International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic
The Stanford International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic, launched in 2011, addresses a range of situations of rights abuse and violent conflict around the world. By providing direct representation to victims and by working with communities that have suffered or face potential abuse, the Clinic seeks both to train advocates and advance the cause of human rights and global justice. The Clinic’s supervisors, Professor James (Jim) Cavallaro and Clinical Lecturer Stephan Sonnenberg have worked on torture, summary executions, indigenous rights, civil conflict and transitional justice in more than twenty countries in North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia, including Argentina, Brazil, Burundi, Panama, the United States, France, Russia, Nigeria, South Africa, China and Bangladesh. Students in the Clinic work on projects in a similar, though more limited, range of countries.
The Clinic engages students in sophisticated and multi-disciplinary advocacy to advance the basic human rights and dignity of victimized individuals and communities globally. Students divide their time between an intensive clinical seminar and ongoing clinical advocacy projects. They are thus exposed to a range of tools and strategies to promote respect for rights and dignity, including factual documentation, elaboration and distribution of reports describing rights abuse, traditional litigation before national and international institutions, community empowerment strategies, and conflict transformation techniques.
“This Clinic teaches students the skills they’ll need to be human rights lawyers, as well as the critical perspective necessary to ensure that they are thoughtful advocates who empower communities. At the same time, we hope that these students and our Clinic will contribute to these stakeholders’ fights for justice.”
Professor James (Jim) Cavallaro, Director, International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic
The Clinical Experience: Unparalled Preparation for Advocates
The Seminar
Students in the clinic divide their time between an intensive clinical seminar and clinical advocacy projects. During the seminar, students read and discuss texts that critically evaluate the human rights movement and advocacy efforts. In addition, participants in the seminar develop a range of skills and strategies to promote respect for rights and dignity. These include factual documentation, elaboration and distribution of reports describing rights abuse, traditional litigation before national and international institutions, community empowerment strategies, advocacy film-making, and conflict transformation techniques.
Adelina Acuña, SLS ’12:
Each of us left with renewed resolve to make social justice at home and abroad a core focus of our professional lives.
The Simulation
The best preparation for accurate, ethical and sensitive human rights fieldwork is fieldwork itself. Students in the Stanford International Human Rights Clinic complete a three-day intensive simulation of human-rights fact-finding and advocacy before they begin their work on live projects in the field.
Atenas Burrola, SLS ’14:
The simulation prepared us to think through the very same challenges and dilemmas we faced in fieldwork.
Fieldwork
The Clinic’s unique full-time model allows students to gain substantive field experience. Because full-time students have no other classes, they are able to travel to sites of rights abuse and potential conflict. In the first two years of the Clinic, faculty and students have researched and worked on human rights issues in the United States, Brazil, Panama, Pakistan, Bolivia, Tanzania, and Cambodia, among others.
Katherine Scherschel, SLS ’14:
The opportunity to travel to Panama and speak with prisoners suffering rights abuses really changed our engagement in the project. It made the difference between reading about human rights and being empowered to promote change.
Advocacy
Students plan and carry out advocacy projects of national and international scope. Clinical students have crafted advocacy messages, drafted op-eds, moot and sometimes give interviews.
Omar Shakir, SLS ’13:
Our work in the clinic resulted in real opportunities for hard-hitting advocacy.
IHRC Featured on MLC Blog
The International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic goes to the Inter-American Court
The International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic (IHRCRC) engages in advocacy in partnership with individual victims and potential victims of rights abuse, as well as with communities and human rights organizations. The clinic also focuses on use of international mechanisms for promotion of human rights--as featured in the blog below written…
Read MoreSupervising Attorney Stephan Sonnenberg Joins an Interdisciplinary Teaching Team for Innovative Course on Human Trafficking
The Diplomatic Dance of Human Rights Hearings - A View From the Bridge
A Rare Opportunity to Observe the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights In Action
Students Attend Sessions of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights
Int'l Human Rights Clinic Student reflects on his experiences and clinic's efforts in asylum case
Students Investigate and Report on Prisoner Rights Violations in Panama
People
News
The Global Police Force That Isn’t – 100 years After Its Inception, Is Interpol Succeeding?
The Atlantic - International
Senior Lecturer Allen Weiner, director of the program in International and Comparative Law, weighs in on common methods used by large countries in combatting terrorism for The Atlantic. Earlier this month, local police, backed by Interpol, fanned out across the Philippines, busting nearly 60 people allegedly connected to cyber “sextortion” syndicates.…
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