The Global Human Rights Clinic (GHRC) advances justice and addresses the inequalities and structural disparities that lead to human rights violations worldwide using diverse tactics and interdisciplinary tools. Over the past year, GHRC students and faculty worked in teams to promote human rights around the world. In particular, the GHRC supported efforts to investigate and prevent unlawful killings globally; stop the unlawful use of the death penalty; advance the rights of migrants and non-citizens; ensure justice in conflict; promote climate justice; and challenge discriminatory laws. Assistant Clinical Professor of Law Anjli Parrin is director of the Clinic. Below are the Clinic's significant achievements for 2024-25.

Extrajudicial Executions: Preventing and Investigating Unlawful Deaths Globally

The GHRC provided strategic support to Morris Tidball-Binz, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, and a leading independent human rights expert appointed by the United Nations to advise on the issue of unlawful killings from a thematic perspective. The Special Rapporteur procedures are a key pillar through which human rights is advanced at the UN. As part of their mandate, Special Rapporteurs undertake country visits, conduct annual thematic studies, and act on individual cases of reported violations by sending communications to States and international authorities. As of June 2024, Tidball-Binz joined the University of Chicago Pozen Family Center for Human Rights as a visiting senior research associate, where he engages with and conducts joint research alongside Pozen Center and GHRC students.

In particular, the GHRC supported the Special Rapporteur with: 

• Support in the research and drafting of his thematic report on the rights of families of persons unlawfully killed. GHRC students conducted factfinding, expert interviews, and legal analysis to inform the Special Rapporteur’s thematic report on the rights of families of persons unlawfully killed, which was presented to the UN Human Rights Council on June 18, 2025 (A/HRC/59/54). The UN Special Rapporteur acknowledged the contributions of the GHRC (video, remarks referencing the GHRC at 1:05:35).
• Co-hosting, alongside the UN Special Rapporteur’s mandate and the University of Chicago Pozen Family Center for Human Rights an experts’ technical meeting to draft guidelines for practitioners on the investigation of femicides, held at the University of Chicago John W. Boyer Center in Paris in April 2025. The expert meeting brought together leading practitioners from around the world, to discuss and draft guidelines related to the investigation of femicide. 

Challenging Death Penalty Methods in Alabama

In the U.S., Alabama has recently begun using nitrogen asphyxiation as a method through which to carry out the death penalty, despite the serious risk of torture, and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment which is poses to individuals subjected to it. The GHRC is representing British Professor Jon Yorke, an international expert on the use of the death penalty, in a motion to intervene as a third party in a 42 U.S.C. §1983 civil rights action in the case of David P. Wilson, who has been under a sentence of death since 2008. Professor Yorke seeks to inform the Court of the crucial international law issues at risk through the use of nitrogen asphyxiation. 

Missing Migrants: A Forensic Response for African Missing Migrants in Southwest Europe

Thousands of Africans go missing each year attempting to cross international borders in search of safety and better opportunities. Despite the broad recognition among states of the importance and need to address the situation of missing migrants, there is a lack of formal coordination and procedures among all relevant stakeholders relating to missing migrants, and in many instances, even within a country’s government, there is a lack of information sharing. For families searching for the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones, the uncertainty is devastating, often leaving them in limbo. 

In partnership with the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic (IRC) and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, the GHRC is supporting efforts to identify missing migrants traveling from Africa to South–West Europe. Over this course of this academic year, GHRC/IRC students:

• Completed an analysis of the existing legal frameworks governing the rights of missing migrants, and laws that pertain to transnational exchange of information of missing migrants. This analysis will be published in August 2025, in partnership with EuroMed Rights, an NGO which focuses on the rights of migrants in the Mediterranean.
• Co-hosted a regional workshop in Nairobi bringing together civil society, State actors, intergovernmental bodies, and forensic experts from countries across Africa and Europe dealing with high numbers of migrants, to assess challenges relating to the transnational search for and identification of missing and deceased migrants. This workshop was the first of its kind between Europe and Africa which combined State forensic actors with civil society and families’ representatives and forms a foundation upon which to develop a multistakeholder and transnational mechanism to identify migrants. GHRC and IRC Students presented on the international and regional legal framework at this workshop.
• Traveled to Morocco twice, to work alongside local civil society in border towns in Morocco (Oujda), supporting the families of migrants, and to participate in a regional civil society convening relating to missing migrants in Rabat, Morocco. An IRC student presented our forthcoming research on the legal frameworks governing the rights of missing migrants at this convening. 

