Global Human Rights Clinic—Significant Achievements for 2021-22
This year the Global Human Rights Clinic (GHRC or “the Clinic”) continued to strengthen human rights around the world through its multi-dimensional advocacy strategies of supporting transnational litigation, documentation and reporting, and education and outreach on human rights. As in past years, GHRC engaged in innovative, necessary and timely project collaborations with organizational partners aimed at advancing social and economic justice across the globe.
Below is a description of selected GHRC 2021-22 projects, all of which were aimed at promoting the rule of law and protecting human rights globally and in the United States. This past year GHRC focused its efforts on promoting the right to asylum in the context of rising border violence; environmental justice and freedom of assembly for climate change activists; women’s equality and non-discrimination; and the human rights of stateless persons. GHRC also provided non-governmental organizations and grassroots activists both in distant places, such as Myanmar, and locally, in Chicago, with critical training on human rights treaty interpretation and enforcement mechanisms to support their work.
Supporting Litigation and Documentation On Access To Asylum In The central Mediterranean
A decade after the 2011 Arab Spring, the “central Mediterranean route” which migrants and refugees take from Libya, Tunisia or Egypt to Italy or Malta remains an area of great concern from a human rights perspective. According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 2,000 deaths have been recorded in the central Mediterranean in the past two years alone. These deaths are preventable by European governments. And yet, apart from rare exceptions, they are not conceived as implicating European state responsibility under human rights law.
For years, human rights observers have documented a pattern of collaboration between European and Libyan forces in intercepting migrants at sea and preventing them from seeking international protection. Under international law, the rule of non-refoulement prevents governments from turning back asylum seekers to countries where they will suffer persecution, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. However, European authorities have developed a technologically sophisticated and surreptitious form of “refoulement by proxy,” whereby they systematically surveil the movements of asylum seekers in the Mediterranean and direct the Libyan Coastguard to pull back the boats before they reach European territory to claim asylum, as is their right under international law.
This year, the GHRC partnered with two organizations based in Europe—Border Forensics (BF) and the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN)—to challenge this practice by European governments and advance legal arguments for holding them accountable under international law for migrant drownings in the Central Mediterranean. The GHRC students conducted extensive legal research and analysis using international and regional human rights doctrine and jurisprudence to develop novel legal theories, which will directly feed into pending litigation by BF and GLAN in European courts. In addition, the student team conducted remote fact-finding—in the form of virtual interviews with European authorities and parliamentarians, journalists, non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders, as well as extensive desk research and public records requests—to inform and enhance the partner organizations’ factual account of the evolving situation. This investigation broke new ground in revealing how this system of surveillance and control at sea operates, and how it contributes both to drownings and to refoulement by proxy.
Reporting On the Prolonged Detention And Deportation Of Stateless Persons By The United States
Statelessness – the condition of lacking citizenship or nationality in any country of the world – affects more than 10 million people globally, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In the United States, conservative estimates put the number of stateless persons at over 200,000. However, the U.S. legal framework is completely silent with respect to statelessness, in effect leaving stateless people unrecognized, unprotected and invisible before the law.
As persons relegated to a life without legal status or documentation, stateless people in the United States are subject to being detained by immigration officials. Because they do not have a country of nationality where they can be deported to, stateless detainees have remained in immigration detention for months or years without any prospect of release, in violation of the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law. In some cases, after undergoing prolonged detention, stateless detainees have been forcibly deported to “third-countries” (countries where they are not citizens), thereby perpetuating their condition of legal limbo and further depriving them of protection as required by international law.
For this project, the GHRC team partnered with United Stateless (USL), a unique grassroots organization formed by stateless individuals in the United States, to undertake cutting-edge research and fact-finding on the detention of stateless individuals in immigration centers. To provide essential backbone and credibility to the research, the team conducted in-depth interviews with various stateless individuals with direct experience of prolonged detention in the U.S. immigration system. These accounts were supplemented by an extensive literature review, interviews with relevant stakeholders, and FOIA requests to various government agencies. The research culminated in a report documenting how the United States violates international law by subjecting stateless persons to prolonged, repeated and arbitrary detention, and setting out specific recommendations for the U.S. government to bring its laws and policies in line with international human rights law.
