The Human Rights Clinic and the American Civil Liberties Union represent Jessica Lenahan (formerly Gonzales), a domestic violence survivor who initiated the first international human rights legal action against the United States for police failure to protect her and her children (Jessica Gonzales v. United States of America (IACHR)) after she lost her case before the U.S. Supreme Court (Town of Castle Rock v. Jessica Gonzales). Ms. Lenahan’s case has been fully briefed and is currently pending before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. A final merits decision is expected in spring 2010. Over the past three years, Clinic students have been involved in every aspect of the litigation and advocacy: legal research, brief writing/editing, drafting declarations, preparing expert reports and exhibits, organizing workshops and advocacy strategy meetings, and writing op-eds. This year, “Team VAW” will continue to follow up on the case and engage in general advocacy related to violence against women and human rights in the US and abroad.
With respect to general violence against women/gender advocacy, students will be involved in follow-up on a survey to domestic violence/VAW advocates in the US about how the Gonzales case, and the human rights framework generally, can be useful for DV/VAW advocacy. Students will also work with DV advocates in the US to research potential ways that the human rights framework can be used in legislative advocacy – including legislative testimony and draft legislation (e.g. VAWA 2010 and New York State legislation) – and domestic litigation.
The Human Rights Clinic and Sexuality & Gender Law Clinic recently created an advocacy manual and toolkit for DV/VAW advocates in the US for Fordham Law School’s annual Domestic Violence conference. "Human Rights and Domestic Violence: An Advocacy Manual," frames and reinforces an international human rights approach to domestic violence/gender-based violence advocacy and underscores the growing interest among domestic violence lawyers and advocates in international human rights law strategies to address client needs. It covers classic domestic violence issues such as physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and child custody, but also human trafficking in the U.S., housing and forced evictions, genital mutilation, and domestic violence within the LGBT community. Eight students (Zarizana Abdul Aziz, Esha Bhandari, Alice Izumo, Kathrin Regg, and Kate Stinson) from the Human Rights Clinic and the Sexuality & Gender Law Clinic researched and drafted the training manual, which offers guidance on how relevant human rights treaties, instruments, jurisprudence, and other sources may be useful for domestic violence advocacy. It is divided into seven chapters, and aims to serve as a quick reference for busy legal services lawyers and advocates.
Finally, students will help to plan a transnational convening of women’s rights/gender/sexuality advocates from across the Americas to discuss the significance of the Gonzales and other cases in the Inter-American system related to gender and sexuality (Campo Algodonero v. Mexico, Atala v. Chile) on their advocacy, and for sharing advocacy strategies generally.Click here to view the amicus brief submitted by Columbia in the case Campo Algodonero v. United Mexican States (Inter-American Court of Human Rights). Commentary on the case is available here.
The Human Rights Clinic, the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), the Santo-Domingo-based Dominico-Haitian Women’s Movement (MUDHA), and the Port-au-Prince-based Group for Repatriates and Refugees (GARR) represent approximately 30 individuals, both Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, who were among the tens of thousands of people collectively deported to Haiti by the Dominican Republic in 1999 during a mass expulsion campaign directed against ethnic Haitians. The case is currently pending on 2 tracks in the Inter-American human rights system: provisional measures (before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights) and merits (before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights). After a successful hearing in July 2009, the Court reauthorized, for the sixth time, the provisional measures, ordering the Dominican government to take immediate steps to ensure immediate special protections for petitioners. Clinic students have traveled regularly to the Dominican Republic and Haiti to meet with the petitioners in the case, dialogue with advocates, and participate in international conferences related to immigration and human rights. The Clinic conducted its most recent trip in March 2010
Italian Interdiction of African Migrants and the Inter-American Perspective
On May 6, 2009, the Italian coast guard forcibly returned 227 migrants to Libya. According to Human Rights Watch, “[n]o screening was conducted to identify refugees, the sick or injured, pregnant women, unaccompanied children, victims of trafficking, or victims of violence against women.” While the Italian interior minister called this interdiction at sea a historic “turning point” in the campaign against illegal migration, human rights advocates have filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights arguing that Italy’s actions violate article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits a state from returning anyone to a country where there is a risk of inhuman or degrading treatment.
The Human Rights Clinic recently submitted an intervenor brief in this case describing the approach of regional and international bodies to interdiction, including the extra-territorial application of human rights law. The brief also describes the historical and current responses of states to boat migration, including the U.S. response to Haitain asylum-seekers in the 1990s.
US. Human Rights Treaty Ratification and Implementation
The Human Rights Clinic is working with Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute to develop strategies and models for implementing the U.S.’s human rights treaty obligations at the federal, state and local levels and to help coordinate and encourage U.S. ratification of major human rights treaties. There are several on-going clinic projects that support these goals
(1) Advancing Domestic Human Rights at the State and Local Level. The Human Rights Institute has played a critical role in the growing Campaign for a New Domestic Human Rights Agenda (“Campaign”), which urges Congress and the Obama Administration to build human rights into the baseline of government. The Institute leads the Campaign’s efforts to build support for state and local governments’ human rights implementation efforts. In support of the Campaign’s efforts, Clinic students and HRI interns helped to research and draft a report for state and local human rights commissioners and their staff detailing ways in which an international human rights framework can advance their work, and setting forth recommendations for federal support for such efforts. Building on these efforts, Clinic students will work with identified state and local human rights commission staff and other partners to (1) follow up on implementing key recommendations contained in the report, including developing training and outreach materials; (2) create a strategy for outreach to other associations of state and local government officials and agencies to raise awareness of and support for state and local implementation of a human rights framework; (3) help build support and awareness among and develop policy recommendations for key decision/policy makers using an international human rights framework to advance equality and opportunity; (4) work with the Campaign to ensure that recently proposed new federal human rights mechanisms, including an Inter-Agency Working Group for Human Rights and U.S. Commission on Civil and Human Rights, embrace states and localities as partners in enforcing civil and human rights by supporting and facilitating state and local efforts, with a focus on recommending funding mechanisms.
