The Human Rights Centre Clinic has announced its six projects for the 2024/25 academic year.
The projects range from supporting the land claims of indigenous people in Canada to producing an environmental rights toolkit.
Project 1 - Understanding the impact and outcomes of strategic litigation in the home state of transnational corporations
Partner: Amnesty International (International Secretariat)
This project will examine the impact and outcomes of past and current strategic litigation pursued in the home state of respondent transnational corporations that sought corporate civil and/or criminal accountability. This will include assessing the impacts of promoting, vindicating and ensuring effective remedies for the litigants and the tangible outcomes of several lawsuits filed against multinational companies in their home states across different jurisdictions.
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental human rights organisation and a movement of over 10 million members, activists and supporters in more than 150 countries and territories. It is independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest, or religion. Amnesty International’s mission is to advocate for global compliance with international human rights law, the development of human rights norms, and the effective enjoyment of human rights by all persons. To do so, Amnesty International monitors state compliance with international human rights law and engages in research, advocacy, strategic litigation, and education to prevent and end human rights violations and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated.
Supervisor: Justin Poonjatt
Project 2 - Environmental rights for a just energy transition in Kenya
Partner: Center for Justice Governance and Environmental Action (CJGEA)
This project will investigate the application of procedural environmental rights as a tool to empower the community living in the Uyombo area in Kenya, which has been earmarked for a nuclear reactor. By empowering the Uyombo community through the application of procedural environmental rights, the project will contribute to challenge the responsibility of state and non-state actors towards environmental protection and access to socio-economic rights.
The Center for Justice Governance and Environmental Action (CJGEA) will advocate for accountability in environmental governance and to enhance the protection of communities’ rights in the face of a potentially harmful development project such as the proposed nuclear reactor.
The Center for Justice Governance and Environmental Action (CJGEA) is a grassroots environmental justice organisation based in Kenya and rooted in the communities most impacted by pollution.
Supervisor: Dr Stephen Turner
Project 3 - Reparations Praxis Hub
Partner: Global Survivors Fund
The Global Survivors Fund is implementing a Reparations Praxis Hub. This is a repository of lessons learned from the implementation of reparations for survivors of conflict related sexual violence and for other victims of massive violations of human rights or international humanitarian law. The aim is to systematise lessons that derive from practical experiences. Those lessons will be used as guidance for defining reparation policies and mechanisms in the future. In this project, the team will examine, among others, how reparations measures implemented by different programmes were defined, the types of measures and modalities of implementation, the inclusion of a gender perspective in the reparations, specific forms of reparations for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, conditions required for the implementation of reparations, and the effectiveness of those measures to respond to identified harms.
The Global Survivors Fund (GSF) was launched in October 2019 by Dr Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad, Nobel Peace Prize laureates 2018. The GSF’s mission is to enhance access to reparations for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence around the globe, thus responding to a gap long identified by survivors.
Supervisor: Dr Marina Lostal
Project 4 - The Innu Nation Land Claims
Partner: The Innu Nation and Survival International
This project will support the Innu Nation land claims being made in negotiation with the Canadian government. The project will involve research to bolster Innu claims through investigating colonial documents in the National Archive at Kew, summarising and fact-checking documents produced by the Innu Nation and other groups, literature reviews. It will also involve interviewing and liaising with Innu leaders and their legal team and with members of Survival International in London. Students will rely on relevant international legal standards to provide a full picture of the legal recognition of Indigenous peoples’ rights, with particular attention to collective identity issues and rights to Innu land (Nitassinan).
The Innu are the indigenous people of most of the Labrador-Quebec peninsula, in eastern Canada. Survival International is a human rights organisation formed in 1969 that campaigns for the rights of Indigenous and/or tribal peoples and uncontacted peoples.
Supervisors: Professor Colin Samson and
Dr Ebba Lekvall
Project 5 - Making ILO Convention 189 Real for Domestic Workers in the Caribbean
Partner: Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO) and the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF)
This project will support two domestic worker organisations in Grenada and Guyana carry out research in relation to the Convention 189 on Domestic Workers of the International Labour Organization (ILO), as part of a joint initiative between Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO) and the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF). The research will be used to support the organisations’ advocacy, including by contributing to the workers’ reports to the ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR) in 2026. The project will strengthen accountability for the commitments made by the Governments of Grenada and Guyana by ratifying the ILO Convention 189.
Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) is a global network focused on empowering the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy to secure their livelihoods. The International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) is a global member-based organization serving over 670,000 domestic and household workers through its affiliates in 68 countries.
Supervisor: Professor Paul Hunt
Project 6 - Arbitrary Detention Redress Unit
Partner: UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
Since 2022, the Human Rights Centre Clinic has been running the Arbitrary Detention Redress Unit, supervised by Dr Matthew Gillett, Chair Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
Arbitrary detention is a human rights violation, prohibited under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It can constitute a gateway to further violations, including torture, enforced disappearances, and violations of fair trial rights.
Thousands of people around the world are subjected to arbitrary detention every year, including human rights defenders, journalists, and members of civil society organisations.
The ADRU team will work with Dr Gillett and other UN experts to redress cases of alleged arbitrary detention. Team members will work on real cases and help prepare briefings for country visits, including inspections of detention facilities.
Supervisor: Dr Matthew Gillett
