CLINICAL & SKILLS PROGRAMS > International Human Rights Law Clinic > Projects & Cases >

Accountability and Transitional Justice

The Clinic's Accountability and Transitional Justice program conducts advocacy and applied research to end and prevent atrocities, hold governments and their agents accountable for them, and assist societies rebuilding after mass violence. Working with a transnational network of activists, its projects have contributed to accountability on four continents.

Stopping Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity in Darfur and Beyond

Since summer 2007, IHRLC  has been conducting research on how the U.S. government has responded to instances of genocide and crimes against humanity in the past and how it can stop them more quickly or prevent them from occurring at all in the future. Students are also working with the Washington, D.C.-based Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net) to develop and obtain enactment of new federal legislation that would reform the foreign policy process based on these insights. When confronted with imminent or actual mass atrocities in Darfur, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, or elsewhere, the U.S. government can take a wide range of possible actions, such as cutting off arms shipments to involved parties, imposing economic sanctions, working with other countries to muster diplomatic pressure, facilitating negotiations among warring factions, and supporting prosecution at the national or international level. The project is promoting systemic change in how the U.S. government addresses mass atrocities, moving beyond the inertia, disinterest, and reluctance to engage that it has shown in many past crises.  

Diario Militar: Guatemalan Military Death Squad Dossier Case ( José Miguel Gudiel Álvarez et al. v. Guatemala )
In 1999, a chilling document recording the fate of scores of Guatemalan citizens who were "disappeared" by security forces during the mid-1980s became public. Apparently written by Guatemala's military intelligence, the 54-page document contains photos of 183 victims and coded references to their executions. During the two decades since the disappearances, no one has been held responsible for the crimes.

Clinic students are working alongside the lawyers at the Fundación Myrna Mack (FMM), a Guatemalan human rights organization to represent family members of 30 of the victims named in the dossier.   The families seek to hold the Guatemalan state accountable for the disappearances of their loved ones and the failure of the state to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators.   The suit is filed in the Inter-American system - the human rights enforcement arm of the Organization of American States (OAS). In October 2006, clinic students traveled to Guatemala to meet with FMM attorneys, archival experts, and family members of the victims.  Clinic students incorporated the evidence gathered into extensive legal briefing filed before the international tribunal in spring 2007.   The case is pending and clinic students will continue to advocate on behalf of the victims and highlight the duty of the government to uphold the human rights of its citizens.  

Human Rights and the Internet
The Clinic is developing new strategies to hold non-state actors such as multi-national corporations legally, politically, and morally accountable for human rights violations. Non-state actors play a critical role in creating conditions under which human rights are upheld or violated, especially in developing countries. Ensuring these actors respect human rights obligations requires innovative approaches, because the human rights movement historically has focused on the actions of governments.

In the summer of 2005, the Clinic, in partnership with Boalt's Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic, helped initiate a multi-stakeholder process to produce principles for companies operating in countries whose governments limit privacy or free expression on the Internet, such as China. Based on human rights standards, the principles will provide practical guidance for company decision-makers when they face laws, regulations, and policies that may violate international human rights norms. Participants in this process include Google, Microsoft, Vodafone and Yahoo!, in addition to academics, investors, technology leaders, and human rights organizations. The process is nearing completion and the voluntary principles will be published soon.

Reforming Africa's Human Rights Institutions
The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights has been criticized for failing to promptly and effectively address the continent's urgent human rights situations. As part of reform efforts, the Commission is adopting new rules of procedure. The clinic collaborated with Interights, a human rights organization based in London, and proposed new rules to streamline Commission procedures and strengthen protections for victims and witnesses appearing before the body. Clinic students provided an insightful analysis of the proposed rules to members of the African Commission that informed the deliberations. Students had a direct impact on the debate and discussion of the new rules this important human rights mechanism will adopt to address some of the most urgent human rights crises in the world.

Alien Tort Claims Act Policy and Research
On June 29, 2004, the Supreme Court ruled in two cases Sosa v Alvarez-Machain, 03-339, and United States v. Alvarez-Machain , 03-485, in which students in Boalt's International Human Rights Law Clinic filed an amicus curiae brief. The cases before the Court stem from the 1990 kidnapping of Dr. Alvarez-Machain. Under the direction of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Alvarez-Machain was taken from Mexico to the United States by Mexican nationals in order to stand trial for his alleged role in the death of a DEA agent in Mexico. After being acquitted of the charges, Alvarez-Machain used the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) to bring civil claims against the United States and a Mexican national who participated in his delivery to the United States.

