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: apply a human rights framework to domestic issues (e.g., gun violence); involve human rights advocacy abroad (e.g., rules to counter terrorism financing); engage with international institutions to advance human rights (e.g., on trafficking in persons); and/or address human rights in U.S. foreign policy (e.g., state-level truth inquiries on U.S. post-9/11 national security practices). 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.
In addition to advancing my international law research skills and learning how to draft carefully and precisely, I learned to analyze and synthesize different viewpoints, finding a principled and sustainable middle ground on issues that are politically contentious and much-debated.
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 Clinic
Students in the International Human Rights Clinic are expected to also enroll in the International Human Rights Advocacy Seminar. 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.