At GRIL, we are building new ways to demand legal accountability. Our multidisciplinary teams of law and technology students work side-by-side to translate complex data into powerful advocacy tools for our clients.
In this first-of-its-kind clinic, we build legal cases with insights from digital technologies. Right now, our students are building evidentiary support for critical issues around the world. Students are aiding the prosecution of crimes against humanity in Ukraine, developing data-driven methods to identify war crimes in Syria, documenting the realities of gender apartheid in Afghanistan, and investigating the climate change impacts of extreme heat in California county jails.
Sample projects include:
Climate Justice in California Jails
Climate change generates extreme temperatures in carceral facilities. For GRIL’s client organization, we are collecting and analyzing evidence on the impact of high temperatures on incarcerated people in California jails to determine the nature and extent that high temperature impacts are violating human rights of detained and incarcerated people.
Gender Apartheid
What does consolidation of Taliban rule mean for women? De facto authorities are publicly flogging women accused of violations of a strict morality code that regulates women’s dress, intimate relations, and movement in public. On behalf of our client organization, we are documenting these trends through open-source information, analyzing the international human rights violations of these patterns, and preparing data visualizations of these harms for submission to United Nations human rights mechanisms as well for a wider audience.
War Crimes in Syria
During the Syrian conflict multiple States conducted military campaigns, including the US-led Coalition, Russia and Türkiye. Thousands of airstrikes caused civilian harm, destroyed residences, hospitals, schools, and other civilian infrastructure. Civilian objects are protected under the laws of war, and parties that intentionally target them are committing war crimes. We integrated laws of war research and data science methods to analyze thousands of airstrikes, develop a methodology for our client, Airwars, to identify patterns of intentional targeting that advances documentation and investigation for legal and accountability purposes.
Designing Justice.
Data Science for Human Rights Advocacy: A Blueprint for the Global Rights Innovation Lab Clinic. July 2025
This report is the culmination of a dedicated planning semester grounded in design thinking and informed by stakeholder and student interviews. It offers an in-depth look at GRIL’s model, capturing our vision, research process, and the insights we gained along the way. It also explores how GRIL is developing innovative services at the intersection of law, data science, and digital storytelling, and highlights the impact we aim to make in the human rights field.