| Who We Are | What We Do | How We Are Organized |
Who We are
HLS Advocates originally formed to give an institutional home to the various students interested in human rights advocacy at HLS. It is hard to believe now, but only five years ago the Human Rights Program was an entirely different place. It had a highly academic focus, and the only readily available opportunity for student involvement was to participate in the Human Rights Journal. Of course, it would be unfair to say that there was no student activism at HLS before the creation of the Advocates, but whatever existed was generally sporadic, ad-hoc, and limited only to those few highly committed students who managed to catch the attention of a faculty member and develop a mentor-mentee relationship with them. Four years ago, a small group of students - with the constant support and guidance of Jim Cavallaro (current Clinical Director of the Human Rights Program) - decided to pool our efforts to more effectively harness the tremendous intellectual and financial resources of the Harvard Law School. Our purpose was to create an organization through which students of all levels of commitment could explore their interest in human rights advocacy under the guidance of experienced activists.
Since those days, we have made quite a splash. HLS Advocates has grown from a membership of approximately 20 to approximately 150. Each year we put on a series of major events and conferences, and we now expect to complete around 30 projects with partner organizations on five continents, dealing with many of the world's thorniest human rights issues. In addition, HLS Advocates successfully lobbied the University administration to create a Human Rights Clinical, which is now entering its second year of operation. HLS Advocates and the Human Rights Clinical form a seamless unit offering Harvard students a spectrum of opportunities to develop their hands-on experience with human rights issues, no matter what their level of commitment of particular field of interest. Best of all, HLS Advocates has maintained its hands-off approach to student initiative, meaning that to the maximum extent possible, we encourage motivated students to develop their own project ideas and take ownership over their own learning process; HLS Advocates exists to facilitate this process, not to suppress and channel it.
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What We Do
For almost every project, we work in close collaboration with an NGO or international organization to design and apply our work product. Increasingly, the work we do has found concrete advocacy applications, in other words, we DO NOT ask students to work on a project that does not have some direct advocacy purpose in the "real world." Some examples of past advocacy projects include:
- Writing a brief to the European Court of Human Rights about a case of torture in Chechnya, on behalf of the torture victim and in close collaboration with a Russian human rights organization.
- Conducting field research on the persecution of the Ahmadiyya minority in Bangladesh, with a subsequent article published in the Wall Street Journal describing the situation.
- Developing a conflict analysis tool for use by the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, designed to fuse conflict resolution methodology into the prosecution strategy in situations of grave humanitarian disasters.
- Organizing a conference exposing the serious human rights violations of Coca Cola in Latin American bottling factories.
As you can see, this list addresses some of the most contemporary human rights issues worldwide. This year's list will include some US-focused human rights advocacy projects as well, just in case you were wondering if our definition of 'human rights' ended at our own national borders.
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How We Are Organized
HLS Advocates is currently divided into ten interest groups - six regional groups (Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and USA) and four thematic groups (Human Rights & Conflict Resolution, Human Rights & the Environment, Human Rights & Gender, and Anti-Torture). Each interest group develops projects, organizes its own events and meetings, and coordinates its own group of volunteers. The coordinators of each group sit on the Advocates board, which meets periodically to discuss the progress of the various projects, discuss bureaucratic and logistical issues, and develop all-Advocates projects together. In general, however, the primary point of contact for most volunteers will be the specific coordinators of their interest group. We assign volunteers to projects through a centralized system that allows access to the myriad of opportunities we offer. Members are free to be involved in as many interest groups as they choose (time and interest permitting, of course).
Advocates volunteers can chose their preferred level of involvement with the Advocates. Some students wish to throw themselves directly at a project, dedicating a significant amount of time towards the work. Others might prefer a more limited time commitment. Still others wish only to attend events and the odd meeting. All levels of commitment are welcome.
All students are welcome to participate substantively in clinical projects. However, we do ask for those students who take on roles in a clinical project to commit themselves formally to these tasks, since as a student practice organization we have real responsibilities towards our partners and clients working in the field. HLS Advocates and the Clinical Program of the Human Rights Program will jointly provide expert supervision for all such volunteers.
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