Justice in Conflict: Supporting Atrocity Investigations in The Gambia 

In the Gambia, a military regime run by autocrat Yahya Jammeh committed scores of human rights abuses between 1994 and 2016, including arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances. Following the overturning of the Jammeh regime, a truth commission was created to understand what happened during the dictatorship, and a special prosecution office is being set up. Families of those killed and disappeared are searching for answers as to the fate of their loved ones. 

In partnership with the African Network Against Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances (ANEKED) Gambia chapter, the Gambian Ministry of Justice, and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, GHRC students supported efforts to advance justice and the search for missing persons in the Gambia. In particular, building on an assessment of the forensic and international criminal system conducted in 2023, the GHRC further supported ANEKED to develop a perpetrator database and explore lines for possible future accountability mechanisms. Additionally, Director of the GHRC and ANEKED obtained a grant from the Provost’s Global Faculty Awards program to develop a transitional justice teaching too in the Gambia. This tool will be piloted over the next academic year, in line with the grant. 

Bridging the Chasm Between Law, Science, Technology and Narrative to Advance Climate Justice

While climate change is having a devastating impact across the planet, the harms are not experienced equally. Those on the frontlines of the climate crisis are frequently those who have contributed least to climate harms – including Indigenous groups, individuals living in small island nations, young people, and communities across the Global South. Coalitions of young people, including the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) and the World’s Youth for Climate Justice (WY4CJ), are leading the right to ensure a livable present and future.

In March 2023, the PISFCC succeeded in getting a historic resolution adopted, asking the International Court of Justice – the World’s Court – to rule on what the obligations of States are to protect the climate, and what the consequences are for the world’s biggest violators. Ahead of the ICJ oral hearings, GHRC partnered with PISFCC, WY4CJ, visual investigations experts SITU Research, and artist Suneil Sanzgiri, to create a short film that weaves together the stories of young people and the impacts of climate harm through testimony, historical and contemporary documentation, and climate science. The film debuted at the Pinakothek der Moderne museum in Munich, Germany as part of an exhibition entitled Visual Investigations: between Advocacy, Journalism, and Law, which was ran between October 10, 2024 and February 9, 2025. Clinic Director Anjli Parrin discussed the film, and the broader ICJ decision in a podcast on Lawfare. 

Advancing Equality: Resisting Discriminatory Laws in Uganda and Globally

Discriminatory laws impact the ability of sexual and gender minorities, as well as other vulnerable groups, to access basic rights. GHRC students work alongside civil society organizations in Uganda and around the world to challenge unfair laws and policies. This academic year, students partnered with Chapter Four Uganda and Stanford Law School International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic to examine and challenge discriminatory practices relating to the use of outdated and abusive medical examinations which cause unnecessary pain and suffering and serve no evidentiary value in Court. Further, GHRC students carried out and factfinding and analysis on the ways in which advocates challenge stigmatized rights around the world. 

GHRC Events and Student Fellowships

The GHRC hosted multiple events for the student body and the human rights community at large, in Chicago and around the world. These included:

• The Grandmothers Epic Struggle: How Argentinian Grandmothers Challenged a Dictatorship and Sparked a Revolution in Human Rights Investigations (featuring Claudia Poblete, who was kidnapped by the Argentine military regime as a child and is now a member of the board of directors of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo)
• The role of Forensics Experts in Identifying Deceased Migrants: Challenges & Opportunities (held at the University of Chicago Center in Paris)
• Has the World Gone Forward or Backward? Reflections from 90-year-old South African Freedom Fighter Albie Sachs, in conversation with Anjli Parrin

Additionally, GHRC graduating students obtained prestigious fellowships to pursue public interest work post-graduation. In 2025, Lindsay Saligman will join Human Rights Watch as a legal fellow.