HRP is delighted to announce the 2024-25 Satter Fellow Aizhan Tilenbaeva LLM ’22. Aizhan is a human rights and international humanitarian lawyer from Kyrgyzstan. During her Satter fellowship, she will be placed with Global Rights Compliance in Ukraine, concentrating her efforts on promoting justice and accountability as part of the project “Support for Ukrainian Mobile Justice Teams.” She previously worked at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kyrgyzstan from 2015 to 2021. She advised the ICRC mission on matters of international humanitarian law, like detention and torture, and ..read more

At a recent discussion hosted by the Program on law and Society in the Muslim World and the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, Nader Andrawos, Egyptian legal historian and Residential Fellow at the HLS Institute for Global Law and Policy, dove into the experience of human rights litigation in Egyptian courts, illuminating the discourses that lawyers employ to vindicate human rights within a highly circumscribed and volatile political context. The conversation, moderated by Omar Abdel-Ghaffar, JD ’25, began by considering the structural characteristics of Egypt’s legal system. From a ..read more

The Human Rights Program is pleased to announce that the application for the 2024-2025 Henigson Fellowship is now open.  The post-graduate fellowship is open to Harvard Law School graduates only. The application deadline is on March 18, 2024. Prospective applicants must email HRP Associate Director Abadir M. Ibrahim (abibrahim@law.harvard.edu) before March 1, 2024, to discuss their plans and have their host organization vetted. For more information about the fellowship, eligibility, advising and application process, please visit the Henigson Fellowship page on our website. The post 202 ..read more

We are pleased to present HRP’s 2022-2023 Annual Report. The report showcases the global reach and impact of the Human Rights Program in its 39th year, featuring work on Ethiopia, chronological age discrimination, and children’s rights. It spotlights the impact of visiting scholars and fieldwork undertaken by students and alumni, and details the rich assortment of HRP events. We thank all of the partners and alumni who contributed to the success of this productive year. The 2022-2023 Annual Report can be downloaded as a PDF file. The post HRP’s 2022-2023 Annual Report appeared first on Harv ..read more

We recently bade farewell to HRP’s Eleanor Roosevelt Visiting Fellow Benyam Dawit Mezmur, who returned to his regular position as Professor of Law and Deputy Dean at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. In his 16 months at Harvard Law School, Benyam left a deep and lasting impact on the human rights community at HLS and Harvard. From guest lectures at the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and the Harvard Kennedy School, to panel discussions and lectures at the Chan School of Public Health, he was a highly sought-after expert on children’s rights. While at Har ..read more

Rebecca Gore LLM’23 in front of the Harvard Law School Library. Credit: Lorin Granger. The Human Rights Program is pleased to present its 2023-2024 Henigson Fellow Rebecca Gore LLM’23. Rebecca is a South African human rights lawyer and scholar. For the 2023-24 academic year, she will be a Henigson Fellow with the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s new initiative on Waging Justice for Women, where she will focus on data-driven strategic litigation and advocacy to reform discriminatory laws against women and promote accountability for gender-based violence in South Africa and Malawi. Previously, R ..read more

A destroyed tank is seen by the side of the road south of Humera in western Tigray, Ethiopia, May 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File) Since the signing of the Pretoria agreement which ended formal hostilities between the Ethiopian government and the Tigrayan Forces in November 2022, transitional justice has become a leading topic of debate in many Ethiopian and international circles. The spike in interest was spurred in part by nationwide public consultations that are being held based on a January 2023 green paper which outlines policy options for transitional justice. Although this has been ..read more

Driving toward the village of Kut in Armenia, on the border with Azerbaijan. Credit: Anoush Baghdassarian. The dirt road leading to Kut, a small Armenian village on the border with Azerbaijan, is uneven and somber as we drive down it at dusk. I gulp, attempting to swallow my fear, as we get closer to the Armenian mountain on which Azerbaijani soldiers have illegally positioned themselves. My colleague points directly in front of us: “There they are,” she says. We are so close. I take a deep breath and revert to conversation, doing my best to feign strength so I can speak with the families who ..read more

The 2023 HRP summer fellows, from left to right: Chinaza Asiegbu, Sabrina Ochoa, Krister Rasmussen. HRP is pleased to announce its 2023 summer fellowship cohort: Chinaza Asiegbu JD’25, Sabrina Ochoa JD’24, and Krister Rasmussen JD’25. Summer fellowships for human rights internships are a central part of the Harvard Law School human rights experience and provide rich professional, personal, and intellectual opportunities. Many students and alumnae/i who are committed to human rights were introduced to the field through an internship. Interns work for at least eight weeks with nongovernmental or ..read more

Ben Ferencz at the HLS Medal of Freedom Award Ceremony in 2014. The world has lost a tireless champion in the cause of human rights and peace: Benjamin Ferencz ’43. A decorated World War II veteran whose Jewish family had emigrated from Transylvania to the USA, Ferencz first gained international recognition when, at age 27, he was appointed as Chief Prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen case of the Nuremburg trials against leading Nazi war criminals. Ferencz subsequently became one of the world’s foremost advocates for the establishment of an international criminal court, which finally came to frui ..read more