The Human Rights Institute is the focal point of human rights at Georgetown Law.
"The Institute aims to make Georgetown Law a premier training academy for the next generation of human rights advocates by equipping them with the knowledge, skills, and experience they need to tackle today’s pressing human rights problems at home and abroad."
Agnieszka Fryszman (L’96), a partner at Cohen, Milstein, Sellers & Toll, is one of the world’s leading human rights lawyers against corporate abuse.
As founder and chair of the firm’s Human Rights practice group, Agnieszka champions the rights of victims of injustice and abuse against corporate giants and foreign powers. Throughout her legal career, she has brought civil suits on behalf of victims of torture, human trafficking, extrajudicial killings, and forced labor.
We are proud to announce our 2023 Pruckmayr Award winner: Abbey Koenning-Rutherford!
Abbey embodies the spirit of Bettina Pruckmayr through their infectious enthusiasm and tireless dedication to fighting injustice, advancing human rights, and fostering community.
Ecofeminist human rights and environmental lawyer and former Special Rapporteur on Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights at the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights Soledad García Muñoz will join Georgetown Law as the 2023-2024 Robert F. Drinan, S.J., Chair in Human Rights.
Last 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.
