areas. The Center works to address this problem by laying bare the enormous impact that businesses have on a wide spectrum of human rights in a variety of industries across the world, analyzing gaps in the international protection regime, and advocating the development of stronger legal standards for business and human rights. To date, the Center has partnered with Human Rights Watch to produce a report illustrating how everyday business decisions have significant implications for the human rights of workers, local communities, suppliers, and consumers. Read more on the work on the Project on Business and Human Rights Project on Extrajudicial Executions The Center supported the work of Philip Alston, the Center’s co-Chair, in his capacity as United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions from 2004-2010. Correspondence with governments helped to prevent unlawful executions, reports clarified legal standards ranging from the duty to investigate deaths during armed conflict to the public availability of death penalty statistics, and fact-finding missions to a wide range of countries resulted in significant reforms. NYU law students made very significant contributions to these activities through research and writing projects. Since 2010, the Project has continued to develop materials relating to the problem of extrajudicial executions and is now in the process of developing a major new initiative to study the evolution of international fact-finding procedures in the human rights field. Read more on the work on the Project on Extrajudicial Executions Transitional Justice

Philip Alston makes a statement to the press while on mission in the Philippines as UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

In partnership with the International Center for Transitional Justice, the Center has offered the Transitional Justice Essentials Course in New York, an intensive course for mid-level and senior staff of multilateral agencies, governments, NGOs, foundations, and universities, and hosts an annual transitional justice lecture. Read more on projects on Transitional Justice