Program Overview

Students in the International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic (IWHR) engage in change-lawyering through litigation and advocacy, locally and globally. In conjunction with women’s rights advocates, human rights lawyers, and grass-roots organizations in the United States and abroad, we advocate on behalf of individual clients in the context of promoting change in both national and international human rights law.

We urge international lawmaking institutions to redefine and implement human rights that will provide greater protection to, among others, those victimized by gender and sexual violence, and to advance reproductive and sexual rights as well as economic and social rights. In the United States, we represent immigrant domestic workers and other victims of human rights abuses with international and domestic claims in U.S. courts, as well as file amicus curiae briefs in domestic cases with significant and otherwise overlooked international dimensions.

Widely recognized for its expertise and contributions to the jurisprudence and practice of human rights, IWHR clinic enables students to engage in cutting edge work under close clinical supervision. We maintain an eclectic docket of cases and projects to provide both in-depth and broad experiences. Our goal is to develop a sound understanding of international human rights, as well as sharpen the lawyering skills necessary for effective law reform-oriented advocacy work applicable in both U.S. and international contexts.

The field of women's human rights enables students to learn how to identify gender-specific problems and challenge apparently neutral, but exclusionary human rights frameworks. This approach provides a transferable experience of simultaneously working with the diverse perspectives of the marginalized, generally, but focusing specifically on gender issues which are multi-dimensional, incorporating diversities among women in terms of race, ethnicity, geopolitical context, economic and other status, including discrimination based on non-hetero-normative sexual and gender identities. By addressing problems through the lens of human rights, students build capacity to use international human rights frameworks and institutions to reexamine and challenge the narrower rights approach of the U.S. Constitution in domestic and international fora while developing lawyering skills applicable purely to U.S. law reform efforts.