Clinic students also work with the Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers’ Network Working Group on Treaty Implementation to help coordinate efforts among the different campaigns working for human rights treaty ratification in the United States. including assisting with coordination of the Working Group’s Meetings.
(2) Comparative Research on National Human Rights Commissions. In support of the work of the Campaign mentioned above, the Human Rights Institute, is conducting research regarding the role of national human rights commission in promoting and protecting human rights The research is aimed at identifying effective strategies commissions can use to facilitate legal protection and empowerment, focusing on integrating a broad spectrum of human rights; creating recommendations to guide the process of establishing a U.S. commission that effectively monitors human rights and protects and promotes the rights of individuals and groups; Clinic students partake in comparative research on a variety of national human rights commissions and materials to support advocacy around proposals for a transformed commission.
(3) Universal Periodic Review. Finally, The Human Rights Institute is on the interim steering committee to coordinate civil society involvement in the U.N. Human Rights Council’s review of the United States human rights treaty compliance, under the Universal Periodic Review process. In the past, working with the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, the Clinic has played a key role in supporting coordinated civil society involvement in the U.N. review of U.S. compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of racial Discrimination (CERD), the Convention Against Torture (CAT), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), including working with NGO partners to prepare significant sections of "shadow" reports concerning human rights violations. Clinic students play a supporting role in coordinating civil society participation in the Process through contributions to NGO reports, facilitating Administration consultations with civil societyand creation of materials for use in domestic arenas as well as in advocacy to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. . (The Human Rights Institute recently hosted the New York UPR Consultation for civil society and government representatives. Written statements from the consultation are available here.)
National Security and Human Rights
Over the past several years, the Clinic has collaborated with major NGOs, including Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, to examine the U.S. practice of transferring individuals to states with records of torture or ill-treatment pursuant to “diplomatic assurances,” or agreements for humane treatment. Most recently, we filed extensive freedom of information act (FOIA) requests in conjunction with the ACLU and participated with other NGO leaders in making representations to the Task Force set up by President Obama.
Building off of these experiences, the Human Rights Institute will publish a report this summer examining the evolving use of assurances during the past decade. As the Obama administration considers new transfer policies, this report will impact the debate on what role assurances should have and, in particular, what legal changes are necessary to ensure that assurances are used as effective anti-torture safeguards, rather than as tools to circumvent anti-torture law.
Yusupov v. Attorney General of the United States (immigration detention)
HRI has long been involved in advocacy around the rights of immigrant populations in the United States and in promoting U.S. compliance with international legal obligations regarding the rights of foreign nationals. In 2009, HRI filed a brief before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Yusupov v. Attorney Genera, Dkt. No. 09-3032, a ground-breaking case regarding the application of the so-called “national security bar” to an Uzbek asylum-seeker. Marshaling the jurisprudence of foreign national courts and commentary from international human rights bodies, the brief argued that overbroad application of the national security bar was contrary to the purpose of international refugee protection and put the U.S. out of step with international practice.The brief was innovative for its in-depth discussion of foreign national court jurisprudence. It also helps establish the relevance of international refugee law principles in U.S. courts.
The brief is part of HRI’s ongoing effort to identify the growing trend of traditionally rights-upholding states using counterterrorism measures to defeat the humanitarian purposes of immigration law. In “securitizing” immigration policy, that is, framing immigration decisions as ordinarily implicative of national security rather than rarely so, these states relegate to the background international norms of refugee protection and the torture prohibition, reducing their salience and elevating “security” as a debate-ending justification.
The Human Rights Clinic has extensive involvement in issues linking human rights and natural resource exploitation. We have paid consistent attention to a range of issues involving mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo while focusing on issues related to the law and economics of state-investor contracts around the world.
Mapping Mining Interests in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The DRC is emerging from a decade of war at a time of world-historic highs in the prices of minerals that are in abundance in the country. Students in the Clinic have conducted extensive desk research on the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) mining industries and assisted The Carter Center in assessing the feasibility of a mapping project through field research in the DRC. The Clinic conducted a mission to the Congo in conjunction with The Carter Center in March 2007. Students are now working to create the interactive online map that will serve as a comprehensive source of up-to-date information on mining companies, investors, labor conditions, supply and production chains, export routes, NGOs involved, and communities affected among others. The map seeks to increase transparency and accountability, decrease corruption, facilitate mobilization among local and international civil society actors, and enable the government to better manage its resources. The Congolese have never truly benefited from the DRC’s abundance of rich mineral resources; this map is a key step in reforming the DRC’s mining industry and promoting sustainable development.
Law, economics and governance of natural resources in Latin America
Last year, the Clinic completed a preliminary study of oil contracts in Peru, a country which offers expansive access to oil agreements. In conjunction with a team from the business school, students traveled to Peru twice during the year. In June, they made presentations to Congress and to NGOs. The Revenue Watch Institute has asked us to expand the study of law, governance and economics of the oil contracts to other minerals in Peru and to other countries in the region.
