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University Human Rights Centers are centers established at universities to promote human rights and social justice locally, nationally, and globally through education, fieldwork, and other efforts. They are usually associated with Law or Political Science departments to converge the discussion, researches and actions on Human Rights in a dynamic way. Although their roots might be related these departments, there are centers affiliated to differents fields and with different formats. Thefore, the scientific research produced is commonly build on an interdisciplinary model to promote.

Human Rights Centers provide practical experience to the students under the professors supervision. Therefore the centres are responsible to organize and stimulate engagement in practical and pedagogical activities, such as Human Rights Clinics, Mock Competition and Lectures These activities are often organized in parternships with the civil society and they seek to provide students with the skills they need as professionals.

Americas

Human Rights Research and Education Centre - University of Ottawa

The Human Rights Centre was established in 1981 and is formed by researchers from the Faculties of Common Law, Civil Law, Arts and Social Sciences. One of its first works was the publication with invited scholars of the book "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: A Commentary”, one of the first comments to the The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Currently the Centre promotes researches from its member and from projects resulting from partnerships, online courses, summers schools and a human rights clinic. The clinic accepts both undergraduate and graduate students and it aims to promote advocacy, research, training and technical assistance. Among its activities it has produced handbooks, researches and amicus curiae petitions.

Human Rights Center – University of California

The Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley was established in 1994 as part of their School of Law. This center works to promote human rights and justice at a global level. The faculty and staff of the Center have collaborated with leading human rights organizations specializing in the promotion of justice and post-war reconstruction in countries that have been torn apart by war.The Center lists 3 core goals that guide its service: pursue accountability for mass atrocities, ensure the needs of survivors are heard, strengthen the research and advocacy capacities of local and international human rights organizations.

This Center has devoted a number of its projects to war crimes, including genocide. Current projects include documentation of the exposure to violence and the forced conscription in northern Uganda. They are also investigating the experiences of the former detainees who were held at the U.S. military installation at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Concerning health injustice, the Center is investigating mental health problems in Albania as well as access to healthcare for workers in post-Katrina New Orleans. In the Summer of 2010 the Center announced the beginning of their Sexual Violence and Accountability Project where they will study the role that safe shelters play in both peacetime communities as well as communities displaced by conflict.

The Center's current executive director Alexa Koenig holds a J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law, an M.A. from UC Berkeley, and is in the final stages of completing her Ph.D. in UC Berkeley’s Jurisprudence and Social Policy program. The Center's former director (currently Faculty Director of the Center), Dr. Eric Stover, is known for his work in uncovering evidence to prosecute crimes against humanity and returning remains to the victim’s families in genocide cases.

Human Rights Center – University of Minnesota

The Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota was inaugurated in December 1988 on the fortieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Their purpose is to assist human rights advocates, students, educators, and volunteers in promoting a culture of human rights on the local, national, and international level.Weissbrodt, founder of the Human Rights Center, is notorious for his work on the Guantanamo detainee cases. He organized law students through the Center to help with work on legal research and briefing.

On February 4, 2011 the Center launched the Islamic Law and Human Rights Program. This program “engage in research, scholarship, and educational and practical activities on issues of Islamic law, human rights, rule of law, and terrorism.” The Center also maintains a website that gives updates on the International Women’s Rights Activist Watch and a K-12 Human Rights Education Initiative and Curriculum.

In 2010, the Center initiated a Close the Gap initiative, which was a learning resource that focused on issues of race, class, and place disparities in the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota. The Center goal was to provide educational tools to help others to take action towards ending these inequalities. Potential projects stemming from this initiative include students interviewing parents to dissolve barriers preventing parental involvement in schools and working with the Carpenters Union to introduce children to apprenticeships and technical education as an alternative to college.

Issues of focus for the Center in 2010 included but were not limited to fair trade, immigration and asylum, indigenous rights, public health, torture, women’s rights, and wrongful convictions.

Duke Human Rights Center

The Duke Human Rights Center is an organization of Duke University that is home to a variety of scholar initiatives. The Center “seeks to lead university-wide scholarly conversations, collaborations, and programs on human rights, bringing together the humanities and social sciences with public policy and law.”

