Advocacy Memo, 2005-06
LSHR Advocacy Guidelines, Structure, and Accomplishments
Law Students for Human Rights (LSHR) is an active student organization at New York University School of Law whose mission is to promote global human rights lawyering through training, discussion, and direct service on strategic human rights issues. The organization draws on the institutional support and faculty guidance of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (http://www.nyuhr.org/).
The work of LSHR is divided into four Committees, each led by one or two student chairs:
Education Committee: Brian Crow (crow@nyu.edu)
The Education Committee serves to inform members of LSHR, the Law School, and the community at large about human rights issues. To this end, the Education Committee plans speaker events, film screenings, discussion groups, brown bag lunches, and other formal and informal gatherings designed to raise awareness about human rights.
Advocacy Committee: Jessica Chicco (jessicachicco@nyu.edu); Sarah Parady (sjp315@yu.edu)
The Advocacy Committee aims to directly promote the advancement of human rights. The committee focuses on developing the rights-based advocacy skills of the student membership, while meeting the legal or policy research needs of NGOs and other human rights institutions. It also engages in broader advocacy techniques, such as public education and direct action.
Symposium Committee: Matt Schrumpf (mattyschrumpf@yahoo.com)
The Symposium Committee develops and organizes an annual Symposium on issues in global human rights. The Symposium takes place in the spring semester, and focuses on an issue directly related to the organizing principle chosen by students each year.
Career Development Committee: Stephanie Tyree (styree@nyu.edu)
The Career Development Committee provides students with the information and resources to access careers in international and domestic human rights.
Outreach Committee: Jennifer Friedman (jenniferfriedman@nyu.edu)
To broaden the connections between LSHR and concerned stakeholders at NYU and in New York City, the Outreach Committee distributes information about LSHR-sponsored events and initiatives and seeks for new partners and action areas.
In addition to the Committee Chairs, LSHR is led by an organization Chair: Bill Van Esveld (williamv@nyu.edu); Vice-Chair, Caroline Cincotta (ccincotta@gmail.com); Treasurer, Eric Ruben (eruben@nyu.edu); an LLM Representative and several 1L Co-Chairs.
Philosophy and Function of the Advocacy Committee
The Advocacy Committee is composed of a large body of first-year students supervised by second-year students and LLMs. As law students, we are uniquely positioned to provide certain services towards the promotion of human rights, including:
§ Legal research and writing in the form of internal memos, contributions to scholarly articles, or material for amicus briefs
§ Policy advocacy in the form of legislative drafting or compiling position statements for issue-based lobbying coalitions
§ Public education and training in the form of fact sheets, op-eds, and flyers
§ Direct action in the form of letters and petitions, training of legal observers, organizing protests and silent demonstrations before institutions subject to popular pressure
None of these remedies can operate exclusively. Either the advocacy committee will struggle through its own issues of strategy and balance, or it will figure into a larger plan of a particular NGO or coalition that is struggling through them.
Structure: The Advocacy Committee Co-Chairs, including the 1L Co-Chairs, direct and oversee all the activities of the Committee. They are responsible for logistics of meetings and programming that develops the rights-based advocacy skills of the membership. However, each project has its own Project Team, led by its own Project Head. The Project Head and members are responsible for the bulk of the work, which is supervised by a Faculty Sponsor, an NGO Partner, or both (the Advocacy Committee considers quality work products a priority, and any written work for external circulation undergoes a review process). Project Heads and members are also responsible for developing contacts, assessing needs and goals, and coordinating reasonable progress in accord with an agreed upon timeline. Some of this may be initiated by a Committee Co-Chair early in a semester, but projects should be handed over to teams as soon as practicable.
We prefer the team structure to individual research because we believe that the building of a community where discussion of human rights is kept vibrant, critical, and relevant should be complementary to what we learn through our specific assignments. The team structure creates a space for collaborative lawyering that mirrors human rights work in the post-Law School world. It also provides for time to digest the challenges and lessons learned in the process.
