2005-2006 Archive
Organizing Principle 2005-06: Displaced Persons
From the millions of people displaced by the Indian Ocean tsunami to those driven from their homes in Darfur, from the detainees at Guantanamo who have been confined for four years to the three million left homeless by the earthquake in South Asia, the topic of “Displaced Persons” focuses LSHR's attention not on particular disasters but on the human consequences of losing one's home and community. What duties do governments and the international community have towards displaced persons, and what remedies, if any, do the displaced have against those who caused or who are ignoring their plight? In addition to our Symposium on the rights of displaced persons during and after natural disasters, LSHR is focusing its advocacy work and educational events this year on the displaced, and on their economic, social and cultural rights in particular.
Symposium 2005-2006: Displaced Persons
Recent and ongoing humanitarian catastrophes highlight the need for dialogue on the applicability of human rights principles to governments' obligations in this context. An enormous amount of aid has been pledged to victims of the Iranian earthquake in Bam, the Indian Ocean Tsunami, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. One hopes that victims of the earthquake in Kashmir and the mudslides in Guatemala will not be neglected. Yet critics charge that much of the suffering that followed these natural disasters was preventable. Misery and death were exacerbated by a lack of preventative planning and construction, by inadequate evacuations, by bureaucratic inefficiency in distributing aid, by discrimination in aid delivery, and by "reconstruction" efforts that further displaced those left homeless. This Symposium seeks to bring these threads together and to clarify the terms of the debate by focusing on the human rights laws and norms that could guide governmental action and define governmental responsibility following natural disasters. To advance the argument on these contentious issues, we have selected a group of speakers ranging from local and national civil rights advocates, to scholars and international experts on internal displacement and refugee issues, to governmental aid administrators.
It is often assumed that responding to natural disasters is the province of the executive and legislative branches. Given that disaster preparedness programs and aid distribution are matters of life and death, should we begin to think about the consequences of natural disasters in terms of States' obligations to protect human rights? Months after the Indian Ocean tsunami, for instance, key issues remain unresolved, including land ownership, the allocation of reconstruction aid, and ground level re-employment assistance. While the protections afforded "civil and political" human rights are well-known, isn't it time to ask whether governments should be responsible for providing humanitarian aid in ways consonant with economic, social, and cultural rights?
Our symposium's first panel seeks to identify a legal and theoretical framework to address these issues. How, for instance, have the humanitarian norms associated with internally displaced people been implemented in natural disasters? How would U.S. ratification of the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights influence the response to events such as Katrina? How can advocates push normative thinking based on these rights in a country that refuses to recognize them? Is there room for the application of these norms in domestic legal cases? What remedies might be available?
Humanitarian principles demand that individuals not be discriminated against. Following tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes, however, there has been ample evidence of discrimination based on race, class, caste, and status, from Dalits ("Untouchables") in India to African Americans in New Orleans . The second panel will look specifically at non-discrimination in regards to rescue efforts, access to aid, and reconstruction assistance. What are governments' obligations and liabilities regarding such discrimination? What should they be? Should international financial institutions and non-governmental organizations have the responsibility not to acquiesce in the discriminatory provision of aid?
Finally, how can human rights advocates best respond to the man-made fallout from "natural" disasters? What might the effects be of lawsuits based on these rights and norms? How should "natural disaster jurisprudence" develop? Who are potential defendants and what would be the effect of suing them? Would granting economic, social, and cultural rights put the burden on the courts' common law development techniques, taking years to become coherent and comprehensive? Or do advocates first need to take other steps, so as to change the legal climate in which there are so few actionable rights for natural disaster victims?
Advocacy Committee
Philosophy and Function of the Advocacy Committee
The Advocacy Committee is composed of a large body of first-year students supervised by second-year students and LLMs. As law students, we are uniquely positioned to provide certain services towards the promotion of human rights, including:
- Legal research and writing in the form of internal memos, contributions to scholarly articles, or material for amicus briefs
- Policy advocacy in the form of legislative drafting or compiling position statements for issue-based lobbying coalitions
- Public education and training in the form of fact sheets, op-eds, and flyers
- Direct action in the form of letters and petitions, training of legal observers, organizing protests and silent demonstrations before institutions subject to popular pressure
None of these remedies can operate exclusively. Either the advocacy committee will struggle through its own issues of strategy and balance, or it will figure into a larger plan of a particular NGO or coalition that is struggling through them.
Structure : The Advocacy Committee Co-Chairs, including the 1L Co-Chairs, direct and oversee all the activities of the Committee. They are responsible for logistics of meetings and programming that develops the rights-based advocacy skills of the membership. However, each project has its own Project Team, led by its own Project Head. The Project Head and members are responsible for the bulk of the work, which is supervised by a Faculty Sponsor, an NGO Partner, or both (the Advocacy Committee considers quality work products a priority, and any written work for external circulation undergoes a review process). Project Heads and members are also responsible for developing contacts, assessing needs and goals, and coordinating reasonable progress in accord with an agreed upon timeline. Some of this may be initiated by a Committee Co-Chair early in a semester, but projects should be handed over to teams as soon as practicable.
We prefer the team structure to individual research because we believe that the building of a community where discussion of human rights is kept vibrant, critical, and relevant should be complementary to what we learn through our specific assignments. The team structure creates a space for collaborative lawyering that mirrors human rights work in the post-Law School world. It also provides for time to digest the challenges and lessons learned in the process.
We expect there to be and welcome varying levels of experience within a team – there is no single path to a career in human rights, and every individual brings something different to the table. Students may work on more than one project, but they are generally expected to follow each project through to completion once they have committed to it.
There are situations, particularly with respect to short-term projects or those with particularly limited scope, where this proposed structure is less appropriate. Committee Co-Chairs should consult with partners and deviate from this proposal where it makes sense to do so.
Meetings : The Advocacy Committee meets regularly as an entire group once a month on the third Wednesday of the month between the hours of 6 and 8pm . These meetings serve as a time for teams to come together and learn about the progress in other projects, share lessons learned, and brainstorm ideas for moving forward. Project Heads are asked to submit updates before meetings to facilitate discussion. In between monthly meetings, teams meet at their own discretion to coordinate the substantive work of their projects.
Co-Chairs are responsible for introducing articles or exercises to challenge and develop members' understanding of human rights advocacy. To assist in skills-building, the Committee also holds several training sessions throughout the year related to Library Research, Human Rights Traditions and Institutions, International Human Rights Law, and Participatory and Direct Action Methods.
For NGO Partners : One of the foundational purposes of the Advocacy Committee is to support the work and build the capacity of NGO Partners. For this reason, we welcome the proposal of projects from NGOs, even those with no prior experience working with LSHR or any law student group before. Collaborating on a project is a fruitful way of generating interest in your organization or a specific issue you believe deserves more attention by the human rights community, and also for recruiting students for term-time and summer internships with the confidence that their work is reliable. We ask only that an individual at the NGO commit to being available to develop a project proposal and supervising the students. It is discouraging for students, once mobilized and ready to be of service, to have little contact and guidance from advocates in the field.
http://www.law.nyu.edu//studentorganizations/lawstudentsforhumanrights/20052006archiveorganizingprincipleadvocacycommitteeandsymposium/index.htm