International Human Rights Clinic
The International Human Rights Clinic enables students to critically engage with cutting-edge human rights issues, strategies, tactics, institutions, and law in both domestic and international settings.
Through weekly seminars, fieldwork and travel, students develop a range of practical tools and skills needed for human rights advocacy – such as fact-finding, litigation, indicators, reporting, and messaging – that integrate interdisciplinary methods and new technologies. Students also develop competencies related to managing trauma in human rights work, as well as the ethical and accountability challenges of human rights lawyering.
Types of clinic projects include those that: involve human rights advocacy abroad (e.g., gendered impacts of criminal justice approaches to countering terrorism); engage with international institutions to advance human rights (e.g., on trafficking in persons); apply a human rights framework to domestic issues (e.g., firearms and domestic violence); and/or focus on identifying promising practices and advances in the realization of human rights (e.g., tracking advancements to human rights made by governments during the COVID-19 pandemic). Students work closely with grassroots organizations, novel transitional justice institutions, international NGOs, and U.N. human rights experts and bodies to further the promotion and protection of human rights.
The clinic showed me how human rights law can be used to advocate for marginalized peoples around the world: through litigation, research, and advocacy, to name a few. I highly recommend the clinic to students interested in international law and who want to protect the human rights to which all people are entitled.
The International Human Rights Clinic is a core component of the Human Rights Program at Duke Law. Through an extensive curriculum, Duke Law's international and comparative law faculty equips students to deepen their knowledge and critical assessment of human rights laws, institutions, advocacy, and scholarship. In addition to the clinic, summer and post-graduate fellowships, including a dedicated post-graduate fellowship in international law and human rights, and Duke Law's externship program provide a bridge between these theoretical foundations and the skills necessary for domestic and international human rights advocacy, as well as to prepare students for the increasingly global nature of legal practice more generally.
News & Events
Clinic Faculty
Aya Fujimura-Fanselow
Clinical Professor of Law
Supervising Attorney, International Human Rights Clinic919-613-7239
Students in the International Human Rights Clinic are expected to also enroll in the International Human Rights Advocacy Seminar either as a pre-requisite or co-requisite to the clinic. This course critically assesses the field of international human rights advocacy, its institutions, strategies, and key actors. It explores how domestic, regional, and global human rights agendas are set; the ethical and accountability dilemmas that arise in human rights advocacy; and human rights advocacy concerning a range of actors, including governments, international institutions, and private actors.