The International Human Rights Program at UCLA School of Law seeks not only to provide opportunities for clinical participation and scholarship. It also seeks to engage the wider community in special programming pertaining to current human rights topics.
Recent events during the spring of 2009 have included the following:
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On February 17, the Bosniak member of the Presidency of Bosnia & Herzegovina, H.E. Dr. Haris Silajdzic, delivered a major policy address at the Law School. Introduced by Dean Michael Schill, President Silajdzic gave an overview of the constitutional and political problems that beset Bosnia today. A video of the lecture may be viewed by clicking on the link to the right.
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The Obama Administration's earliest actions dealt with the future of U.S. detention policy in the fight against terrorism. On February 2, the Program hosted a special screening at the James Bridges Theater at UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television of The Response, a short film based on actual transcripts of hearings before the Combatant Status Review Tribunals at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. We followed this powerfully instructive film with a panel discussion, including Adam Rodgers, director of The Response; Ahilan Arulanthan of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California; Jack Beard of UCLA School of Law; David Glazier of Loyola Law School of Los Angeles; and Pierre-Richard Prosper, former Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues for the Bush Administration. You can watch the panel discussion at http://av.law.ucla.edu/uclaw/Sequence%201-UCLA-1.mov.
On February 10, Professor Laurel Fletcher of U.C. Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law presented Guantanamo and its Aftermath: U.S. Detention and Interrogation Practices and their Impact on Former Detainees. The report, a joint effort of Berkeley's Human Rights Center, International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Center for Constitutional Rights, is the most far-reaching study of U.S. detention policy's effects on detainees.
On February 18th, Scott Horton, a law professor, writer and blogger whose work appears regularly in Harper's and elsewhere, spoke on the topic of accountability for alleged crimes during the Bush Administration in connection with counter-terrorism detention and interrogation policy. His talk may be heard here.
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Fall 2008 events included Saira Mohammed, the State Department's Senior Advisor to the Special Envoy for Sudan, who gave students and faculty at update on Darfur on August 25; co-sponsorship of the annual Whither the Court program, with David Kaye speaking on the implications of the Supreme Court's 2007 term decision, Boumediene v. Bush; and a range of other programs. Peter McCloskey, senior trial attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and Gregory Townsend, Deputy Registrar at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, gave talks to participants in the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Justice Clinic. We highlight a few major events from the Fall of 2008 here:
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On November 24, two senior officials in the war crimes investigations service of the Government of Serbia spoke to participants in the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Justice Clinic. Aleksandar Kostic, Chief of the War Crimes Investigating Service of the Ministry of Interior, and Goran Markovic, Chief of Unit of the same service, introduced students and faculty to the efforts of the Government of Serbia to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity, cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, apprehend and transfer to The Hague fugitives from ICTY justice and search for missing persons from the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s.
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On November 12, Damir Arnaut, constitutional and legal adviser to the President of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haris Silajdzic, discussed the development of constitutionalism in the wake of genocide. In particular, his lunchtime lecture before students and faculty of UCLA Law focused on key constitutional issues facing Bosnian leaders, who must work within a governmental and legal framework established by the 1995 Dayton Accords which ended the war in Bosnia. Following the talk, Mr. Arnaut spent the afternoon with students in the Sanela Diana Jenkins Clinic on International Justice, discussing with them their specific projects and some of the legal issues they are facing.
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On October 3, Judge Theodor Meron of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and General Wesley K. Clark joined forces in a penetrating discussion about the state of international criminal justice. Judge Meron's lecture, "International Justice: Does it Work?," was a tour d'horizon of the field. General Clark followed with a trenchant discussion of the politics, practicalities and consequences of embedding justice in international affairs. Written up in UCLA Today, the event was co-sponsored by UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations and the American Society of International Law.
Far left, Judge Theodor Meron. Center: Professor Kal Raustiala, Professor Richard Steinberg, former UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale, General Wesley K. Clark, Judge Theodor Meron, ASIL President Lucy Reed, Executive Director David Kaye; Far right: General Wesley K. Clark.
Professor Richard Steinberg, Dean Michael Schill, Professor Kal Raustiala, Executive Director David Kaye.
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On September 15, the International Human Rights Program hosted the Los Angeles Human Rights Leadership Summit, a unique effort to bring together the community of local leaders committed to international human rights. Nearly fifty human rights activists, academics, philanthropists, educators and others came together at the UCLA Faculty Center for a penetrating conversation about building the local human rights community. The event included a conversation with Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Laureate and path-breaking Iranian human rights lawyer.
Left: David Kaye moderated a discussion involving nearly fifty human rights figures in Los Angeles. Right: Dean Michael Schill, center, is joined by philanthropist Sanela Diana Jenkins (to his left), who has given the Law School a $4 million endowment to establish the Sanela Diana Jenkins Clinic on International Justice, and Miriam Rothbart '07 (to his right), a key backer of the International Human Rights Program. They are joined by Professor Richard Steinberg, Faculty Director of the human rights program, and David Kaye.
2003 Nobel Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi, left, has spent her career in Teheran defending the human rights of women, religious minorities and others in Iran. In her keynote address at the Human Rights Summit, Ebadi spoke of the importance of integrating human rights norms into domestic advocacy and the role the United States should play in fostering human rights worldwide. Victoria Riskin, right, a longtime board member of Human Rights Watch and a major figure in human rights advocacy locally and nationwide, introduced Ebadi.
Dean Schill (left) welcomed guests to the Human Rights Summit, calling for a "sustainable partnership not only among yourselves but also with UCLA School of Law." Lara Stemple (center), director of graduate studies at the Law School and board member of Just Detention International, spoke about how local advocates can affect national and international human rights developments. Richard Steinberg (right) spoke about the contributions UCLA Law can make to the international human rights community.
Meredith Blake (left), CEO of Cause & Affect, discussed how advocates can leverage the publishing, media and entertainment industries. Tzivia Schwartz-Getzug, Executive Director of Jewish World Watch, talked about her experiences leading an LA-based organization that does human rights and humanitarian work in Darfur, Sudan. Dr. David Eisenman (right), an assistant professor at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, spoke from his experience working with victims of torture and survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
Above, left to right: Judy London directs the Law School's Immigration and Asylum Clinic and is the Directing Attorney of Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project; Salam Al-Marayati is the Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council; and Bill Bogard is the Mayor of the City of Pasadena. Professor Asli Bali, who has recently joined the faculty of UCLA School of Law, teaches and practices in areas of human rights and spoke about how advocates may deploy international human rights norms to maximize success at the city and state levels.
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On September 10, Vincent Warren (pictured below, far left and far right), Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, spoke on the topic, "Guantánamo, the Supreme Court and the Power of the President." Moderated by David Kaye, the program was co-sponsored by the Public Interest Law Program at UCLA School of Law.
