Student Perspectives

When War Criminals Run the Government: Not Too Late for the International Community to Vet Sri Lankan Officials

(Editor’s Note: This is the latest in a series on the spotlight placed on allegations of war crimes and other abuses in Sri Lanka during the February 22 to March 23, 2021, session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The series includes voices from former U.N. officials, international NGOs, human rights litigators, and researchers. Find links to the full…

Rayhan Asat LLM’16: Her Brother’s Keeper

HLS Advocates for Human Rights is proud to present the Spotlight Series, a forum for essays and opinion pieces written by Harvard Law School students and alumni calling attention to pressing domestic and international human rights issues. If you are a Harvard Law student or alumnus/a and would like to contribute a piece to Spotlights, please contact Sondra Anton ([email protected])…

Rethinking MSIs: Q&A on the Blog Series

December 18, 2020

In July 2020, MSI Integrity and the International Human Rights Clinic launched the blog series, “Rethinking Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives.” Accompanying the publication of MSI Integrity’s major report, Not Fit-For-Purpose, the blog series sought to share several critical perspectives on the MSI field. The contributions largely honed in on two of the key questions posed by the report: are MSIs working for rights…

Planning for a Year of Activism with HLS Advocates for Human Rights

September 22, 2020

HLS Advocates for Human Rights (Advocates) is a student practice organization (SPO) at Harvard Law School (HLS). Many students first join the HLS human rights community through Advocates their 1L year. In the SPO, students work on human rights projects with partner organizations around the world. Over the last year, the organization has decided to formally renew its commitment to…

Clinic Intern Q&A: Edi Ebiefung JD’21

September 15, 2020

Edi Ebiefung JD’21 was one of three interns in the International Human Rights Clinic this summer, who worked on various human rights projects under clinical staff. He recently spoke with the Human Rights Program about his summer with the Clinic and how he sees it influencing his future trajectory. You can read about interns Sondra Anton JD’22 and Laura Clark…

Clinic Intern Q&A: Laura Clark JD’20

September 8, 2020

This summer, the International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) hosted three Harvard Law School interns. We recently spoke with intern Laura Clark JD’20, a 3L graduating in December, who started work as a student in the Clinic in Spring 2020 and returned for the summer. During law school, she also interned with the UNHCR in Turkey, the World Bank Group in…

Rethinking MSIS: Be Wary of the Fox(es), A Power Analysis of MSIs

September 3, 2020

The opening blog in this series laid out two different paths MSIs could have taken: The allure [of MSIs] was (and still is) obvious. If we bring the right players together, they can learn from each other and solve the given problem by setting up a democratic institution that can prevent future abuses and sanction violators, and governments will not have to…

COVID-19 Response Can Help Reimagine Climate Change Response

For the past three years, my peers and I at HLS have worked towards earning our law degrees in the hopes of contributing to a more equitable society. As the Class of 2020 graduates this month, I realize that the path toward justice has become more urgent and increasingly challenging. Our class will spend some of our most formative years navigating…

HLS Advocates Co-Presidents Reflect on 2019-2020

On March 9, 2020, HLS Advocates for Human Rights hosted a discussion on the oppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang China. As murmurs about classes moving online circulated, and US leadership continued to doubt the threat of COVID-19, we held what turned out to be our final Advocates lunch talk of the year. If we had known this would be our…

Excluding marginalized workers from COVID-19 relief is bad policy—is it also a human rights violation?

The $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act is the most expansive COVID-19 relief package in the world, so why does it still exclude many vulnerable workers and small business owners? Mehrsa Baradaran begins to answer these questions in her April 9 article, “The U.S. Should Just Send Checks—But Won’t” in The Atlantic. Baradaran describes how the CARES Act excludes several vulnerable groups of…