The Court held that while the ATCA allows foreign victims to sue perpetrators of a limited number of the most serious abuses of human rights in U.S. courts, the statute did not permit Dr. Alvarez to recover for his claim of arbitrary detention. The Court also held that the FTCA prohibits claims for injuries that occurred on foreign territory.

Using firsthand accounts from victims of human rights abuses, the brief argued that the ATCA is a critical tool for victims in their pursuit of justice and was submitted on behalf of individual survivors who have filed ATCA cases, the National Consortium of Torture Treatment Programs, and the Center for Justice and Accountability .

In addition to the amicus brief, clinic students compiled every published court opinion interpreting the ATCA (as of March 2004). The Clinic's ATCA Case Compendium is the first such compilation of ATCA jurisprudence of which we are aware. The summaries synthesize the pertinent factual background as well as the legal arguments and defenses raised in each opinion. It provides practitioners, activists, journalists, and scholars a succinct reference tool regarding this important area of law.

Alien Tort Claims Act Litigation
In July 2002, a Florida jury decided in favor of plaintiffs in Ramagoza-Arce v. Garcia; Estate of Ita Ford v. Garcia and ordered former Salvadoran generals José Guillermo Garcia and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova to pay $54.6 million to three Salvadoran clients of the clinic who proved they were brutally tortured by Salvadoran security forces under the generals' command. Clinic students assisted the plaintiffs during the four-week trial. Boalt students were featured in the documentary film about a prior companion trial involving the same defendants for the murder of four American church women in 1980, Justice and the Generals , which aired on PBS on February 21, 2002.

Bosnia Judicial Study
In January 2000, the clinic joined the Human Rights Center in its Communities in Crisis Project, an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research initiative to examine the relationship between the pursuit of international justice and local approaches to social reconstruction in the aftermath of war and genocide. As part of this work, the International Human Rights Law Clinic, the Human Rights Center, and the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Sarajevo, co-issued a report in 2001. "Justice, Accountability and Social Reconstruction: An Interview Study of Bosnian Judges and Prosecutors" examined the attitudes of this important group toward the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and domestic war crimes trials.

Bosnian legal professionals have been subject to much criticism from the international community, primarily on the issue of corruption. Yet it is apparent that justice for most of those who were victims of the 1992-95 war will not be achieved in The Hague but in the courts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The ability of Bosnian courts to render justice to victims depends, in part, on a judiciary that is capable of providing fair trials. This study attempts to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the influence of pressures faced by these professionals, the impact of their own losses and the contribution of nationalist views to the problems in the judicial system. Ultimately the goal of this study is to identify interventions that build on the current efforts of court monitoring and resource development.

Centar za Ljudska Prava i Pravna Klinika za Medjunarodna Ljudska Prava, u saradnji sa Centrom za Ljudska Prava Univerziteta u Sarajevu, izdali su studiju "Pravda, Odgovornost I Socijalna Rekonstrukcija U Bosni I Hercegovini: Studija O Bosanskim Sudijama I Tuziteljima Na Osnovu Intervjua," koja se bavi pogledima ove vazne grupe prema Medjunarodnom Krivicnom Tribunalu za bivsu Jugoslaviju i lokalnim sudjenjima za ratne zlocine. Bosanski pravni strucnjaci su predmet velikih kritika od strane medjunarodne zajednice, prvenstveno po pitanju korupcije. Medjutim, ocigledno je da pravda za vecinu zrtava rata od 1992-1995 nece biti dosegnuta u Hagu, vec u sudovima Bosne i Hercegovine. Mogucnost sudova Bosne i Hercegovine da omoguce pravedan ishod za zrtve zavisi, dijelom, od sudija koji su sposobni da pruze pravedna sudjenja. Ova studija je pokusala stvoriti sire razumjevanje o uticaju pritisaka sa kojima su ovi strucnjaci suoceni, o uticaju njihovih licnih gubitaka, i o doprinosu nacionalistickih pogleda ka problemima u sudskom sistemu. Konacno, cilj ove studije je da identifikuje intervencije koje proizilaze iz trenutnih napora za nadgledanje sudstva i razvitka sredstava. Da bi ste pogledali studiju na BiH jezicima, pritisnite ovdje Bosnia.