
Georgetown Law’s Human Rights Institute partners with Nobel Laureate to pursue justice for Yazidi community
September 18, 2023Last January, Alexis Shanes, L’24, found herself in Erbil, a city in Northern Iraq. “It was the most astonishing experience, one I never thought I would be able to have in law school,” she said.
Shanes was one of a dozen students in Georgetown Law’s Human Rights Institute (HRI)’s Human Rights Advocacy in Action Practicum, where every academic year students get a chance to work firsthand practicing human rights law. In last year’s practicum, HRI partnered with Nadia’s Initiative, an organization founded by 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad, a survivor of the Islamic State’s genocidal attack on the Yazidis of Sinjar, an area in northwestern Iraq near Syria.