2023-2024

Debayan Gupta, LLM’23 will be working with the South Rupununi District Council (SRDC) based in Region 9, Guyana. SRDC is the collective representative body of Wapichan people in Region 9 and have been working to ensure that any development which takes place on their territory is in line with their vision for the territory. To that end, they have recently started a community paralegal program, to do legal training and inform people about their rights under domestic and international law and share information about developments in Guyana which will have impacts on the Rupununi. Debayan will be working with the community paralegal program to secure their land rights, protect their natural resources, and ensure participation in decision-making processes in Guyana.

Debayan holds an LL.M. from the New York University School of Law, focusing on international human rights law and critical legal empowerment. During his time at NYU, he was a Student Advocate at the Global Justice Clinic working with the Guyana Indigenous Land Rights and Earth Defense Project in the Fall Semester and continued working as a Research Assistant in the Spring Semester. During the academic year he also worked as a Human Rights Scholar with the Land and Housing work stream of the Prevention Project and will continue working with them in the summer as a Junior Research Scholar. In the Spring Semester he was part of the newly formed Legal Empowerment and Judicial Independence Clinic wherein he assisted Margaret Satterthwaite in her mandate as the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers.

After graduating with a B.A. LL.B. (hons) from National Law University Odisha, India in 2017, Debayan joined the Centre for Policy Research Environmental Justice Program in New Delhi as a Legal Research Associate. During his five years at CPR, he worked closely with the field teams and local communities affected by the legal non-compliance of developmental and infrastructure projects in districts of Karnataka and Chhattisgarh by using a legal empowerment approach. He has also co-authored several op-eds and reports on issues related to land and environmental justice.

2022-2023

Stephanie Williams JD ’22 is working as a Helton Fellow with Missing Voices and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) in Nairobi, Kenya as well as several other sub-Saharan African countries. Missing Voices is a coalition of civil society organizations that seeks to end extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances in Kenya. EAAF is a non-governmental organization, headquartered in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that applies methodologies and techniques from different branches of forensic sciences to aid in the investigation, search, recovery, and identification of missing persons. As a Helton Fellow, Stephanie will be working on documentation and investigation of serious human rights abuses and other grave violations of international law in Kenya, Central African Republic, and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

At NYU, Stephanie was a CHRGJ Human Rights Student Scholar with the Prevention Project, a two-time International Law and Human Rights Fellow with the UN Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict and the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, and served as a student advocate in NYU’s Global Justice Clinic, where she worked on projects concerning serious human rights abuses, extraordinary rendition, and human rights investigations. In addition, Stephanie was a researcher on NYU’s International Criminal Court Moot Court Competition Team, an extern with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and a research assistant to Professor James G. Stewart in relation to international criminal law, conflict, and transitional justice. She was a staff editor on the Journal of International Law and Politics.

Before attending NYU, Stephanie worked in various capacities with the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (UNMICT); the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR); Amnesty International USA; the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, as a research assistant on starvation as a war crime; and Hillary for America. She holds a BA in Political Science from Brown University and an MA in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

2021-2022

Rachel Riegelhaupt ’21 will start her Helton Fellowship in September 2021 at Equal Rights Beyond Borders, an NGO offering legal representation to asylum seekers in Greece. Rachel’s project will support Equal Rights Beyond Borders in operating the first legal-aid office for asylum seekers on the island of Kos, where thousands of asylum seekers have been overlooked. Until recently, only three NGOs and a single lawyer have been offering humanitarian support on Kos. Through her project, Rachel will work to address this urgent yet under-resourced situation by: (1) representing asylum seekers on Kos in their applications for asylum and family reunification under Dublin III; (2) spearheading a new project to increase available protections for refugee survivors of sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) on Kos, while also advocating for authorities to transfer SGBV survivors to Mainland Greece so that they may apply for humanitarian protection in relative safety; (3) organizing legal-empowerment trainings for groups of asylum seekers on Kos so that they may better understand the convoluted asylum process that will determine their futures and advocate for themselves when necessary; (4) developing advocacy reports related to this fieldwork in order to pressure local and regional actors to enact policy change.

At NYU, Rachel was a student intern at the Central American Refugee Center through NYU’s Immigrant Defense Clinic, an Abby Lyn Gillette Fellow at Sanctuary for Families’ Immigration Intervention Project, and an International Law and Human Rights Fellow at the International Women’s Rights Action Watch. She assisted asylum seekers with their immigration related casework through the New Sanctuary Coalition’s weekly asylum clinic, and represented gender-based violence survivors through Sanctuary for Families’ Courtroom- and Campus Advocates Projects. She was a Research Assistant for Professor Ashley Armstrong and a student author for the Journal of Legislation and Public Policy. She served as President of NYU Law’s Immigrant Rights Project and Events Chair of NYU’s International Law Society.