We expect there to be and welcome varying levels of experience within a team – there is no single path to a career in human rights, and every individual brings something different to the table. Students may work on more than one project, but they are generally expected to follow each project through to completion once they have committed to it.
There are situations, particularly with respect to short-term projects or those with particularly limited scope, where this proposed structure is less appropriate. Committee Co-Chairs should consult with partners and deviate from this proposal where it makes sense to do so.
Meetings: The Advocacy Committee meets regularly as an entire group once a month on the third Wednesday of the month between the hours of 6 and 8pm. These meetings serve as a time for teams to come together and learn about the progress in other projects, share lessons learned, and brainstorm ideas for moving forward. Project Heads are asked to submit updates before meetings to facilitate discussion. In between monthly meetings, teams meet at their own discretion to coordinate the substantive work of their projects.
Co-Chairs are responsible for introducing articles or exercises to challenge and develop members’ understanding of human rights advocacy. To assist in skills-building, the Committee also holds several training sessions throughout the year related to Library Research, Human Rights Traditions and Institutions, International Human Rights Law, and Participatory and Direct Action Methods.
For NGO Partners: One of the foundational purposes of the Advocacy Committee is to support the work and build the capacity of NGO Partners. For this reason, we welcome the proposal of projects from NGOs, even those with no prior experience working with LSHR or any law student group before. Collaborating on a project is a fruitful way of generating interest in your organization or a specific issue you believe deserves more attention by the human rights community, and also for recruiting students for term-time and summer internships with the confidence that their work is reliable. We ask only that an individual at the NGO commit to being available to develop a project proposal and supervising the students. It is discouraging for students, once mobilized and ready to be of service, to have little contact and guidance from advocates in the field.
Organizing Principle
Each year, LSHR selects a specific organizing principle in the area of human rights. The organizing principle provides a focus to the organization's events for the year and is addressed throughout panel discussions, speakers, movies, direct service programs, and other programming activities. The organizing principle for 2005-2006 is Displaced Persons (see main page).
Accomplishments (since 2003)
1. Students and faculty affiliated with LSHR and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice formed a delegation to an October 2003 ACLU Conference on the use of international human rights law in domestic courts. Upon returning, they hosted a Law School discussion to report on and further explore methods of promoting accountability on domestic issues through the framework of human rights advocacy.
2. Students organized a symposium entitled, “Bringing Human Rights Home: Promoting Accountability in the Corporate Arena,” featuring renowned legal scholars and practitioners to discuss recent development of tools to hold corporations accountable in labor and other arenas, including the fate of the Alien Tort Claims Act and practicability of corporate codes of conduct.
3. Students launched a campaign to introduce a 1L elective in international law and expand the offering of upper-level human rights courses at the Law School. After collecting over two hundred signatures and gaining faculty support, they were successful in getting the Law School administration to convene a Special Committee to restructure the 1L curriculum, and subsequently, introduce a spring elective.
4. A team of students assisted in annotating and editing a draft New York City ordinance codifying the international CERD and CEDAW discrimination treaties in municipal law. They were subsequently invited to participate in further drafting sessions and political strategy meetings between prominent human rights organizations to urge passage of the ordinance.
5. A team of students researched the history of U.S. legislation relating to Mariel Cubans for the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project. The students' research was incorporated into an amicus brief submitted by the ACLU in the case of Benitez v. Mata.
6. Students worked with the Center for Justice in International Law (CEJIL) to research and write a memo on national, regional, and international legal standards with respect to treatment of HIV/AIDS in Latin America. This memo forms the basis of one of the first petitions on economic and social rights to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
7. Students participated in demonstrations protesting continued violations of human rights in post-war Iraq. In particular, they researched violations of international humanitarian law by state actors and transnational corporations, and possible claims around restructuring of the Iraqi economy. The research was incorporated into educational materials and distributed to the public.
8. A team of students collaborated with the World Policy Institute to research issues around non-citizen voting, including a comprehensive survey of state and local laws across the country. The research also extended to international comparative law on the political rights of non-citizen residents. The same students collected signatures in support of a New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights petition and are monitoring the introduction of legislation in the City Council to the same end.
