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Real Cases. Real Experience.

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Human Rights Clinic

Clinic Projects

The Situation ofthe Texas-Mexico Border Wall

Advocating human rights in the southern border of Texas*

As part of the working group on Human Rights and the Border Wall, students wrote a memo exploring possible areas for human rights advocacy in front of the Inter-American Commission on behalf of a coalition of border residents opposed to the construction of the wall between the U.S. and Mexico. In June 2008, the UT Working Group published a series of papers documenting and analyzing the human rights impact of the construction by the United States of a wall on the Texas/Mexico border. The Working Group submitted these papers during a public hearing convened by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The paper explored the violations on the part of the United States Government of the right to property and non-discrimination held by residents of the Texas Rio Grande Valley and was written by the students.

The Cost of Gold

Ghana

The Human Rights Clinic at The University of Texas School of Law has documented the effects of gold mining on Ghanaians living in the Tarkwa area in the Western Region of Ghana. The Clinic went to Ghana in October of 2009, partnering with Center for Public Interest Law at UT and the Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM) in Ghana to survey the area and conduct interviews. The resulting report, The Cost of Gold: Communities Affected by Mining in the Tarkwa Region of Ghana, became public in the Fall of 2010.

Swimming Against the Current

Students from the Human Rights Clinic traveled to Costa Rica in the spring of 2010 to investigate the proposed creation of the largest hydroelectric project of its kind in Central America and its impact on the indigenous Teribe people. In violation of international human rights law, the Costa Rican government is proceeding without the consultation with and the free, prior and informed consent of the Teribe people who live on the proposed site. The Human Rights Clinic published the following report in English and in Spanish:

Press Releases:

Abra Pampa: a Community Polluted, a Community Ignored

As the result of a semester-long research project (including a fact-finding mission in Argentina), the Clinic produced the report “Abra Pampa: a Community Polluted, a Community Ignored,” documenting the lead pollution by a smelting plant and its impact on Abra Pampa, an indigenous community in northern Argentina. Based on the findings of the Clinic, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and several U.N. Special Rapporteurs requested information from the Argentine government on the plan to remedy the situation and provide health care to the inhabitants of Abra Pampa.

Reports and Executive Summaries

Where do our cases and projects come from?

clinic cases map

Past Clinical Projects

Background Paper for the UN Independent Expert on Minority Issues (Spring 2009)

  • The Clinic prepared a paper for the United Nations Independent Expert on Minority Issues to facilitate one of her country’s missions. The Clinic researched the legal, social, economic, and political status of several particular minority groups in the country.

Disputes among minority groups: UN Independent Expert on Minority Issues (Fall 2009)

  • The United Nations Independent Expert on Minority Issues asked the Clinic to prepare a brief on the dispute between two minority groups. The Clinic researched the historical background of the dispute, the legal arguments and current situation. The document contains an analysis of the dispute based on the human rights framework and proposes different courses of action to the UN Independent Expert.

Choosing a forum for the Protection of Women’s Rights

  • Clinic students are collaborating with the International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW AP) in the production of a manual intended to help women’s rights advocacy groups choose the most effective international forum to bring their claims. The students are researching the case law of various U.N. bodies as well as the Inter-American, European, and African systems.

Collective Reparations in Cambodia

  • The Clinic worked with the International Center of Transitional Justice (ICTJ) to compose a series of memoranda to address the experiences of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to secure collective reparations. The ICTJ used the memoranda in its work with the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) to ensure collective reparations for victims of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Corporate Complicity and Legal Accountability

  • The Clinic conducted a follow-up project on the three-volume report on corporate complicity and legal accountability released by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). The Clinic researched corporate complicity cases in the Americas to determine how courts are dealing with claims seeking civil, criminal, and constitutional remedies for the harms produced by companies’ complicity with gross human rights violations.

Documenting and reconstructing historical memory and access to information: The Ecuadorian Truth Commission*

  • Students worked with the Ecuadorian Truth Commission and with the National Security Archives to obtain the release of classified U.S. documents on Ecuador. These documents informed the Ecuadorian Truth Commission while they investigated alleged human rights abuses over three decades, particularly during the administration of Ecuadorian President Leon Febres Cordero. Students also researched the pursuit and use of U.S. declassified materials by different truth commissions in Latin America.