Prior to NYU, Rachel worked with the UN Refugee and Migrant Response Team in Greece’s Education in Emergencies team, and then advocated on behalf of rural Palestinian communities in Area C of the West Bank through a 2017-18 Dorot Fellowship. Rachel holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University, where she dual-majored in International Studies and Sociology with a concentration in Global Social Change and Development, and an MA from Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, where she focused much of her research on the prevention of conflict-related sexual violence.

2020-2021

Beenish Riaz ’20 will be working as a Helton Fellow for the Aurat Foundation this year. Before coming to law school, she completed her undergraduate studies in political science and English with a focus on human rights and humanitarianism with honors from Macalester College. From Kenya and Pakistan, she has a passion for international human rights law and has worked at many human rights organizations both in the United States and abroad. She is also a creative writer and has written and published novellas and poems. At law school, Beenish was an international law and human rights fellow at Justice Project Pakistan, an ILLJ scholar, and the Book Annotations editor for the Journal of International Law and Politics. She also served as a teacher’s assistant, a research assistant, and a student advocate at the Global Justice Clinic for two years.

Her Helton project addresses the pervasive problem of violence against women in Pakistan. It takes a twofold approach to change. She begins with participatory action research involving interviewing a broad and diverse cross-section of women, community leaders, policymakers, and ministry officials and using focus groups with men and women to identify why and where certain laws on violence against women fail in implementation and practice and what might help. Following the ethos of participatory action, project participants are key co-thinkers with their lived struggles informing any knowledge of the deficiencies in the laws and any recommendations for change. The second part of the project uses this research to fuel continuing mobilization of women through legal and policy advocacy, demanding state responsiveness at the local, national, and international levels and attempting to shift societal attitudes including by using the media.

2019-2020

Jamie Kessler JD ’19 will be an Arthur Helton Human Rights Fellow at Equal Rights Beyond Borders in Chios, Greece. As a Helton Fellow, Jamie will be working with asylum seekers applying for asylum in the European Union and researching conditions for LGBTQIA asylum seekers in Greece. 

While at NYU Law, Jamie interned at Catholic Migration Services in Brooklyn, New York and was an International Law and Human Rights Fellow at the UNHCR in Amman, Jordan. She was also a student in the LGBTQ Rights Externship where she worked with Brooklyn Legal Services’ LGBTQ/HIV Advocacy United and the Immigrant Defense Clinic where she worked with The Legal Aid Society’s Immigration Law Unit. 

S. Priya Morley LLM ’19 is a Helton Fellow with IMUMI (Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración), a civil society organization based in Mexico City that promotes the rights of migrant women in Mexico, whether they are staying in, transiting through, or returned to the country from the United States. As a Helton Fellow, Priya is designing and supervising a year-long research project, including qualitative interviews and desk research, on the experience of Black migrant women (from Africa and the Caribbean) in Mexico.

Priya completed an LLM in International Legal Studies as a Vanderbilt Medalist, Transitional Justice Scholar, and Human Rights Scholar. After graduation, she worked in legal empowerment and migration with the Global Justice Clinic and Bernstein Institute for Human Rights and as an International Law and Human Rights Fellow with the UN Team of Experts on Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict.

Before attending NYU, Priya worked in Toronto as a litigator and judicial law clerk. She also has experience working with civil society organizations in Canada, Kenya, Germany, and Mexico on women’s and children’s rights, sexual violence, migration, and human rights education. She earned LLB and BCL (common law and civil law) degrees from McGill University and a BA in International Relations from the University of British Columbia.

2017-2018

Joana Nabuco LLM '17 will start her Helton fellowship in September 2017 at Conectas Human Rights, a non-governmental and not-for-profit organization based in São Paulo, Brazil. Joana’s Helton fellowship project focuses on the fulfillment of the right to an effective remedy in the context of the Doce River disaster, in which the failure of a mining tailings dam affected more than 3 million people, endangered 400 species, and caused the release of 32 million cubic meters of toxic residue into one of Brazil’s main river basins. Over a year after the disaster, there is still no adequate remedy for the affected communities. The programs that the companies are currently developing are insufficient to repair the damage and to avoid future harm and most of the survivors are still suffering from health problems and the risk of further contamination. Those who were forcedly displaced are lodged in temporary accommodation with no clear indication of when they will return to the rural area.

