Child sexual abuse, immigration, and toxic waste - students in the Frank C. Newman International Human Rights Clinic raised these and other headline-making issues when they lobbied the United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women and its Human Rights Council as representatives of Human Rights Advocates (HRA).

Commission on the Status of Women - Edith Coliver interns Erika Dahlstrom 3L and Jesse Macias '07 attended the Commission on the Status of Women meeting, along with Kiran Singh '07 and Nicole Philips '99, an HRA board member. The meeting's purpose was to craft "agreed conclusions" on eliminating discrimination and violence against the girl child. They combined their research - Dahlstrom's on child sexual abuse and exploitation as violations of human rights and of the U.N.'s Convention on the Rights of the Child; Macias' on trafficking in persons and the market for the sexual abuse of girls - into a single, three-minute oral presentation before the Commission.

Dahlstrom was gratified to find that the agreed conclusions on violence listed all of the issues she had been working on, in language similar to that of her report.  Macias lobbied successfully to include trafficking language in the final document. "Taking part in the creation of language in a U.N. document was the most I could have asked for," he said. 

Council on Human Rights - Six Frank C. Newman interns presented reports on diverse topics to the Human Rights Council. Mary Johnson 3L examined the human rights of migrants, noting that "migrants are often viewed in economic terms as commodities, rather than as human beings who are entitled to rights."

Caryn Nutt '07 reported on violence against women in times of armed conflict, including abuse at the hands of peacekeepers, national military forces, and private military and security companies (PMSCs). She attributed the Council's reluctance to act on PMSCs to their being "a totally new actor on the international scene." Troy Ware 4L, who served as a marine in Iraq in 2004, advocated for improving human rights compliance among peacekeepers.

Ware also reported on the right to vote, which is not begin addressed by any international body despite reports of numerous violations ranging from intimidation to the poor use of electronic voting machines.  Because the topic wasn't even on the Council's agenda, Ware leveraged a network of connections to lobby pivotal countries. "Several delegations accepted draft resolution language," he reported, "at the bare minimum, a long list of contacts was established for lobbying next year."

Two interns addressed criminal sentencing. Nicole Skibola 3L cited the recent wave of resolutions in opposition to sentencing juveniles to life without parole as one reason for countries' increased willingness to change their domestic laws.  Of the 11 countries she studied, four have laws pending that would bring them into compliance with international standards.  Elisabeth Hanowsky '07 reported on the "death row phenomenon" - psychological trauma experienced by inmates imprisoned for long years before their execution. "Essentially, two sentences are being imposed - one of severe psychological torture and one of death." she wrote.

Ifeoma Yvonne Ajunwa '07 tackled the illicit transfer and dumping of toxic waste around the globe. Her presentation stressed the link between the "lack of corporate accountability and the dumping of toxic waste by multinational corporations . . . and the need for coherent approach among the different mandates to achieve real progress."

Copies of the students' reports can be found on the Human Rights Advocates website.