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Fact-Finding Missions

The International Women's Human Rights Clinic regularly engages in fact-finding missions and related human rights advocacy.  For more on the clinic's activities, click here.  To read about the clinic's fact-finding work in the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law, click here.

Ecuador
In 2006, the Human Rights Institute supported a group of students engaged in challenging the "material support" bar to asylum in the United States.   The material support bar, which prohibits persons who have offered material support to terrorists from gaining asylum in the United States, defines both “material support” and “terrorist” broadly, and does not include an exception for persons who give such support involuntarily.  Students organized a fact-finding trip to Ecuador, where they interviewed approximately 70 Colombian refugees, UNHCR officials, Ecuadorian and U.S. government officials, and human rights and refugee advocates to determine the effect that the material support bar was having on refugees.  Upon their return to Washington DC, they compiled their findings into a report, which they presented to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and Congressional leaders.  They also spoke to journalists, who used the stories the students had collected in editorials and articles in The New York Times and elsewhere.  To read the full report, click here.