We are a prominent, collaborative platform through which to create and deepen gender justice.

About

The Institute was co-founded by Professor Lisa Davis and Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee as well as Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland, Madeleine Rees, and Yifat Susskind. In fall 2020, Prof. Davis, Leymah Gbowee, Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland, Madeleine Rees, and Yifat Susskind came together to discuss starting an Institute at CUNY Law school as a prominent, collaborative platform through which to create and deepen gender justice. The result was the Institute on Gender, Law, and Transformative Peace. We serve as a hub for cross-sectoral, cross-movement and transnational organizing, research and scholarship.

The Institute is a joint partnership between CUNY Law School and Brooklyn College, providing students, faculty, alums, and scholars with opportunities to supplement their learning through lectures, panel discussions, and workshops on a broad range of issues related to women’s rights and gender justice. We work to support participatory research and movement-building by providing a hub to promote the leadership and voices of women and LGBTQI+ persons1 who face intersectional discrimination.

We reimagine policymaking from the perspective of social movements, bringing those most impacted by crisis and conflict into the policy development process. We work to advance the cutting edge of rights-based approaches to national and international law and policy, including peace and transitional justice processes, reconstruction, and human rights mechanisms. We promote the leadership of women and LGBTQI+ persons who face interlocking forms of discrimination, including those at the intersections of race, ethnicity, and disability, partnering with them to strengthen movement-building initiatives and change attitudes, policies, and practices that shape global crisis response.

The Institute uses intersectional framing of gender analysis from a social justice lens. We infuse this approach throughout our work to inform the development of gender justice in emerging national and global laws and policies, treaties, tribunals and other peace and transitional justice processes, and human rights mechanisms. Taking a community-centered approach, we work to support participatory research and movement-building. We echo calls for change by community-based advocates, where research or documentation has been collected and shared with us.

1 While the acronym LGBTQI+ is inclusive of a broad range of persons, it is not exhaustive, nor is it the universally standard acronym.