9. LSHR sent two representatives to a conference at American University, Washington College of Law on the crisis in Darfur, and reported back on the event to our membership. Students also researched and wrote a report for Human Rights Watch on whether the situation in Darfur over the past year and a half could be characterized as genocide in a legal sense, as per the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the ICC. The report focused on the specific intent required for the crime of genocide and applied the facts currently available to come to a determination of whether genocide is occurring in Darfur. The team presented their report in person to senior members of HRW including the Executive Director and Program Director, among others.
10. Students organized two tabling events to raise awareness about the Darfur crisis. The first tabling emphasized distribution of informational materials and members fasting to protest the slow response of the international community; this event made the cover of the university-wide paper. The second tabling came a couple months later and emphasized raising money for aid efforts. Student leaders raised over $1,500 in a single day and donated the money to organizations like MSF and the WFP.
11. Students assisted in the final preparation of a report on extraordinary rendition released jointly by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and the Committee on International Human Rights of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.
12. Several students have collaborated with Voices of Women and Picture the Homeless to improve conditions at local Emergency Assistance Units. They investigated requirements for federal funding for use a leverage point in advocacy and researched possible due process claims for individuals applying for shelter.
13. Students have organized up to eight or ten educational events each semester open to the NYU Law School community, on topics ranging from the situation of Afro-Columbians to rebuilding the legal system of Afghanistan to the rights of juvenile criminal defendants. Students have also coordinated panels on how to prepare for international human rights careers.
14. The Steering Committee has brought together an Advisory Board composed of leading members of the professional and academic Human Rights. This Advisory Board functions as a resource for its members and for LSHR. It is a keeps LSHR grounded and connected to the professional Human Rights community through discussions and advice on topics and speakers that could provide value to the dialogue at NYU. It also keeps the professional Human Rights community aware of the tremendous passion and competence that NYU Law students bring to the table by providing an outlet for members to outsource organizational projects to interested students.
Law Students for Human Rights (LSHR) is an active student organization at New York University School of Law whose mission is to promote global human rights lawyering through training, discussion, and direct service on strategic human rights issues. The organization draws on the institutional support and faculty guidance of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (http://www.nyuhr.org/).
The work of LSHR is divided into four Committees, each led by one or two student chairs:
Education Committee: Brian Crow (crow@nyu.edu)
The Education Committee serves to inform members of LSHR, the Law School, and the community at large about human rights issues. To this end, the Education Committee plans speaker events, film screenings, discussion groups, brown bag lunches, and other formal and informal gatherings designed to raise awareness about human rights.
Advocacy Committee: Jessica Chicco (jessicachicco@nyu.edu); Sarah Parady (sjp315@yu.edu)
The Advocacy Committee aims to directly promote the advancement of human rights. The committee focuses on developing the rights-based advocacy skills of the student membership, while meeting the legal or policy research needs of NGOs and other human rights institutions. It also engages in broader advocacy techniques, such as public education and direct action.
Symposium Committee: Matt Schrumpf (mattyschrumpf@yahoo.com)
The Symposium Committee develops and organizes an annual Symposium on issues in global human rights. The Symposium takes place in the spring semester, and focuses on an issue directly related to the organizing principle chosen by students each year.
Career Development Committee: Stephanie Tyree (styree@nyu.edu)
The Career Development Committee provides students with the information and resources to access careers in international and domestic human rights.
Outreach Committee: Jennifer Friedman (jenniferfriedman@nyu.edu)
To broaden the connections between LSHR and concerned stakeholders at NYU and in New York City, the Outreach Committee distributes information about LSHR-sponsored events and initiatives and seeks for new partners and action areas.
In addition to the Committee Chairs, LSHR is led by an organization Chair: Bill Van Esveld (williamv@nyu.edu); Vice-Chair, Caroline Cincotta (ccincotta@gmail.com); Treasurer, Eric Ruben (eruben@nyu.edu); an LLM Representative and several 1L Co-Chairs.
