Recent Highlights

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  Clinical Voices: Jonathan Nomamiukor '13 reflects on his experience

  Read more about what compelled Jonathan Nomamiukor ’13 to take a break from law school, his work with Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic on the issue of fully autonomous weapons, and the mentorship he received from Clinical Instructor Bonnie Docherty.

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  IHRC's Giannini, Farbstein represent families of 2003 Bolivian massacre victims

  On June 24, 2013, family members of those killed in government-planned massacres in Bolivia in 2003 filed an amended complaint, with extensive new allegations that the defendants, former President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and former Defense Minister Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, had devised a plan to kill thousands of civilians months in advance of the violence. The family members are being represented by a team of lawyers, including Tyler Giannini and Susan Farbstein of Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic,

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  Lillian Langford: Working to safeguard human rights abroad

  Lillian Langford’s life could have turned out much differently. Instead of graduating now with two Harvard degrees, she could have been on a remote island in the South Pacific, or on a stage playing the harp with a classical orchestra. But a series of inspiring mentors, starting with her parents, helped guide her to her life’s passion: fighting injustice.

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  Clinic students secure asylum for indigenous survivors of persecution in Guatemala

  Last month, as an historic trial continued in Guatemala against a former dictator charged with the genocide of indigenous Mayans, Lauren Herman ’13—a student in the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic (HIRC) —stood in court in Boston as a judge announced he was granting asylum to her Mayan client, who, with his family, had suffered persecution for decades before he came to the U.S. in 2009.

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  The Harvard Immigration Project: Fighting for the rights of immigrant detainees

  Following its second victory, the Harvard Immigration Project’s (HIP) Bond Hearing Project continues its new campaign to provide free legal representation to detained immigrants seeking release from immigration custody.

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  From 2013 World Winter Games to Global Development Summit, Alford plays major role in Special Olympics International

  As an enthusiastic supporter of the Special Olympics who has worked for more than two decades with Special Olympics International, Harvard Law School Professor William P. Alford welcomed the opportunity to help bring about the 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games, held in PyeongChang, Korea earlier this year. “One of the major messages of the Special Olympics is that having a disability need not be seen as being as limiting or disqualifying as some people might assume,” says Alford, director of East Asian Legal Studies and chair of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability (HPOD).

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  Human Rights panel discusses cost of Iraq invasion, 10 years after (video)

  On March 26, representatives of a number of human rights organizations gathered at Harvard Law School to reflect on the lasting impact of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and to discuss their efforts to hold the U.S. government accountable for problems there during the occupation and ongoing to this day.

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  Clinic and Human Rights Watch: Obama should urge Jordan to stop sending asylum seekers back to Syria

  While Jordan has accommodated more than 350,000 refugees since the start of the Syrian conflict in March 2011, it is routinely and unlawfully rejecting Palestinian refugees, single men, and undocumented people seeking asylum at its border with Syria, according to Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic and Human Rights Watch.

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  IHRC report outlines concerns about ‘killer robots’

  Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic and the independent human rights organization Human Rights Watch have authored a report titled “Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots.” The report, released Nov. 19, argues that governments should pre-emptively ban fully autonomous weapons because of the danger they pose to civilians in armed conflict. 

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  At Harvard Law School, UN investigator announces probe of drone attacks by U.S. (video)

  At a packed Harvard Law School event co-sponsored by the Human Rights Program and the Harvard National Security and Law Association, Ben Emmerson, United Nations Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, announced plans to launch an investigation into the use of drone attacks which have caused civilian deaths—including those carried out by the U.S.

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  Namibian women living with HIV report violations of sexual and reproductive rights

  Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic has co-released a report documenting the Namibian health care system’s maltreatment of women living with HIV. A joint product of the clinic, the Namibian Women’s Health Network and Northeastern Law School, the 49-page report, entitled “At the Hospital There Are No Human Rights,” was released on July 26 during the International AIDS Conference, in Washington, D.C.

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  Fact-finding in Libya: Documenting the risks from a revolution

  There she stood, in northern Libya, a spread of explosive weapons before her: mortars and rockets and surface-to-air missiles almost 20 feet long. For all her work in post-conflict zones, senior clinical instructor Bonnie Docherty ’01 had never seen anything like it. The weapons stretched on for miles. It was March, five months after the revolution had ended, and Docherty was supervising a team from the International Human Rights Clinic on a trip to assess the humanitarian risks of abandoned weapons. As the team traveled from city to city, the scale of the problem was startling.