Our Current Projects

Under the guidance of director Professor Susan Deller Ross and Teaching Fellow Tzili Mor, current Clinic students spend a semester developing “cause lawyering” skills while working as part of a team on an international women’s human rights project with a Clinic partner NGO in African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Swaziland.  Students work closely with local lawyers to develop policy, strategy, and proposed legislation, court papers, or human rights reports to address an important gap in women’s rights.  This year the Fall Clinic is focusing on test case litigation projects in Ghana and Swaziland, while the Spring Clinic will produce human rights reports based on factfinding in Swaziland.

Problems past Clinic students have worked on include:  domestic violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation/cutting, honor crimes, domestic servitude, polygamy, bride price, child marriage, and guardianship laws that subject wives to the authority of their husbands.  They have addressed laws that give husbands the lion’s share of marital property and of property inherited through intestate succession.  They have tackled discriminatory labor laws that prevent women from working at night or in mines, require them to retire earlier than men, and prohibit work without a husband’s consent.  They have challenged the constitutionality of discriminatory intestate succession laws.  They have worked to remedy the lack of effective employment legislation to protect working women against sexual harassment, lower pay, and pregnancy discrimination.  They have also worked on issues of reproductive rights, trafficking in women, and political affirmative action. 

“I learned more about being a lawyer in one semester of the IWHR Clinic

than I have in the rest of law school combined.”

-Alexandros Papanikolaou

 Alex worked on a Nigerian Supreme Court brief for Amina Lawal,

who had been sentenced to death by stoning for zina

("adultery" between a divorced woman and a single man).

 Amina Lawal’s death sentence was overturned on appeal.

 

The Clinic does not have a prescribed set of topic areas on which students and fellows work. Rather, local lawyers and clinic faculty collaboratively choose projects that are responsive to partner NGOs’ priorities and offer Clinic students and fellows the best opportunity to be directly involved in the research, development, and advocacy of women's international human rights.  Although projects and host countries vary from semester to semester, all emphasize the application of international and national women’s human rights standards in the domestic context and all require extensive comparative analysis with such standards in other countries. The Clinic provides students with intensive training in writing and oral presentation skills.

Contingent upon funding, Clinic students and faculty conduct fact-finding trips each spring, working closely with our local partners to develop human rights reports and proposed legislation. 

 

Our factfinding trip to Uganda allowed us to understand how much the issue

involves members of the family and what political context this recommendation is going to go through. ... I

learned everything from actual tangible legal skills to

analytical skills to skills that apply to discussions about culture and tradition

that are so relevant to this historical moment in which we’re living—

when politics, and women’s bodies, and the concept of culture interact.

-Adriana Kertzer

Adriana worked on draft legislation to combat female genital cutting/mutilation in Uganda.

 

By going into the country with a team of students and supervisors devoted to fact-finding and documenting not only the experiences of women who have faced human rights violations, but also the experiences of those working in the legal system and seeking justice for these women, the Clinic fills two critical needs of partner NGOs.

 First, it helps to document women’s human rights violations. 

Secondly, the Clinic helps in documenting key stakeholders’ views on how discriminatory existing laws operate, and their views on proposed legal reforms. 

The Clinic’s work helps the partner NGOs and those who are involved in advocacy and legal reform efforts to undertake evidence-based advocacy.

-Esther Kisyaake

Lecturer of Law, Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda)

Executive Director, Uganda Network on Law, Ethics, and HIV/AIDS

 

The Teaching Fellowship

The IWHRC Clinic offers one two-year graduate fellowship annually for individuals interested in developing their skills as advocates. Fellows aid in deciding on appropriate topics for the clinical course, teaching the clinical course, planning course materials, and supervising students. Fellows also conduct the research, writing, and editing necessary to transform student work into publishable pieces.

Fellows must have excellent organizational, communication, and writing skills. Fellows must must have earned a J.D. from a U.S. university and be members of the D.C. bar, or take steps to apply for membership in the D.C. bar (through examination or waiver) upon being accepted for the position. The next available fellowship will begin in the summer of 2008. To apply, please submit a resume, law school transcript, writing sample, and a detailed statement of interest by December 1, 2007. Materials should be directed to:

Professor Susan Deller Ross, Director

International Women's Human Rights Clinic

Georgetown University Law Center

111 F Street, NW, Suite 334

Washington, D.C. 20001-2095

RE: Fellowship application

 

 

International Women's Human Rights Clinic Speaker Series

To complement the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic’s mission to immerse students in the real and practical challenges women face around the work in trying to realize their human rights,  the Speaker Series invites advocates, practitioners, and scholars to the Law Center to share their first hand experiences and expertise.  Selected speakers apply a gender rights prism to broad human rights concerns and discuss their advocacy tactics. 

The Clinic encourages and welcomes student groups to select and co-sponsor speakers, as well as to design follow up advocacy around the substantive topic of the talk.  The Speakers Series is open to the public.

This Fall 2007 the Clinic will highlight women’s human rights during armed conflict, and examine the often disproportionate impact of conflict on women’s lives.  On October 30, 2007 the clinic along with Amnesty International –GULC section, the International Law Society and the Women of Color Collective, hosted Jerusalem Women Speak: Three Women, Three faiths, One Shared Vision, in conjunction with these women’s US tour facilitated by Partners for Peace. Three women of three faiths relate their experiences in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and their continuing efforts at bridge building and peacemaking, often in the face of general and gender-specific repression and intimidation.  

