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November 23, 2023

Geneva, Switzerland

In advance of China’s Universal Periodic Review — a human rights process to which all countries are subjected on  rotating basis — the Leitner Center provided a stakeholder submission focusing on the rights of marginalized migrants in Hong Kong. This will be the fourth cycle of review for China; the Leitner Center previously submitted a report for China’s review in 2018.

While civic space in general in Hong Kong has been decreasing since the introduction of the National Security Law (NSL) in 2020, marginalized groups are especially vulnerable to limits on fundamental rights. The Leitner Center’s submission focuses on marginalized migrants, specifically: migrant domestic workers (MDWs), people seeking international protection (refugees/ non-refoulement claimants), detained migrants, and children of migrant backgrounds.

This submission was based on consultation with key stakeholders on the ground in Hong Kong, and will expand on its findings in a forthcoming report: Unseen Struggles: Addressing Migrant Rights in Hong Kong.

The Leitner Center urges states to focus on the following key recommendations during China’s UPR for implementation in Hong Kong:

• Migrant Domestic Workers: Reform employment regulations to eliminate the “two-week” rule and “live-in” rule, align minimum hourly wage for MDWs with other workers, raise the minimum allowable wage and food allowance to adequate levels, and eliminate any requirements that prevent MDWs from leaving abusive employers or restrict their access to financial services. 
• Refugees / non-refoulement claimants: Recognize and protect people fleeing persecution as asylum seekers and refugees by extending application of the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol to Hong Kong, and granting protection, residence permits, and other rights in accordance with international law. 
• Migrant detention: Introduce a time limit on immigration detention in line with international standards; establish robust monitoring mechanisms to safeguard detainee rights; implement community-based alternatives to immigration detention; and prohibit detention of people at heightened risks of harm or prolonged arbitrary immigration detention, including children, pregnant women, survivors of trafficking or torture, LGBTQI+ individuals, and stateless people.  
• Migrant children: Grant residence permits to asylum-seeking and refugee children; reform laws which contribute to children of migrant domestic workers being separated from their mothers; ensure all migrant children can access essential support, appropriate education, and all their rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international law.  

The UPR is set for early 2024. States are gathering in Geneva next week for the pre-session to the review.

(New York, USA and Brussels, Belgium, September 20, 2023) – The Leitner Center for International Law and Justice released a new report today examining the role that non-state entities played in coordinating support and humanitarian evacuations for Afghans in the midst of foreign military withdraw from Afghanistan in August 2021. A project supported by four Fordham Law students in the 2022-2023 Crowley Program, and with support from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) Rule of Law in Asia Programme, the research involved over a year of desk research and legal analysis as well as more than 40 interviews of private individuals, NGOs, lawyers, advocates, aid workers, and veterans, all of whom responded to requests for assistance to evacuate Afghan civilians. The report was launched at a hybrid event with a physical launch at the KAS offices in Brussels.

After the Taliban’s capture of Kabul on August 15, 2021, thousands of Afghan citizens gathered at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) seeking evacuation. The unexpectedly swift resumption of Taliban control meant widespread fear and panic among groups including former government officials, human rights defenders, journalists, the legal community, people from religious and ethnic minorities, the LGBTQI community, those who had worked for foreign governments and their organizations, and many others. The ensuing chaos at HKIA underscored the lack of preparation by foreign States and out of this confusion—compounded by an ISIS-K attack at HKIA on August 26, 2021—scores of volunteers from across the world rallied in response to requests for assistance to evacuate Afghan civilians.

The new report, “The World Simply Gave Up”: International Law and the Role of Non-State Entities in Humanitarian Evacuations in Afghanistan, provides a comprehensive review of International Human Rights Law (IHRL), International Refugee Law (IRL) and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to document and examine the experiences of those volunteers. It seeks to shed light on the lived realities of evacuation processes; and the gaps that have been exposed by these experiences in terms of applicable laws, policies, and practices. Finally, it attempts to identify a series of guidelines to implement in advance of future instances where evacuations of civilians in the context of conflict may be necessary.

The Leitner Center came to this work as one of those non-state entities seeking to help coordinate information around humanitarian evacuations in August 2021, and Fordham Law students provided research for legal pathways into countries that evacuating Afghans could travel to, contributing to the PILnet Afghan Legal Aid and Pathways. As the evacuation chaos unfolded, it was clear that critical assessment and accounting for the failures on the part of State actors in Afghanistan was needed—even while global attention shifted to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. The research and resulting report aims to record the history of this period and the stories of those affected by conflict and crisis. It aims to identify recommendations that improve on policies and processes to prevent similar failures in the future.

Download the report here.

New York, NY (January 5, 2023) – The Leitner Center for International Law and Justice congratulates our colleague and Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, Professor Gay McDougall,  as recipient of the first Nelson Mandela Award given by the International Human Rights Section of the  Association of American Law Schools (AALS) . The award is presented in recognition of her work  as an outstanding law teacher and scholar who has “made an exceptional contribution to International Human Rights.” As always, we are immensely proud to work with Professor McDougall.

