Catherine Sweetser, attorney at Schonbrun Seplow Harris & Hoffman LLP, discussed her work in the area of international human rights including her specialization in Alien Tort Statute litigation and the Trafficking Victims Protections Reauthorization Act. This talk is part of the Human Rights in Practice series, which is organized by the International Human Rights Clinic and the Center for International and Comparative Law.

From the Human Rights in Practice Series: Samuel Moyn, Yale Law School, asks what is wrong with "forever war" - as the post-9/11 campaigns of the United States have been called. For a broad swath of critics, the trouble is its inhumanity - especially the peril it brings to civilians. What, however, if the opposite is true - and the problem is that the war on terror is the most humane war ever fought in history?

Darius Charney, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, discusses "Lawyering for Racial Justice." He addresses the various ways in which lawyers engage in efforts to achieve racial justice, ranging from litigation to advocacy, media, and partnering with and supporting grassroots social movements and activists.

Professor Macarena Sáez, Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law and Fellow in International Legal Studies at American University Washington College of Law, and Professor Laurence R. Helfer , Harry R. Chadwick, Sr. Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for International and Comparative Law at Duke Law, give a talk titled "New Developments in LGBT Rights within the Inter-American System."

Kelli Muddell, Director of the Gender Justice Program at the International Center for Transitional Justice, discusses trends in the field of transitional justice especially with respect to gender-based impacts of violations committed during conflict and under authoritarian regimes as well as how these impacts are addressed post-conflict. This talk was moderated by Professor Aya Fujimura-Fanselow, Senior Lecturing Fellow and Supervising Attorney of the Duke International Human Rights Clinic.

Eric Gitari, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (NGLHRC) in Kenya, gives a talk on "Litigating LGBTIQ Rights: The Kenya Experience." Gitari draws from social factors (constitutional dictatorship, poverty, institutional corruption, etc) underlying the remaking of Kenya's Constitution in 2010, from its ongoing implementation, and from his own involvement in three pending test cases concerning sexual orientation and gender identity. The talk is moderated by Laurence Helfer, Harry R. Chadwick, Sr.

Judith Kelley, Senior Associate Dean and Terry Sanford Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy, lectured on her recently published book titled "Scorecard Diplomacy: Grading States to Influence their Reputation and Behavior." This lecture addressed the potent symbolism of public grades that, despite lacking traditional force, can evoke countries' concerns about their reputations and motivate them to address problems. Jayne Huckerby, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the International Human Rights Clinic, moderates.

The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay remains open, despite efforts to close it. Forty-one detainees are currently held at Guantanamo Bay and Military Commission proceedings continue. A panel of DoD experts, litigators, and human rights advocates discussed the way ahead during the American Bar Association's 2017 Annual Meeting.

Moderator: David B. Rivkin, Jr., Partner, BakerHostetler

Panelists:

The spring Faculty Author Event celebrated a new book by co-authors Larry Helfer, Molly Land, Ruth Okediji and Jerome Reichman, "The World Blind Union Guide to the Marrakesh Treaty: Facilitating Access to Books for Print Disabled Individuals." The Marrakesh Treaty is a watershed new agreement situated at the intersection of intellectual property and human rights law. The Treaty creates mandatory exceptions to copyright to expand the availability of books and cultural materials in accessible formats to individuals with visual disabilities.

"Tightening the Purse Strings: What Countering Terrorism Financing Costs Gender Equality and Security" represents the culmination of research, interviews, surveys, and statistical analysis carried out by the International Human Rights Clinic at Duke Law and the Women Peacemakers Program (WPP) to begin to fill the gap in understanding how responses to terrorism and violent extremism may in practice squeeze women's rights and their defenders between terror and counter-terror.

Steven Watt, Senior Staff Attorney of the Human Rights Program at the American Civil Liberties Union, delivers a lecture titled "Law and Legal Challenges in Addressing Psychologists in the CIA Torture Program." The lecture focuses on the recent ACLU lawsuit Salim v. Mitchell filed against psychologists whose role in designing and overseeing aspects of the post-September 11 detention and interrogation program was recently detailed in The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program (2014).

Visiting scholar Moritz Baumgärtel, a PhD candidate from the Université libre de Bruxelles, gives a lecture titled "Europe's Refugee Crisis and the Rights of Migrants: What Role for Europe's Supranational Courts?" With large numbers of asylum seekers arriving in Europe, to what extent have the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice been used to strengthen the precarious rights of asylum seekers and refugees? Baumgärtel's research focuses on the intersection of migrant rights and human rights in litigation before these European supranational courts.

Klara Skrivankova, head of the Europe Programme and Advocacy Coordinator at Anti-Slavery International, discusses "Trafficking and the European Refugee/Migration Crisis." This event focused on the risks of trafficking in connection with the ongoing European refugee/migration crisis. The event coincided with the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery (December 2).