This center sees the history of the American South, predominantly the role of slavery and segregation, as being integrally important to their practice and study of human rights. In 2009, the university launched the Pauli Murray Project which is a program that makes use of human rights thinking and techniques to branch out in the Durham community, seeking reconciliation regarding past practices of segregation and slavery. In November 2011, the Center announced that it would unveil a historic marker in honor of Pauli Murray. She was co-founder for the National Organization for Women and the country’s first black, female Episcopal priest. The marker was placed near her childhood home in Durham, NC. The Pauli Murray Project is working to restore the Murray home and director of the project, Barbara Lau, urged audience members at the unveiling to donate to the cause.

Duke is home to Genocide Convention author Rafael Lemkin and Dr. Peter Storey who co-chaired the Peace Accord structures that intervened in political violence which occurred before South Africa’s first democratic elections.

The DCenter commonly shows films pertaining to social justice that are kept in an archive for the university and shown free of charge. In 2011, they offered a viewing of a series of documentaries exploring issues of immigration, refugee rights, the justice system, and the environment called “Rights! Camera! Action!”

Buffalo Human Rights Center

The Center is a part of The State University of New York Buffalo Law School. The Center maintains goals that include the organization of internships with leading human rights organizations throughout the world. They maintain relations with human rights organizations, universities, and government agencies. In addition, they seek to gain attention for human rights topics in the Buffalo community by organizing speakers, conferences, and symposia with leading human rights speakers. They hope “to garner greater exposure and community support for the recognition, promotion, and protection of international human rights.”

In 1994, the Center founded the Buffalo Journal of International Law, which was renamed in 1997 as the Buffalo Human Rights Law Review. The BHRLR “seeks to unite professionals, students, legal practitioners, policymakers, advocates, and cross-disciplinary scholars, and to encourage thereby the development and practical application of human rights law.”

The Center organized a speaker series called The Comparative Human Rights and Practice series in the spring of 2010. This series included talks about justice in Sierra Leone, international politics of civilian protection, sex trafficking in the United States, indigenous rights in the Americas, and refugee and asylum law. The events were free and open to the general public.

Centro de Derechos Humanos del Caribe - Universidad del Norte

The Centro de Derechos Humanos del Caribe was founded in 2013 under a project funded by the USAID, called Alianza Colombia-US Human Rights Law School Partnership Program on the Caribbean Coast. It is currently part of the department of Law, Political Science and International Relations of the University of North. It declared goal is to educate professional leaders for the promotion of human rights in the Caribbean. Among its activities, the Centre promotes research projects, courses for leaders from marginalized communities and groups and monitores the human rights situation in the Caribbean region.

Instituto de Democracia y Derechos Humanos - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

The Institute was funded in 2004 as a academic unit of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. The Institute offers a Master's Degree in Human Right and a Master's Degree in Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology. Furthermore, it promotes research projects, publications, human rights clinics and also specialization and short courses.The institute also produce a weakly program in the university's radio and have a anti-corruption observatory. It interacts with the Inter-American System of Human Rights by submitting amicus curiae petitions in partnership with other Centres.

Centro de Derechos Humanos - Universidad de Chile

The Centro de Derechos Humanos of the University of Chile was founded as a academic unit of the Faculty of Law in 2002 with the general goal to enhance the respect for human rights. It promotes research activities by raising funds for research projects and engage with other academic units and public bodies to elaborate and develop materials that are use to mainstream human rights among the society. The Centre also collaborates with civil society organizations, priotizing parternships with those that represent the most marginalized sectors of the Chilean society.

Centro de Derechos Humanos - Universidad de Buenos Aires

The Centro de Derechos Humanos of Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires was created in 2015. It main purpose is to promote research and education in human rights. Since 1985, during the Argentinian redemocratization process, the University offers modules in human rights and promotes students professional practice with partnerships with important civil society organizations, such as CELS (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales). The Centre aims to further promote these partnerships , workshops and research in Human Rights.

In 2018, the Centre submitted a Amicus Curiae petition to the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights in the case of Mohammed Al-Asad x Djibouti, regarding forced disappearance. The petition was elaborated by students and graduates in partnership with several human rights NGOs and prominent scholars.

Africa

Centre for Human Rights – University of Pretoria

The Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria is an academic department and NGO in South Africa that was established in 1986 as part of domestic efforts against the apartheid system. Their focus has now extended beyond the borders of South Africa and they currently work towards human rights for the entire continent of Africa. They hope to improve the education of human rights in Africa while increasing awareness and the number of publications about human rights in Africa. They also aim to improve women’s rights, people affected by HIV, indigenous peoples, sexual minorities, and others who are disadvantaged in some way.