Philosophy and Function of the Advocacy Committee
The Advocacy Committee is composed of a large body of first-year students supervised by second-year students and LLMs. As law students, we are uniquely positioned to provide certain services towards the promotion of human rights, including:
§ Legal research and writing in the form of internal memos, contributions to scholarly articles, or material for amicus briefs
§ Policy advocacy in the form of legislative drafting or compiling position statements for issue-based lobbying coalitions
§ Public education and training in the form of fact sheets, op-eds, and flyers
§ Direct action in the form of letters and petitions, training of legal observers, organizing protests and silent demonstrations before institutions subject to popular pressure
None of these remedies can operate exclusively. Either the advocacy committee will struggle through its own issues of strategy and balance, or it will figure into a larger plan of a particular NGO or coalition that is struggling through them.
Structure: The Advocacy Committee Co-Chairs, including the 1L Co-Chairs, direct and oversee all the activities of the Committee. They are responsible for logistics of meetings and programming that develops the rights-based advocacy skills of the membership. However, each project has its own Project Team, led by its own Project Head. The Project Head and members are responsible for the bulk of the work, which is supervised by a Faculty Sponsor, an NGO Partner, or both (the Advocacy Committee considers quality work products a priority, and any written work for external circulation undergoes a review process). Project Heads and members are also responsible for developing contacts, assessing needs and goals, and coordinating reasonable progress in accord with an agreed upon timeline. Some of this may be initiated by a Committee Co-Chair early in a semester, but projects should be handed over to teams as soon as practicable.
We prefer the team structure to individual research because we believe that the building of a community where discussion of human rights is kept vibrant, critical, and relevant should be complementary to what we learn through our specific assignments. The team structure creates a space for collaborative lawyering that mirrors human rights work in the post-Law School world. It also provides for time to digest the challenges and lessons learned in the process.
We expect there to be and welcome varying levels of experience within a team – there is no single path to a career in human rights, and every individual brings something different to the table. Students may work on more than one project, but they are generally expected to follow each project through to completion once they have committed to it.
There are situations, particularly with respect to short-term projects or those with particularly limited scope, where this proposed structure is less appropriate. Committee Co-Chairs should consult with partners and deviate from this proposal where it makes sense to do so.
Meetings: The Advocacy Committee meets regularly as an entire group once a month on the third Wednesday of the month between the hours of 6 and 8pm. These meetings serve as a time for teams to come together and learn about the progress in other projects, share lessons learned, and brainstorm ideas for moving forward. Project Heads are asked to submit updates before meetings to facilitate discussion. In between monthly meetings, teams meet at their own discretion to coordinate the substantive work of their projects.
Co-Chairs are responsible for introducing articles or exercises to challenge and develop members’ understanding of human rights advocacy. To assist in skills-building, the Committee also holds several training sessions throughout the year related to Library Research, Human Rights Traditions and Institutions, International Human Rights Law, and Participatory and Direct Action Methods.
For NGO Partners: One of the foundational purposes of the Advocacy Committee is to support the work and build the capacity of NGO Partners. For this reason, we welcome the proposal of projects from NGOs, even those with no prior experience working with LSHR or any law student group before. Collaborating on a project is a fruitful way of generating interest in your organization or a specific issue you believe deserves more attention by the human rights community, and also for recruiting students for term-time and summer internships with the confidence that their work is reliable. We ask only that an individual at the NGO commit to being available to develop a project proposal and supervising the students. It is discouraging for students, once mobilized and ready to be of service, to have little contact and guidance from advocates in the field.
Organizing Principle
Each year, LSHR selects a specific organizing principle in the area of human rights. The organizing principle provides a focus to the organization's events for the year and is addressed throughout panel discussions, speakers, movies, direct service programs, and other programming activities. The organizing principle for 2005-2006 is Displaced Persons (see main page).
