As society grapples with an unprecedented pandemic, the most vulnerable workers and communities bear the brunt of its immediate and long-term devastating effects, even as they provide essential services to our societies. But can the pandemic also present opportunities to address market failures and position workers’ rights as central to a more sustainable, just, and resilient economy?

The impact of COVID-19 on education is tangibly felt across the globe, with school closures, disparities in access to remote education, disruption to free meal and vaccine programs, risk of increased dropout rates, and more. How can we ensure an accelerated recovery that doesn’t widen educational attainment —and related power— gaps between the rich and the poor, between boys and girls, and between the Global North and the Global South?

The global pandemic is exacerbating discrimination against, and challenges faced by, persons with physical and mental disabilities. Some may face increased risk of becoming infected or seriously-ill with COVID-19, including in institutions, and others may face obstacles in accessing healthcare and other necessary services and supplies. How can advocates promote a disability rights-based response to the pandemic, including one that centers persons with disabilities in decision-making on prevention and containment measures?

As COVID-19 threatens to collapse our healthcare system, sexual and reproductive health and rights are in grave jeopardy. Opportunistic policymakers are exploiting the pandemic to restrict or outright ban abortion care and access to contraception. In what ways has the health emergency exacerbated already existing vulnerabilities, and in what other ways has it created new problems? What advocacy strategies are being used to combat the exploitation of a state of emergency to curtail sexual and reproductive health?

Covid-19 has profoundly disrupted how we conduct human rights work. Advocates around the world are adapting to new challenges brought on by lockdowns, including needing to balance responding to new and exacerbated human rights concerns, increased personal and family responsibilities, and the challenges of remote working. Further, many traditional strategies for resilience and wellbeing such as maintaining strong social bonds and organic peer support networks, are being tested as we remain physically apart.

The pandemic is, quite literally, pushing people apart. Physical distancing makes traditional forms of organizing and activism—rallies, protests, Know Your Rights trainings; the people power generated by physical proximity—impossible. The pandemic exacerbates preexisting inequities, disproportionately affecting communities and people already marginalized. How are organizations and social movements shifting tactics to continue to build the power of marginalized communities in this new era? What are the greatest challenges?

As governments respond to the novel coronavirus, asylum-seekers, migrants, and refugees are increasingly being left behind. Housing in overcrowded camps and informal reception centers undermines access to the adequate health care, sanitation, and water needed to protect against COVID-19. And some governments are taking advantage of the pandemic to enact discriminatory prevention and treatment measures, including by rejecting asylum-seekers.

In conflict-affected countries, healthcare systems have been neglected or destroyed, basic services such as water are often lacking, and civilians are already living under extreme stress, often in crowded conditions. As the pandemic spreads, the consequences will likely be devastating, and the UN Secretary General has recently called for a global ceasefire.

Join us for a discussion with leading human rights thinkers on how the pandemic spotlights the need for the human rights field to innovate. Kathryn Sikkink (Harvard) will discuss her new book The Hidden Face of Rights: Toward a Politics of Responsibility, in which she argues that more emphasis needs to be on the responsibilities of all to implement rights. César Rodríguez Garavito (NYU/Just Labs) will discuss his new research, scholarship, and advocacy on forward-looking, hope-based strategies for advancing rights. Moderated by Gulika Reddy (Columbia).

How are justice-seeking movements and organizations adapting to the rapidly-changing environment created by the spread of COVID-19? What tools are proving most effective in their responses? And what role can lawyers and courts play to curb deepened and emerging justice challenges? Join us for conversation with experts and advocates Amna Akbar (Ohio State), Dr. Hassan Jabareen (Adalah Legal Center) and Pamela Spees (Center for Constitutional Rights); moderated by JoAnn Kamuf Ward (Columbia).

Originally recorded on April 14, 2020.

The novel coronavirus has led to millions of people working virtually, and more dependence than ever on access to reliable information and the internet. Some governments have responded to the pandemic by dramatically increasing surveillance on populations, and companies gather and retain huge amounts of our personal data.

The pandemic spotlights and exacerbates socioeconomic inequalities caused by decades of neoliberal policies and failures to invest in social infrastructure. The basic rights to health, housing, and water and sanitation are at risk for millions of people around the world. How can human rights-based approaches ground an effective response to the pandemic now, and build a better world afterwards?

Pandemics affect individuals differently, with policy responses potentially worsening existing inequalities and discrimination for marginalized groups, such as women, children, older persons, those unhoused, people with disabilities, detainees, refugees, and migrants. Join us for a discussion on the risks of deepened inequality within the COVID-19 pandemic, and how governments can use a human rights-based and intersectional approach to ensure the rights of all persons are protected.