The Centre played a crucial role in drafting the Model Law of HIV in South Africa, which was adopted in November by the SADC Parliamentary Forum. Other important research by the Centre included access to medicines and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights adopted this resolution. The Geneva Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law awarded a competitive research assignment to the Centre’s work on the Gender Unit.

The Centre partnered with other organizations in launching the Redlight Children Campaign. This campaign worked to combat human trafficking and the exploitation and abuse of women and children. The centre also held a West and Central Africa Consultation on the African Charter on Democracy alongside other organizations. Discussions were held regarding unconstitutional changes of government, safeguarding the integrity of electoral processes, ending corruption, and aiding in development. The Centre also held a panel discussion in October regarding maternal health concerning the quadrupling of the maternal mortality rate in the past decade as well as related issues and challenges.

Centro de Direitos Humanos - Universidade Eduardo Mondlane

The Human Rights Centre of the Law School of the University Eduardo Mondlane was created in 2005 with support from the European Union, the Moçambique Government and the Civil Society Organizations.  Its two main goals are giving academic and research support to public bodies and NGOs and promoting Human Rights among legal practitioners and public servants.

The Centre maintain a library with more than 500 books, accessible to students and researchers of any University. The professors associated with the Centre are responsible for the human rights modules at the university and for orienting students’ research during the bachelor and master degree. In the past years, the Centre organized workshops, courses to policemen and other public servants and collective studies. The issues approached by the Centre in this activities vary from people's’ right to self-determination and children’s rights to access to justice and information..

Asia

Centro de Direitos Humanos do Timor Leste

The Human Rights Centre of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the National University of Timor Lorosa'e was founded on 27 August 2019. It was fully funded by the European Union through the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR). The Centre plans to promote training, international networking, debates and research activities, as well as to provide a space and support for national human rights organizations.

The Centre will offer to students of the Faculty of Social Sciences the Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation in Asia Pacific, associated with Global Campus of Human Rights and coordinated by the Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand.

Institute of Human Rights - China University of Political Science and Law

The Centre was established in 2002 by the China University of Political Science and Law as an independent academic institute. In April 2011, it was named as one of the first National Bases for Human Rights Education, in order to promote a more comprehensive educational and scientific approach.

The Institute carries out research on human rights law theories and practice and  promotes human rights education at CUPL and other Chinese universities by offering human rights trainings for teachers, legal professionals and public servants. It seeks to to disseminate human rights knowledge to the public and to arouse and enhance human rights consciousness. The institute also provides recommendations and consultations to government agencies and social groups on human rights, participating in the draft of some action plans. It has established academic exchanges and cooperation with domestic, foreign, regional and international institutions and scholars.

Europe

Centro de Direitos Humanos/ Ius Gentium Conimbrigae (IGC) - Universidade de Coimbra

The Centro de Direitos Humanos de Coimbra/ Ius Gentium Conimbrigae (IGC/CDC) was founded in 2000 with a agreement between the University of Coimbra, the Faculty of Law and the Ius Gentium Conimbrigae (IGC) a scientific and research association . It promotes the Postdoctoral Program in Democracy and Human Rights, the European Master in Human Rights and Democratization, the specialization course in Humans Rights and other specific courses. The legal assistence and consulting services to public and private entities. .

Human Rights Centre - University of Padua

The Human Rights Centre of the University of Padua was one of the first to be established in Europe and its activities focus on the development of interdisciplinary knowledge of human rights and on their promotion, particularly through education and research.

It was founded in 1982 on an initiative of the Faculty of Political Science, as ‘Study and Training Centre on the Rights of the Person and of the Peoples’. In 2011, it became the ‘Interdepartmental Centre on human rights and the rights of Peoples’ and finally in 2013 it was transformed into University Human Rights Centre (Centro di Ateneo). In carrying out its activities, the Centre cooperates with regional ombudspersons and other human rights institutions, local authorities, schools and NGOs. The Centre is also responsible for managing the regional Archive ‘Peace Human Rights’, one of the instruments through which the Region of Veneto promotes the culture of human rights.

In the international level the Centre is hosting one of the UNESCO Chairs on “Human Rights, Democracy and Peace” and the European Jean Monnet Excellence Centre and it also is cooperating in different ways with the Council of Europe, the European Union, the UN OHCHR, the Multinational CiMic Group, the Anna Lindh Foundation and many others. Moreover, it contributed to the establishment of the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation (E.MA).

