Racial Justice Initiative

A group of scholars at an event titled Lost in Transition: Race, Reparations & Environmental Justice — **Lost in Transition: Race, Reparations & Environmental Justice**

The Racial Justice Initiative, directed by the Bernstein Institute’s S. Priya Morley, strives to advance critical thinking about the role of human rights to achieve racial justice and equality. This includes pursuing forms of engagement with civil society and movement leaders that have focused on creating space and opportunities for transnational collaborations and supporting grassroots organizations to participate in international legal and policymaking conversations, advocate for change, and challenge the bounds of international law.

Some of our recent projects, involving NYU Law students, include:

Supporting international justice experts, including the Emergent Justice Collective, in their work to advance the international crime of the slave trade
Providing research and drafting support to Prof. E. Tendayi Achiume, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Racism, and Prof. Christopher Gevers, Director of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at the Wits School of Law, for an amicus intervention to the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights’ forthcoming climate advisory opinion
Preparing legal empowerment materials, including guides for civil society to use UN and regional human rights systems to advance global racial justice
Research and convenings of civil society, academics, and human rights institutional experts related to climate justice and reparations

For more information related to this work, please visit the Transnational Justice Initiatives. This new website is a repository of resources that seek to advance new ways of thinking about law and legal institutions to create more just futures. You will find materials related to the Racial Justice Initiative’s collaboration with the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Racism, Prof. E. Tendayi Achiume to bring anti-colonial and racial justice to the center of legal, policy, and academic work to combat environmental degradation, climate change, and related displacement. In addition, on the site you will find archives of the materials produced during former Special Rapporteur Achiume’s mandate (from 2017-2022) as well as related resources for students, practitioners, and scholars interested in thinking critically about race and human rights.