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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

David Tolbert, Ford Foundation Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the Sanford School of Public Policy and former president of the International Center for Transitional Justice, discusses current developments and challenges in the field of transitional justice, providing examples from his work in Colombia, Tunisia, and other contexts. He shares his insights into where the field of transitional justice is heading in the current difficult and challenging political context.

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.

Dr. Christina Cowger, coordinator of North Carolina Stop Torture Now , Catherine Read, Executive Director of the North Carolina Commission on the Inquiry of Torture (NCCIT), Professors Jim Coleman and Robin Kirk (both NCCIT Commissioners), and Professor Jayne Huckerby (an expert witness for, and advisor to, the NCCIT) discuss the work of the NCCIT, a non-governmental and state-level inquiry which recently held public hearings on North Carolina's role in the CIA's post-9/11 rendition, detention, and interrogation program.

Blaine Bookey, the Co-Legal Director at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, discusses "Protecting Asylum-Seeking Women and Children Under Trump." The conversation was moderated by Aya Fujimura-Fanselow, Senior Legal Fellow and Supervising Attorney of Duke Law's International Human Rights Clinic.

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.

"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).