Rebecca Hauser was just 22 when she and her family were taken from their home in Greece to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. After a year of hard labor, she was moved to Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated in 1945. Mrs. Hauser came to the United States in 1947 and has been volunteering with The Center for Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education of North Carolina to ensure that her experience and those like hers are never forgotten. This discussion also includes Rebecca Hauser's daughter, Bonnie Hauser, and Sharon Halperin, director of the Holocaust Speakers Bureau.

During the Civil War the U.S. confronted a growing population of refugees and a humanitarian crisis. The refugees of the Civil War were predominantly slaves - and increasingly women and children - who fled slavery hoping to get to Union military lines in the South. By the end of the Civil War, tens of thousands had passed through, and many died in, refugee camps. In today's language, they constituted an internally displaced population and simultaneously, a stateless people.

Renowned advocate and scholar Lt Col David J.R. Frakt (U.S. Air Force Reserve) speaks about his representation of Guantanamo detainees. In 2009 in the Mohammed Jawad case, Frakt became the only person to win the pretrial dismissal of military commission charges and win the release of a military commission defendant through habeas corpus, while bringing international attention to the abuse of a juvenile detainee. In 2008, Ali Hamza al Bahlul famously boycotted his trial and is the sole prisoner at Guantanamo serving a sentence from a military commission during the Bush presidency.

The 2015 LENS Conference, Law in the Age of 'Forever War', focuses on the legal issues that accompany warfare in a time when technology, relationships between nations, and the abilities of non-state actors to affect the international stage, are all changing rapidly. Speakers address some of the difficult issues that have come to define modern law as it relates to warfare: targeting, surveillance, home-grown terrorism, intelligence gathering in the digital age, ensuring human rights and civil liberties.

As marriage equality seems poised to take effect nation-wide in America within the immediate future, many advocates of LGBT rights are shifting their energies towards challenging other forms of discrimination faced by LGBT individuals, both domestically and internationally. Duke Law Professor Laurence R. Helfer presents a lecture on the current state of LGBT rights and issues across the globe, drawing from his own well-recognized work in international LGBT advocacy and human rights research. Co-sponsored by OutLaw, the Human Rights Law Society, and the International Law Society.

Juan Méndez, UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, and a Professor of Human Rights Law in Residence at the American University Washington College of Law, gives a talk followed by a Q&A. This lecture is co-sponsored by the International Human Rights Clinic, the Center for International and Comparative Law, the Human Rights Archive at the Rubenstein Library, and the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute.

Karen J. Alter, Professor of Political Science and Law at Northwestern University, delivers a lecture sponsored by Duke's Center for International & Comparative Law. The talk addresses topics from her newly released book, "The New Terrain of International Law: Courts, Politics, Rights."

Recorded on April 15, 2014

Appearing: Laurence R. Helfer (Duke Law), host/introductions ; Karen J. Alter (Northwestern University), speaker.

Jeremy Heimans, co-founder of Purpose and All Out, gives a talk titled "Unlocking People Power: Human Rights and Movement-Building in the 21st Century." This lecture was co-sponsored by the International Human Rights Clinic and the Center for International & Comparative Law.

Recorded on April 7, 2014.

Ann Elizabeth Mayer is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She earned a PhD in History from the University of Michigan, a Certificate in Islamic and Comparative Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and a Juris Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research areas include Islamic law in contemporary Middle Eastern and North African countries and international human rights law, with an emphasis on women's international human rights.

Mohamad Fofanah, a Sierra Leonian human rights lawyer, talks about his experiences with transitional justice following the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone. Expanding beyond the traditional transitional justice mechanisms of court proceedings and truth and reconciliation commissions, Fofanah discusses other methods Sierra Leone used in the post-conflict years, including the work of the Anti-Corruption Commission, as well as efforts to promote child rights issues as a measure of laying the basis for generational reform and conflict prevention.

Recorded on April 15, 2009.

What is the relationship between war crimes and the war on terror? How far can governments go in implementing anti-terrorism policies before they run afoul of international war crimes? When governments go too far, who is to be held accountable, and by whom? Professors David Glazier (Loyola Law School), Madeline Morris, and John Dugard discuss these and other other issues raised by the tension between human rights, the laws of war, and the war on terror.

Recorded on March 24, 2009.

Full title: A Devil's Bargain: War Crimes Accountability & the War on Terror.

Jean-Marie Henckaerts is a Legal Adviser in the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and head of the ICRC's project on customary international humanitarian law. Sponsored by the Center for International & Comparative Law.

Recorded on November 07, 2007.

Full title: The International Committee of the Red Cross Report on International Humanitarian Law & Its Critics.

Appearing: Ralf Michaels, host/introductions ; Jean-Marie Henckaerts (Legal Division, International Committee of the Red Cross), speaker.