This report, to be published later this summer, will serve as a critical advocacy tool for USL and its allies to lobby representatives in Congress and agency authorities. Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security for the first time acknowledged the need to address statelessness in a Statement released last December.[1] The publication of the GHRC’s forthcoming report will be a timely contribution to the efforts of USL and its allies, ensuring that the recognition and protection of stateless persons remains a priority in domestic immigration reform efforts.
Publication of Report on Prison Labor in the United States
In June 2022, the Clinic published its report, co-authored with American Civil Liberties Union, on prison labor practices in the United States and their human rights implications. The first-of-its-kind report, Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers, examines the use of prison labor throughout the U.S. and highlights how incarcerated workers’ labor helps maintain prisons and provides vital public services. Captive Labor also calls for far-reaching reforms to ensure prison labor is truly voluntary and that incarcerated workers are paid fairly, properly trained, and able to gain transferable skills.
The Captive Labor report reflects the work of three generations of GHRC students, faculty and staff. From 2018 to 2022, the Clinic team conducted extensive research and completed drafting of a report highlighting the violations of the human rights of incarcerated workers in the United States. They analyzed state and federal laws, policies, and practices that result in these violations of international human rights standards, and detailed the multiple exploitative aspects of prison labor as recounted by incarcerated workers themselves. The Clinic also provided a set of recommendations for federal, state and local governments, state departments of corrections, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, correctional authorities, and private companies involved in prison labor.
In addition to contributing to the drafting and research of the report, the GHRC filed FOIA requests in 50 states, surveyed more than 100 workers currently behind bars in three states (Illinois, Louisiana and California), completed a fact-finding trip to Louisiana in March 2020, and conducted 65 interviews with key stakeholders including experts, formerly incarcerated individuals, representatives of advocacy organizations, academics, and leaders of reentry organizations across the country.
To combat the exploitation of incarcerated workers, the report makes several recommendations in line with international human rights standards, including: ensuring that all work in prisons is fully voluntary by eliminating any laws and policies that punish incarcerated people who are unable or unwilling to work; allowing incarcerated workers the same labor protections afforded to other workers in the United States; instituting comprehensive safety and training programs for all work assignments in correctional institutions; investing in prison work programs that provide incarcerated workers with marketable skills and training that will help them to find employment after release; and, critically, amending the U.S. Constitution to abolish the 13th Amendment’s exclusion that allows slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.
The report’s release was covered by various media outlets, including The Guardian, Aljazeera, and Harper’s Magazine. The report’s findings and recommendations are now being used by a wide range of stakeholders and policy makers around the country to push for these reforms at the local, state, and federal levels, and will remain a key part of advocacy efforts going forward.
Litigation on Environmental Justice and Human Rights Before French Courts
This year, the GHRC partnered with the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic (AELC) and Seattle Avocats, a public interest law firm based in France, to bring suit against a multinational car manufacturer in French courts to demand relief for ongoing human rights violations and environmental harms related to the company’s global supply chain. The litigation seizes on a recently created right of action under French law for victims or concerned parties to sue any company with a nexus to France for its connection to violations along their supply chain which they have failed to reasonably detect and prevent.
Throughout the course of the year, the GHRC and AELC teams provided Seattle Avocats with critical analysis of the car manufacturer’s supply chain, the company’s vigilance plan, and relevant international legal standards. By the end of the year, the student team had produced a final draft of the Notice of Intent to Sue, a formal discovery request, and a preliminary version of the Complaint with the main legal arguments and factual research to be presented before the French courts.
Through this litigation, the GHRC and AELC seek not only to halt ongoing violations by the concerned car company, but also to advance corporate accountability for human rights and environmental law violations long-term by establishing a positive precedent for the future use of the French duty of vigilance law as an avenue for redress.
Strategic Support to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Association and Assembly to advance the rights of climate activists
This year, the Clinic provided strategic support to the U.N. Special Rapporteur[2] on freedom of peaceful assembly and association, Clément Voule, to advance the rights of environmental and climate activists worldwide. In particular, the GHRC team assisted the Special Rapporteur in identifying opportunities for interventions in ongoing litigation around the world concerning restrictions on the rights of climate and environmental justice advocates to assemble and protest.