Accomplishments (since 2003)
1. Students and faculty affiliated with LSHR and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice formed a delegation to an October 2003 ACLU Conference on the use of international human rights law in domestic courts. Upon returning, they hosted a Law School discussion to report on and further explore methods of promoting accountability on domestic issues through the framework of human rights advocacy.
2. Students organized a symposium entitled, “Bringing Human Rights Home: Promoting Accountability in the Corporate Arena,” featuring renowned legal scholars and practitioners to discuss recent development of tools to hold corporations accountable in labor and other arenas, including the fate of the Alien Tort Claims Act and practicability of corporate codes of conduct.
3. Students launched a campaign to introduce a 1L elective in international law and expand the offering of upper-level human rights courses at the Law School. After collecting over two hundred signatures and gaining faculty support, they were successful in getting the Law School administration to convene a Special Committee to restructure the 1L curriculum, and subsequently, introduce a spring elective.
4. A team of students assisted in annotating and editing a draft New York City ordinance codifying the international CERD and CEDAW discrimination treaties in municipal law. They were subsequently invited to participate in further drafting sessions and political strategy meetings between prominent human rights organizations to urge passage of the ordinance.
5. A team of students researched the history of U.S. legislation relating to Mariel Cubans for the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project. The students' research was incorporated into an amicus brief submitted by the ACLU in the case of Benitez v. Mata.
6. Students worked with the Center for Justice in International Law (CEJIL) to research and write a memo on national, regional, and international legal standards with respect to treatment of HIV/AIDS in Latin America. This memo forms the basis of one of the first petitions on economic and social rights to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
7. Students participated in demonstrations protesting continued violations of human rights in post-war Iraq. In particular, they researched violations of international humanitarian law by state actors and transnational corporations, and possible claims around restructuring of the Iraqi economy. The research was incorporated into educational materials and distributed to the public.
8. A team of students collaborated with the World Policy Institute to research issues around non-citizen voting, including a comprehensive survey of state and local laws across the country. The research also extended to international comparative law on the political rights of non-citizen residents. The same students collected signatures in support of a New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights petition and are monitoring the introduction of legislation in the City Council to the same end.
9. LSHR sent two representatives to a conference at American University, Washington College of Law on the crisis in Darfur, and reported back on the event to our membership. Students also researched and wrote a report for Human Rights Watch on whether the situation in Darfur over the past year and a half could be characterized as genocide in a legal sense, as per the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the ICC. The report focused on the specific intent required for the crime of genocide and applied the facts currently available to come to a determination of whether genocide is occurring in Darfur. The team presented their report in person to senior members of HRW including the Executive Director and Program Director, among others.
10. Students organized two tabling events to raise awareness about the Darfur crisis. The first tabling emphasized distribution of informational materials and members fasting to protest the slow response of the international community; this event made the cover of the university-wide paper. The second tabling came a couple months later and emphasized raising money for aid efforts. Student leaders raised over $1,500 in a single day and donated the money to organizations like MSF and the WFP.
11. Students assisted in the final preparation of a report on extraordinary rendition released jointly by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and the Committee on International Human Rights of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.
12. Several students have collaborated with Voices of Women and Picture the Homeless to improve conditions at local Emergency Assistance Units. They investigated requirements for federal funding for use a leverage point in advocacy and researched possible due process claims for individuals applying for shelter.
13. Students have organized up to eight or ten educational events each semester open to the NYU Law School community, on topics ranging from the situation of Afro-Columbians to rebuilding the legal system of Afghanistan to the rights of juvenile criminal defendants. Students have also coordinated panels on how to prepare for international human rights careers.
14. The Steering Committee has brought together an Advisory Board composed of leading members of the professional and academic Human Rights. This Advisory Board functions as a resource for its members and for LSHR. It is a keeps LSHR grounded and connected to the professional Human Rights community through discussions and advice on topics and speakers that could provide value to the dialogue at NYU. It also keeps the professional Human Rights community aware of the tremendous passion and competence that NYU Law students bring to the table by providing an outlet for members to outsource organizational projects to interested students.
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