Courses

    This year-long experiential seminar is designed to support students participating in the Human Rights Institute/Georgetown Human Rights Action fact-finding project. These projects give students an opportunity to work as human rights investigators—researching a human rights problem in depth, conducting extensive interviews on the subject, drafting a comprehensive report on their findings, and engaging in related advocacy. Through this course, students will gain the substantive background and skills needed to carry out this work.

Each year, Georgetown Human Rights Action and the Human Rights Institute identify a new topic on which to work. In 2009-2010, the selected topic is Access to Essential Medicines in the Dominican Republic: Trade-Related Barriers. As such, the 2009-2010 seminar will analyze how trade agreements impact people’s access to medicines, looking in particular at the effects of the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA). In the fall, students will learn about the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), TRIPS flexibilities, the Doha Declaration, and the history of the access to medicines movement. We will discuss how access to medicines is a human rights issue, analyze DR-CAFTA, discuss U.S. trade policy, and learn about new incentive mechanisms in this field. The class will also cover fact-finding skills and methodology, including project design, question development, and interviewing skills. In January 2010, we will travel as a group to the Dominican Republic to conduct interviews on this subject. Upon our return, students will work on drafting their report and engaging in advocacy surrounding their findings. There will be four 3.5 hour class sessions in the spring semester that will help guide students through these processes; sessions will cover topics such as report writing, administrative advocacy, international advocacy, legislative advocacy, and messaging/media outreach. Over the year, students will be expected to devote an additional 100 hours outside of class time to this project; all students must submit a record of this time.

This is a five credit course. Two credits will be awarded for the two-hour weekly seminar in the fall; one credit for the field work in the fall semester; one credit for the four class sessions in the spring semester; and one credit for field work in the spring semester.

The seminar portion of the course will be graded. The two credits of field work are mandatory pass/fail and count toward the 6 credit pass/fail limit. Grading for all credits will occur at the end of the spring semester. The letter grade will be based on a joint pre-mission memo and final report, individual assignments, and co-teaching a class session.