As governments respond to the novel coronavirus, many are declaring states of emergency and giving themselves expansive powers. Some censor information, surveil populations, and detain critics. Are governments overreaching? Will new powers be rolled back when the crisis is over? Join us for a discussion between Fionnuala Ni Aolain (UN Special Rapporteur on Counterterrorism), Isabel Linzer (Freedom House), and Yaqiu Wang (Human Rights Watch); moderated by Ryan Goodman (NYU/Just Security).

From the Green New Deal to the Vision for Black Lives, today's left social movements are turning to law reform as a way to reimagine our relationships to each other, the state, and the commons. Professor Amna Akbar, Professor of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, discusses the possibilities and limits of these law reform campaigns to transform our thinking about law, law reform, and the work ahead to build a more just society. The program is moderated by Jayne Huckerby, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC).

Join us for a discussion on human rights and business with Dr. Surya Deva, professor at City University of Hong Kong and a member, U.N. Working Group on Business and Human Rights. In this talk, Prof. Deva will discuss the duty of states as well as the responsibility of corporations in relation to the right to housing in the context of privatization and financialization of housing.

Molly Land, Professor of Law & Human Rights at UConn Law School discusses the intersection of new technologies and human rights. New technologies have been heralded as vehicles for freedom, allowing activists to organize and document human rights violations. These benefits have been more limited than hoped, and have created new human rights challenges as governments and private companies exploit technology to pursue their own interests. Using the example of online harassment of human rights activists in Guatemala, Prof.

The law school hosted a discussion about guns and domestic violence for Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Cincinnati Law School Dean Verna L. Williams, Sherry Honeycutt Everett, Legal & Policy Director at the North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and Aya Fujimura-Fanselow, Senior Lecturing Fellow and Supervising Attorney, Duke International Human Rights Clinic, discuss issues of domestic abuse and firearms in the United States including what it means to frame and address this issue using a human rights-based approach.

John Knox, Henry C. Lauerman Professor of International Law, Wake Forest University School of Law, and former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, discusses his work as Special Rapporteur, including initiatives on climate change and human rights, as well as a call for the global recognition of the human right to a healthy environment.

Nusrat Choudhury, Deputy Director, ACLU Racial Justice Program discusses modern-day debtors' prisons. The ACLU is fighting against the punishment of people who cannot pay money to courts simply because of their poverty, through arrest, jailing, driver's license suspensions, etc. Since courts generate revenue for local governments, these practices funnel poor and low-income people into cycles of debt, poverty, and involvement with the legal system.

Kazuko Ito, the Secretary General of "Human Rights Now," a Japanese human rights NGO, will be speaking about the legal and advocacy work that her NGO has been doing surrounding the #MeToo movement in Japan. The program will be moderated by Professor Aya Fujimura-Fanselow, Supervising Attorney for the International Human Rights Clinic. This event is part of the Human Rights in Practice series, organized by Duke Law's International Human Rights Clinic and the Center for International and Comparative Law.

H. Timothy Lovelace, Jr., the John Hope Franklin Visiting Professor of American Legal History, gives the annual Robert R. Wilson Lecture titled, "Civil Rights as Human Rights." A member of the faculty of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Professor Lovelace is an expert in legal history, civil rights, human rights, and constitutional law. Before joining the Indiana Law faculty, he served as the assistant director of the Center for the Study of Race and Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Professor Lovelace earned his J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

On Sept. 6, 2018, the Supreme Court of India ruled that the "criminalisation of consensual conduct between adults of the same sex" is unconstitutional. Duke Law presented a panel discussion on the case and LGBTI rights in India featuring Vardhman Kumar, Menaka Guruswamy, and Arundhati Katju, moderated by Prof. Laurence R. Helfer.

This event is part of the Duke Law Human Rights in Practice series organized by the Center for International and Comparative Law and the International Human Rights Clinic.

Aisling Reidy of Human Rights Watch and Christine Ryan, S.J.D. candidate and Fulbright Fellow, Duke Law, discuss the Irish abortion referendum and women's rights internationally. Aya Fujimura-Fanselow, Senior Lecturing Fellow and Supervising Attorney of the Duke International Human Rights Clinic moderates. This talk is part of the Human Rights in Practice series, which is organized by the Duke International Human Rights Clinic and the Center for International and Comparative Law.

Professor Jim Coleman, Duke Law and a N.C. Commission of Inquiry on Torture (NCCIT) Commissioner; Dr. Christina Cowger, coordinator of N.C.