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.
WASHINGTON – Longtime human rights advocate and former Human Rights First President and CEO Elisa Massimino has been named executive director of Georgetown University Law Center’s Human Rights Institute.
"We view DHS from very different perspectives, but we both believe that DHS has become seriously out of balance with America’s needs. We need a new vision for the department that prioritizes responding to these needs and takes a broader view of what it means to keep the nation secure," write Elisa Massimino and Rudy deLeon.
"American diplomats have long understood that hypocrisy has a cost, especially for a nation that seeks to champion the ideals of democracy and human rights as the cornerstone of global peace and security," writes Elisa Massimino.
Elisa Massimino worked on a new report from the Center for American Progress on shifting the priorities of the Department of Homeland Security. Rather than focusing on investigative, detention, and law enforcement functions, functions better carried out by the FBI and Bureau of Prisons, DHS should shift toward new values of connecting, communicating, facilitating, welcoming, and helping.
Elisa Massimino introduces Mona Siegel's book "Peace on Our Terms" about the fight for women's rights during World War I in a book review roundtable with the Texas National Security Review.
"Rather than wait for these crises to boil over, the United States can take concrete steps to anticipate and prepare for the kind of forced displacement that is happening in Ethiopia today," write Elisa Massimino and Alexandra Schmitt in Just Security.
"Here’s our overall advice: as a starting point, go big at the White House, where significant change requires no legislation, and thus can be implemented quickly and effectively," write Elisa Massimino and Rob Berschinski on strengthening human rights in the new Administration.
"In the six years since Abdel Fatah al-Sissi assumed the presidency in Egypt, the country has devolved into the deepest human rights crisis it has experienced in decades. In the face of this downward spiral, it’s not surprising that many in the West have stopped paying attention. As more and more activists are exiled or jailed, human rights abuses in Egypt have become a dog-bites-man story," write Elisa Massimino and Neil Hicks.
"The burning human rights problem for the Trump administration," write Elisa Massimino and Alexandra Schmitt, "[is] that too many 'subgroups' — read, women, LGBTQ people, black people, poor people, native peoples — are demanding rights, including (gasp) in 'domestic political discourse.' America’s rights tradition is under attack, Pompeo claimed, by people who have forgotten a fundamental truth: 'America is special. America is good.'"
"From its quick spread across continents, to the disrupted global supply chains for life-saving supplies, to international networks sharing vital information on treatments and cures, the life-and-death connections between people and nations are now in stark relief. But most importantly, the coronavirus is demonstrating how human rights violations left to fester, even in societies far from our own, carry direct costs for all of us," write Elisa Massimino and Alexandra Schmitt.