Among its several publications, since 2011, the Human Rights Centre of the University of Padua has been publishing, both in Italian and in English, the Italian Yearbook of Human Rights (Annuario italiano dei diritti umani), a periodical account of how the international human rights monitoring system assesses Italy's behaviour, which aims at fostering an informed and transparent debate on this fundamental feature of public life.

Since 2013, the Centre has been supporting a Master's Degree Programme in Human Rights and Multi-level Governance, taught in English, which is supervised by the Department of Political Science, Law and International Studies, part of the School of Economics and Political Science of the University of Padua.

The Global Campus of Human Rights

The Global Campus of Human Rights is global network of universities funded by the European Union. It is based on the cooperation between the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC) and seven Regional Programmes (in Europe, South East Europe, Caucasus, Africa, Asia-Pasific, Latin American and the Caribbean and the Arab World). The university network tries to establish exchanges in terms of curriculum development, pedagogy, student selection and evaluation. One hundred universities are associated so far and each one offer a Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation focused on the region needs. They are divided in the Regional Programmes mentioned above:

• EMA, The European Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation, coordinated by the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC) in Venice.
• HRDA, The Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa, coordinated by the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
• ERMA, The European Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democracy in South East Europe, coordinated by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of the University of Sarajevo in Bosnia Herzegovina and IECOB at the University of Bologna in Italy.
• LATMA, The Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation in Latin American and the Caribbean, coordinated by the International Centre for Political Studies of the National University of San Martin in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• APMA, The Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation in Asia Pacific, Coordinated by Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand.
• CES, The Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation in the Caucasus, coordinated by the Centre for European Studies at the State University of Yerevan, Armenia.
• ARMA, The Arab Master's Programme in Democracy and Human Rights, coordinated by the University of Saint Joseph in Beirut, Lebanon.

These Regional Programmes offer specialised post-graduate education and training in human rights and democracy from a regional perspective and interdisciplinary content, as well as a multiplicity of research, publications, public events and outreach activities.

The Global Campus integrates the educational activities of the Regional Programmes through the exchange of lecturers, researchers and students; the joint planning of curricula for on-campus and online courses; the promotion of global research projects and dissemination activities; the professional development of graduates through internships in inter-governmental organisations; and the strong focus of networking through the Global Campus Alumni Association, as well as support to the alumni associations of the Regional Programmes.

Oceania

Centre for Human Rights Law, Policy and Practice - University of Auckland

The New Zealand Centre for Human Rights Law, Policy and Practice was established in 2012 in Law School of the University of Auckland. Its first goals were to have a multidisciplinary approach and to develop effective policies and encourage human-rights compliant practices in the country. Members of the Judiciary, of legal professions and of the University provide guidance to the Centre staff and advise to the Dean on the Centre’s development. It has a part-time director responsible for strategic planning and day-to-day operations.

The current aims of the Centre include hosting public lectures and seminars on human rights topics; encouraging research on human rights issues; providing a forum for cross disciplinary and inter-university collaboration on human rights related research and advocacy; developing courses in human rights law at the undergraduate and postgraduate level; working with the legal profession to improve the practice of Human Rights Law; working with civil society organisations and government on the development of human rights policies; and assisting students graduates searching for a internship or a job in human rights.  

Castan Centre for Human Rights Law - Monash University

The Castan Centre for Human Rights Law was established in 2000 under Law Faculty seeking to meet the need and interest for the study of Human Rights Law globally and regionally. Its function is to bring together the work of national and international human rights scholars, practitioners, and advocates in order to promote and protect human rights.

The Centre’s main activities are research; teaching and public education. Nevertheless, it also provides advice work, policy work and consultancy for human rights organizations. Its work is concentrated in 21 areas: Australian Human Rights Law and Policy; Business Technology and Human Rights; Children; Development and Conflict; Disability; Education; Freedom of Expression; General; Slavery and Trafficking; Indigenous; History of International Law; International Law; International Criminal Law and Justice; International Law of Armed Conflict; LGBTI; National Security and Privacy; Prisons, Closed Environments and Justice; Racism; Refugees and Asylum Seekers; Regional Issues and Women.

External links

• Human Rights Centre of the University of Padua (in English)

Category:Human rights organizations