In addition, the team provided the Special Rapporteur with timely analysis of a Zimbabwean draft bill, the “Private Voluntary Organizations Act,” which aimed to curb the legitimate activities of domestic non-profit organizations. The team composed a draft letter laying out the main legal arguments under human rights law for discarding or amending the draft law, allowing the Special Rapporteur to make a well-timed intervention to prevent the passage of that bill. By providing such critical support, the GHRC had the opportunity to engage with one of the pillars of the U.N. human rights system, thereby contributing to the development of international human rights standards in the protection of peaceful assembly and association.
Drafting Of Toolkit To Advance Women’s Participation In Constitutional Processes
This year, the Clinic continued its partnership with UN Women to advance women’s effective participation in the constitutional process currently underway in Chile. Over the past year, Chile has engaged in a long-awaited process to draft a new national constitution to replace the one put in place in the 1980s by military dictator Augusto Pinochet.
In collaboration with the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School, the GHRC worked with UN Women Chile to co-author a practical “toolkit” on the Chilean constitution-drafting process that will outline best practices for the inclusion and promotion of women’s human rights in constitution-making processes. The Chilean constitution-drafting process is of particular interest because it is the first time that gender parity in the drafting body has been required.
As part of the research, the Clinic team traveled to Chile in May 2022 to carry out in-person fact-finding. The team conducted more than 30 interviews with members of the constituent assembly, civil society representatives, academics and media stakeholders. The toolkit aims to provide civil society around the world with insights and lessons from the Chilean process with regard to women’s participation, with a view to informing their own constitution-drafting processes in line with human rights and gender equality principles.
Training for Rakhine Youth and Women’s Networks in Myanmar
Following the military coup in Myanmar in early 2021, GHRC designed and delivered a training for activists in Myanmar on how to collect testimony and documentation from victims of human rights violations in accordance with international standards and best practices. At the time, the training provided much-needed training on documentation that would meet evidentiary standards of domestic and international tribunals.
This year, the GHRC did a follow-up training at the request of two coalitions of grassroots activists in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state: the Rakhine Youth Network and the Rakhine Women’s Network. The two-part training focused on international mechanisms and advocacy strategies to address human rights violations perpetrated by the military and non-state actors since the coup. In addition to providing a foundational understanding of human rights principles and their origin, the training highlighted the existence of enforcement mechanisms and other implementation avenues at the international level that could be employed by activists in Myanmar to seek redress for rights violations suffered domestically. Participants engaged in a lively discussion with GHRC students on the significance of human rights in the context of state repression, the challenge of weak international human rights enforcement, and the possibility to devise new strategies for strengthening human rights implementation on the ground.
Training to Freedom House’s Emergency Assistance Program on International Human Rights Treaty Obligations
At the request of Freedom House, for the second consecutive year, the GHRC delivered a training for program officers in Freedom House’s Emergency Assistance Program on how to interpret human rights contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The Emergency Assistance Program requested this training to ensure their internal systems accurately identified human rights violations in a manner consistent with legal principles. The training included interactive portions where participants had to analyze case studies and answer questions about how to apply legal interpretations of the relevant human rights.
Training to Chicago Community Organizers on Human Rights Obligations related to non-discrimination and racial equality
In April 2022, the GHRC conducted a training for law students and community organizers in Chicago who are working on a cross section of racial justice related issues (environmental justice, housing issues, policing and immigration). The training exposed the organizers to human rights, including its origins, substance and enforcement mechanisms, with a view to inspiring reflections on how international human rights law could be relevant to domestic racial justice advocacy.
[1] DHS Announces Commitment to Enhance Protections for Stateless Individuals in the United States, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Dec. 15, 2021), https://www.dhs.gov/news/2021/12/15/dhs-announces-commitment-enhance-pr…
[2] Special Rapporteurs of the United Nations (also called “special procedures”) are independent human rights experts appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council to report and advise on specific human rights issues from a thematic or country-specific perspective. As part of their mandate, Special Rapporteurs undertake country visits, conduct annual thematic studies, convene expert consultations, and act on individual cases of reported violations and concerns of a broader nature by sending communications to States and international authorities.