The three women on the tour this year are:

Wejdan Jaber, a Muslim Palestinian from Gaza;

Abir Kopty, a Christian Palestinian citizen of Israel, and

Hagit Ra’anan, a Jewish Israeli born in Tel Aviv.

For more details about the event and the speakers, please click here.

For more information about Jerusalem Women Speak and Partners for Peace -- a UN-registered NGO, whose mission is to help achieve a just and permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – click here.

In a first page feature, the Georgetown Law Weekly covered the talk, highlighting the speakers’ calls for a stronger role for women in peace negotiations as it is often “women who pay the highest price in the conflict,” yet male leaders continue to be the primary drivers of the political dialogue and views.

           For the full text of the article in the Georgetown Law Weekly (Nov. 6-12, 2007), please click here.

In Spring 2007, the series focused on high impact human rights litigation.  The Clinic  hosted a trailblazing Colombian lawyer, Monica Roa, who spoke about her precedent-setting challenge to the Constitutional Court of Colombia about the state’s failure to protect women’s right to reproductive health.  She highlighted ways to successfully harness constitutional and international law to save women’s lives and discussed the power of high impact litigation where decades of legislative reform had failed. The talk was co-hosted by Alianza del Derecho, the Women of Color Collective, the Women’s Legal Alliance, and Law Students for Choice, with additional sponsorship from the international organization Ipas.         

For more information about the talk please click here.

Marika Maris L’ 07, a Clinic alumna and co-chair of the Women Legal Alliance, covered the well attended event for the Georgetown Law Weekly.  Echoing the sentiments of the many who attended, Ms. Maris marveled at how high impact litigation demonstrates “that international women’s human rights law can change the way people think.”

For the full text of the article in the Georgetown Law Weekly (April 3-9, 2007), please click here.

 

 

Research and Scholarship

In 2006, The Georgetown Journal on Gender and the Law published a special issue commemorating five years of joint fact-finding projects between the IWHRC and its partners LAWA-Ghana, LAW-Uganda, WLAC-Tanzania, and Swaziland’s SWAGAA.  With articles and essays by past and present Clinic faculty, partners, and students, the issue includes:

Fact-Finding as a Lawmaking Tool for Advancing Women's Human Rights
Tamar Ezer and Susan Deller Ross

Reflections on the Contribution of Georgetown's International Women's Human Rights Clinic to Advancing the Protection of Women's Human Rights in Uganda & Tanzania
Esther Kisaakye

Using Fact-Finding to Combat Violence Against Women in Ghana, Uganda, and the United States: Lessons Learned as a Clinic Student, Clinic Supervisor, and Practitioner
Lisa Vollendorf Martin

Child Marriage and Guardianship in Tanzania: Robbing Girls of their Childhood and Infantilizing Women
Tamar Ezer, Kate Kerr, Kara Major, Aparna Polavarapu and Tina Tolentino

Inheritance Law in Uganda: The Plight of Widows and Children
Valerie Bennett, Ginger Faulk, Anna Kovina and Tatjana Eres

Domestic Violence in Ghana: The Open Secret
Nancy Cantalupo, Lisa Vollendorf Martin, Kay Pak and Sue Shin

Inheritance Law in Tanzania: The Impoverishment of Widows and Daughters
Tamar Ezer

The special issue is available for purchase online.

Selected other publications by past and present IWHRC staff include:

Barbara Allen Babcock, Ann E. Freedman, Susan Deller Ross, Wendy Webster Williams, Rhonda Copelon, Deborah Rhode, and Nadine Taub, Sex Discrimination and the Law: History, Practice & Theory (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2d ed. 1996).

Johanna Bond, ed., Voices of African Women:  Women’s Rights in Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania (Carolina Academic Press, 2005).

Johanna Bond, International Intersectionality:  A Theoretical and Pragmatic Exploration of International Women’s Human Rights Violations, 25 Emory Law Journal 71 (2003).

Johanna Bond, The Global Classroom:  International Human Rights Factfinding as Clinical Method, 28 William Mitchell Law Review 317 (2001).

Courtney W. Howland, ed., Religious Fundamentalisms and the Human Rights of Women (New York: St. Martin's Press/London: MacMillan Press, 1999).

Courtney W. Howland, The Challenge of Religious Fundamentalism to the Liberty and Equality Rights of Women:  An Analysis Under the UN Charter, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 231 (1997).

Courtney W. Howland, The Hands-Off Policy and Intramilitary Torts, 71 Iowa Law Review 93 (1985).

Tamar Ezer, A Positive Right to Protection for Children, 7 Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal 1 (2004).

Tamar Ezer, Delivery of Legal Services to Children in the Boston Area, 8 U.C. Davis Journal of Juvenile Law & Policy 95 (2004).

Tamar Ezer, Children's Rights in Israel: An End to Corporal Punishment? 5 Oregon Review of International Law 139 (2003).

Shannon M. Roesler, Women's Human Rights Abuses in the Name of Religion: An Overview, in The Handbook of Women, Psychology, and the Law (Andrea Barnes, ed.) (2005).

Nancy Kaymar Stafford, International Legal Developments in Review: 2004, International Human Rights, 39 International Lawyer 517 (2005) (co-authored with Lawrence G. Albrecht, Benjamin L. Apt, Myra Frazier, Gloria Jean Garland, Sara Ibrahim, Crispian Kirk, Anne Massagee, Cheryl McLandrich, Mary Milano, Kaoru Okuizumi, Anita Raman, Meredith Rathbone, and Anamika Samanta).

Nancy Kaymar Stafford, A Model War Crimes Court:  Sierra Leone, 10 ILSA Journal of International and Comparative Law 117 (2003).