Mining and Human Rights in Ghana

  • The Clinic is working with the Center for Public Interest Law (CEPIL) to develop a brief to challenge the status quo established by Ghana regarding how mining companies and the concessions they receive impact the land rights of affected communities. Students conducted field work in order to gather first-hand testimony from the citizens of these communities.

OAS Draft Inter-American Convention against Racism

Pre-trial Detention and Right to Health in Kenya

  • The Clinic developed a litigation strategy to address the health situation of people in pre-trial detention in Kenya. Working with the Justice Initiative of Open Society, Clinic students researched factual and legal issues and possible venues to challenge the human rights abuses in detention facilities.

Prosecuting former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori for human rights abuses*

  • Clinic students wrote an amicus brief for the trial against Peru’s former president, Alberto Fujimori, whose charges included human rights violations for three separate cases of massacres and kidnappings. The students argued that two of the cases, the Barrios Altos massacre and the disappearance and later killings of the Universidad de La Cantuta students and professor, constituted crimes against humanity. The brief was quoted by the Peruvian court that convicted Fujimori.

Protecting collective rights and challenging racial discrimination: Quilombos in Brazil*

  • Students supported NGOs working on a petition filed with the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. The Clinic concentrated on land rights and racial discrimination issues for the Quilombo community of Marambaia. The community, which was formed between 1532 and 1888 by runaway slaves, has been subject to a number of increasingly strict restrictions imposed by the Navy (which was awarded jurisdiction in 1971) under the widely abused pretext of military interest. The petition was filed in 2009.

Protecting health rights and challenging environmental injustice, Abra Pampa, Argentina

  • As the result of a semester-long research project (including a fact-finding mission in Argentina), the Clinic produced the report “Abra Pampa: a Community Polluted, a Community Ignored,” documenting the lead pollution by a smelting plant and its impact on Abra Pampa, an indigenous community in northern Argentina. Based on the findings of the Clinic, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and several U.N. Special Rapporteurs requested information from the Argentine government on the plan to remedy the situation and provide health care to the inhabitants of Abra Pampa.

Right to Food in Yemen

  • Clinic students prepared a report on legal, institutional, and factual issues related to the right to food, in particular how policies and programs provided by the State secure or hamper this right. The report will be presented to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, the Yemen Government, NGOs, and other inter-governmental organizations.

Securing labor rights in rural Guatemala*

  • Students prepared a report to address the fact that rural employers are often not disciplined for not complying with legally-binding court orders in Guatemala. While the labor courts have vindicated the majority of rural workers’ claims against employers, their decisions are not enforced and frivolous appeals are not dismissed. The findings of the report were presented in a public hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Supporting litigation of Garífunas lands claims at the IACHR

  • The Clinic has worked with the attorney representing the Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (the Fraternal Black Honduran Organization, or OFRANEH) in support of their case against Honduras pending in front of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The Garífunas Communities have suffered through the State’s failure to protect their traditional lands, and now the very existence of these Communities is endangered.

Strengthening the Rapporteurship on the Rights of the Child

  • Save the Children Sweden has asked the Clinic to prepare a document to strengthen the Rapporteurship on the Rights of the Child of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) by addressing all aspects of the work and structure of the Rapporteurship. Clinic students surveyed the activities and output of the Rapporteurship and summarized publications, reports, and litigation. The final document contains a series of recommendations to the IACHR to improve, expand, strengthen, and redefine the work of the Rapporteurship.

Using international law to fulfill orders by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights*

  • For one of the first and leading cases decided by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the prosecutor investigating the disappearance of one of the victims received a legal memo prepared by the students analyzing the different legal arguments to reopen the criminal investigation.

Projects marked with * represent projects completed by students enrolled in the Fall 2008 Human Rights Advocacy class, the predecessor to the Human Rights Clinic.

Work Highlights

Coverage of the Human Rights Clinic's work