Professor McDougall will accept the award at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Schools in San Diego, South California on, January 7. For those unable to attend in person, a zoom invite has been arranged, as follows:

Date: Saturday, January 7
Time: 12 p.m. PT/ 9 a.m. ET

Link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85294739514?pwd=cGJJcTc2cGxENjg1TCswZmh2TjRDdz09
Password:
BAVender*5010

Below is the text of her commendation profile, provided courtesy of the International Human Rights Section of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS):

Few embody the values and spirit of Nelson Mandela as does Professor McDougall. After graduating from high school, she was the first African American student to integrate Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia.  After obtaining her J.D. and LL.M. and gaining legal experience, she worked on eliminating the apartheid system in South Africa. A South African publication explained what she did:

“Prof McDougall was perhaps most noted for her role in loosening the grip of apartheid. She led the Southern African Project for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, where her tireless efforts challenged those who wanted to keep apartheid intact.  Following the country’s liberation in 1994, Prof McDougall spent considerable time inside South Africa, helping to dismantle apartheid laws and assisted in overseeing the first democratic election in 1994. [She was one of five international members of South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission, which successfully organized and administered that country’s first non-racial elections, which saw the election of Nelson Mandela.] She assisted thousands of political prisoners in South Africa and Namibia. In recognition of her tireless opposition to apartheid, Prof McDougall was invited to stand next to Nelson Mandela as he cast his ballot in the historical election that made him South Africa’s first democratically elected President.”

As Special Rapporteur to the UN Subcommission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Professor McDougall presented a groundbreaking study on the issue of systematic rape and sexual slavery practices in armed conflict, calling for international legal standards for the prosecution of such acts.

She was the first person that the UN Human Rights Commission (now the UN Human Rights Council) appointed to the position of Independent Expert on Minority Issues. She was the first American to serve as a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and was reappointed last year by Secretary of State Antony Blinken as a member of that highly respected Committee.  The Committee monitors member state compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. (Deciding to appoint no one to this important human rights body, the Trump administration had refused to reappoint her to that position.)

Professor McDougall also established a non-state organization, the Commission on Independence for Namibia, made up of 31 distinguished policymakers, to thwart then-apartheid South Africa’s aggressive aims towards that country. She played a leadership role in the UN Third World Conference against Racism, held in Durban in 2001.  In addition to her work with the United Nations, she served for over a decade as the executive director of Global Rights, an NGO, which collaborated with human rights advocates in ten countries around the world to develop their strategies for justice.

Professor McDougall graduated from Yale Law School and has an LL.M. from the London School of Economics in Public International Law. She also worked as an associate at Debevoise, Plimpton, Lyons & Gates for two years before joining the National Conference of Black Lawyers as general counsel and later pursuing other public interest law positions.

Since 2018, she has been a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Fordham Law School. She had previously taught at Georgetown Law School as the Father Robert F. Drinan Visiting Professor in Human Rights, again at Fordham as the Mulligan Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Law, and at the Washington College of Law as a Distinguished Scholar in Residence. Her book, The First United Nations Mandate on Minority Issues, published by Brill, covers her work as the first UN Independent Expert on these issues.

In 1999, Professor McDougall was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Genius Fellowship for her work on behalf of international human rights; in 2011, she received the Butcher Medal from the American Society of International Law for her lifetime advocacy for civil and human rights; and in 2015, the Government of South Africa gave her the Order of O.R. Tambo Medal, their national medal of honor for non-citizens, for her contributions to ending apartheid.

          We are honored to present the Nelson Mandela Award to Gay McDougall.

November 23, 2021 – The State of Kuwait has made laudable progress in combating domestic violence through its implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 5 (“SDG 5”) on gender equality and women empowerment and by passing its first domestic violence legislation in August 2020. However, many victims/survivors still have limited access to services to address the detrimental consequences of domestic violence. In development with Kuwaiti partners, the Leitner Clinic designed a guide to help Kuwait achieve the objectives of SDG 5 and effectively implement its new domestic violence legislation. Through a non-carceral approach, the guide focuses on strengthening Kuwait’s capacity to prevent and respond to domestic violence by improving existing services, providing recommendations for new services, and training non-punitive state agencies.

The guide was researched and drafted by Leitner Clinic students Heather Cameron, Charly Frohwitter, Adriana Kranjac, Evan Richardson, and Jacob Setton. The project was co-supervised by SJD candidates Esra Alamiri and Maroun Maalouf and Clinic director Prof. Chi Adanna Mgbako.

An excerpt from the guide:

“The 2018 International Men and Gender Equality Survey – the Middle East and North Africa (“IMAGES MENA”) reveals gaps in gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment. The study found that sixty percent of men reported being abusive towards their wives. Additionally, more than eighty percent of men and twenty percent of women believe that a woman should tolerate violence for the sake of the family and saving a marriage.
As is evident from the IMAGES MENA study, many men and women uphold norms that perpetuate domestic violence and undermine Kuwait’s ability to achieve SDG 5.”

Read the Guide

About the Global 16 Days Campaign of Activism against Gender-Based Violence.

Register Here

The defund the police/invest-divest movement envisions a future where all communities have enough government-funded resources to be healthy and safe from violence, including from state violence in the form of police brutality. The Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic has released a new report calling for reductions in police budgets and greater investments in social and economic community resources that will help communities thrive and increase public safety. The report highlights the long-standing efforts of grassroots organizers, activists, and service providers that provide concrete examples of holistic alternatives to policing in the form of reduction of police budgets and investment in social and economic resources for underserved communities, violence interrupter programs, police-free schools and restorative justice, mental health crisis intervention teams, drug decriminalization and harm reduction programs, state-sponsored reparations for survivors of police violence, transformative justice interventions for gender- based violence, decriminalization of sex work, and community bailout funds. In addition to highlighting some of the work, achievements, and challenges of anti-carceral advocates, the report also debunks misconceptions about policing in the United States and the failed promises of police “reform.”

The report was researched and authored by Leitner Clinic students Shivangi Bhatia, Jay Brodska, Alex Forgione, Mirelis Gonzalez, and Abdulai Turay. The report was supervised and edited by Professor Chi Adanna Mgbako.

Read the report.