The main component of Joana’s project involves the development of a comprehensive report assessing the judicial and non-judicial remedy mechanisms available to the survivors of the disaster against international standards on the right to an effective remedy. The study will be presented in international forums, such as the 2017 United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights, which will focus on the issue of access to remedy for business-related human rights abuses. In addition, Joana also intends to engage in strategic domestic litigation seeking compensation for the survivors of the Doce River case. This will include mapping and analyzing strategic pending lawsuits to identify what kinds of legal support Conectas can provide to the ongoing efforts undertaken by public authorities in Brazil.

At NYU, Joana was the Vice-President of the Brazilian Legal Society and a member of the Global Justice Clinic, in which she worked drafting strategies to hold corporate and government actors accountable for the negative effects of mining activity in Guyana, Ghana and in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Prior to the LL.M., Joana worked as a lawyer at Binenbojm, Gama and Carvalho Britto Advocacia, a law firm specialized in impact public interest litigation and strategic advocacy on topics related to constitutional and administrative law, such as freedom of expression and anti-corruption.

Shreya Rastogi LLM '17 will be working with the Centre on the Death Penalty at National Law University in New Delhi. The Centre was established in August 2014 with the aim to undertake new areas of research regarding capital punishment in India, ensure access to effective legal representation for prisoners on death row, and explore new fronts for public discourse on the death penalty.

During her project, Shreya will focus on developing a robust DNA forensics practice at the Centre and advocate for more reliable use of such evidence in India. While the use of DNA profiling in criminal cases, especially those concerning rape, has increased over the last decade, its rollout has been extremely poor and bears grave consequences for criminal defendants. The law currently does not provide any guidance on how these samples must be collected, stored or tested. In the absence of national standards for testing, quality assurance and accreditation, government-run forensic laboratories follow different procedures and have little oversight. Further, the DNA reports submitted in criminal cases do not contain any statistical analysis of the ‘match’ obtained between the crime scene evidence and the suspect’s DNA profile. As per the criminal procedure, forensic experts who conduct these examinations may also be exempted from testifying during trial. Due to these factors, DNA evidence is rarely challenged and leads to criminal convictions for which defendants may be sentenced to long prison terms or even the death penalty. As part of this project, Shreya will engage with forensic laboratories in India to understand the procedures followed by them during DNA examinations. Through these efforts, she seeks to compare the forensic practices in India which those followed in other jurisdictions and analyse their compliance with international standards.  She will also network with forensic consultants to discuss the emerging complexities in DNA science and create training materials for defense lawyers to effectively engage with such evidence.

At NYU, Shreya was a CHRGJ student scholar and research assistant to Professor Philip Alston in his mandate as Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. Prior to her LLM at NYU, Shreya was the Deputy Director of the Death Penalty Research Project at National Law University Delhi and one of the founding members of the Centre on the Death Penalty. 

2016-2017

Patricia Shnell ‘16 is working with Legal Resources Centre (LRC) in Cape Town, South Africa. The LRC is South Africa’s largest public interest, human rights law clinic. In addition to bringing strategic and constitutional litigation on a number of different subject areas; the organization also serves pro-bono clients through a walk-in clinic, open five days a week. The Cape Town office sees a large number of refugees through the clinic.

Kate Taylor LLM '16 completed the Helton Fellowship in Myanmar at EarthRights International (ERI) – a non-profit non-governmental organization that combines both legal and grassroots approaches in defense of human rights and the environment.

During her Helton Fellowship, Kate undertook legal and policy advocacy for ERI. This involved coordinating civil society efforts to reform Myanmar's investment law and regulations, attempting to embed respect for human rights and environmental sustainability into Myanmar's investment regime.

Kate was also given the opportunity to collaborate with local lawyers and community organizers on human rights and environmental campaigns throughout Myanmar. She worked in partnership with the Dawei Pro Bono Lawyers Network to pursue a number of judicial and non-judicial advocacy strategies with communities harmed by mining operations in southern Myanmar, including appellate litigation, publishing human rights reports, public participation in EIA processes, and engaging with the complaints mechanism of the Thai National Human Rights Commission.

Kate completed an LLM (International Legal Studies) at NYU, where she was a CHRGJ Human Rights Scholar, and was awarded the Jerome D. Lipper Award for Distinction in the International Legal Studies Program. During her time at NYU, Kate was a clinical student in the Global Justice Clinic, working on human rights and justice in Haiti's mining sector. She went on to publish work on community-led accountability of development finance in Haiti's gold mining sector.

Prior to attending NYU, Kate was a legal fellow at the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, pursuing UN accountability for the Haitian cholera epidemic. She worked for three years as an academic researcher in Australia, focusing on access to justice for mining-affected communities throughout Asia. She will continue her passion for interdisciplinary research on international human rights law, assuming a role as a research scholar with the Bernard and Audre Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas's School of Law in Austin.