"We're Dying Here": The Fight for Life in a Louisiana Fossil Fuel Sacrifice Zone
Human Rights Watch’s 98-page report, “‘We’re Dying Here’: The Fight for Life in a Louisiana Fossil Fuel Sacrifice Zone,” documents how residents of Cancer Alley suffer the effects of extreme pollution from the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry, facing elevated rates and risks of maternal, reproductive, and newborn health harms, cancer, and respiratory ailments. These harms are disproportionately borne by the area’s Black residents. The report highlights our community partners in the area and quotes our co-founder, Ruhan Nagra.
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Artificial Intelligence Explored in Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns
Artificial intelligence is a disrupter the likes of which humanity has never seen before. It can magnify existing societal evils, but also offers students unique educational opportunities. It can both replace human knowledge and offer unprecedented opportunities to capture and harness it. It’s seemingly inevitable; it must be regulated.
Professor James Cavallaro was a panelist at the ShaSha Semiar for Human Concerns. “Consciousness is about creating or enabling the conditions for human beings to live meaningful and fulfilling lives,” said James Cavallaro, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the University Network for Human Rights.
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Bolivia's ex-leader to compensate massacre victims in landmark U.S. case
Twenty years ago, Eloy Rojas Mamani made a promise to his 8-year-old daughter Marlene at her funeral: He would not rest until he found justice for her death.
She’d died inside their home in the highlands of Bolivia when a bullet from a government sniper lanced through her chest amid a deadly episode when government forces massacred dozens of civilians, mostly indigenous people.
This week, Mamani said, that day finally came thanks to the resolution of a landmark U.S. court case.
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University Network Statement (October 2023)
The world is witnessing the Israeli government and military commit population transfer, forced displacement, collective punishment, and ethnic cleansing—actions that together constitute genocide in Gaza, according to scholars and legal experts.
University Network for Human Rights statement found here.
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University Network for Human Rights sends submission to UN, presents risks of Armenian ethnic cleansing in Karabakh
The University Network for Human Rights has sent a submission to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention, analyzing the Armenian ethnic cleansing and the threat of genocide in Nagorno-Karabakh, and called for a strong response.
In the introduction of this submission, it is noted as follows, in particular:
“The ethnic Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, known as Artsakh by Armenians, is under the very real threat of ethnic cleansing and potential genocide. The risk may extend to the southern portion of Armenia as well.”
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Armenians Face a Second Genocide. Will the World Intervene? (Newsweek)
The war in Ukraine has dominated headlines in Western media since it began. But the world has largely ignored another humanitarian crisis not far away—one that is reaching a boiling point and finally is starting to get a bit of the attention it merits.
Over the past few weeks, two international legal experts, the first UN special advisor on the prevention of genocide and the founding chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, issued separate reports warning of the genocidal implications of the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh caused by Azerbaijan's blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the key access road for the enclave of 120,000 ethnic Armenians.
But for many in the region—like a young survivor who, for security reasons, I will refer to only by his first name of Mels—ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and on its border has been ongoing for several years.
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Azerbaijan’s Blockade of the Lachin Corridor: Harbinger of Another Armenian Genocide
As the world condemns Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor, a network of human rights researchers and advocates demonstrates that recent events are only the latest in a campaign of abuses that threatens the very real possibility of another Armenian genocide.
In a briefing paper published on August 24, 2023, the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR) shows that Azerbaijan has openly committed atrocities against ethnic Armenians in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, the de facto autonomous region recognized internationally as part of Azerbaijan, but historically controlled by the Armenian majority. Following the 44-Day Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, these abuses have spilled into sovereign Armenia as well.
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University Network for Human Rights Launching Postgraduate Program in Human Rights Advocacy with NOVA School of Law
The University Network for Human Rights and the NOVA School of Law in Lisbon, Portugal, have signed an agreement to partner in the creation of an interdisciplinary Master of Laws (LLM) postgraduate degree in Human Rights Advocacy primarily directed primarily at practitioners from the Global South.
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Don’t Just Remember the Armenian Genocide. Prevent It From Happening Again (TIME)
Every year on April 24 we mark the 1915 Armenian genocide, in which up to 1.5 million Armenians perished at the hands of the Ottomans. But this year, we should also reflect on the present day, for Armenians are again facing a new set of atrocities as the world watches on with indifference.
Check out our Legal & Policy Director Thomas Becker's op-ed in TIME Magazine.
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International Experts Urge Brazilian Court to Ensure Due Process in the Killing of Rights Activist and Elected Official Marielle Franco
Today, four former commissioners from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, two former presidents of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, two former and current United Nations mandate holders, and international legal experts and professors from Brazil, the United States, Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Portugal, South Korea, France, England, and Canada urged a Brazilian court to ensure due process in the 2018 killing of rights activist and elected official Marielle Franco. The international law experts did so by signing onto a technical opinion prepared by Yale Law School’s Lowenstein Project for Human Rights, along with the human rights organizations Justiça Global and the University Network for Human Rights.
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U.S. Withdraws Nomination of University Network Executive Director to OAS Human Rights Body for Criticizing Israeli Human Rights Record
In an alarming expansion of attacks on speech critical of the Israeli government’s well-documented human rights abuses, the U.S. State Department Department of State has withdrawn its nomination of our executive director, James (Jim) Cavallaro, to serve as a commissioner on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The decision comes following reports by a fringe, Trump-affiliated media outlet on Cavallaro's outspoken criticism of Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians.
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Black Communities Fight for Cleaner Air in ‘Cancer Alley’
“In a health survey conducted by the University Network for Human Rights of people living near the Denka plant, nearly half of all children within a 1.5-kilometer (0.94-mile) radius said they regularly experience headaches, nosebleeds, or both, while more than half of adults experience headaches, dizziness, or lightheadedness. One-third or more of the adults living in the same area reported symptoms including chest pain, heart palpitations, wheezing, and eye and skin irritation.”
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‘Misleading’ health data hid higher rates of asthma-related ER visits in St. John Parish, state cites error
“But a study conducted by the University Network for Human Rights found cancer rates to be significantly higher for the residents living near the Denka facility than what would likely, after controlling for the factors of age, race and sex. The study also found that residents’ cancer rates were positively correlated with their proximity to the Denka facility.
Those findings may be relevant to concerns regarding the use of smoothed datasets in general, Kim Terrell, research scientist and director of community engagement at the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic (TELC), told The Lens. That’s because the hyper-local differences the University Network researchers identified demonstrate the hazards of averaging data from various geographical areas.”
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Biden State Department Embraces Flawed Logic for Bolivian Coup in Leaked Report
Read The Intercept’s article on the Biden Administration’s dangerous stance on the 2019 Bolivian Coup. The University Network for Human Rights’ report on the Coup, “They Shot Us Like Animals,” was referenced in the article.
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A path forward: Residents seek remedy for decades of environmental injustice in Mossville, Louisiana
The University Network for Human Rights’ work on forced displacement in Mossville, Louisiana is extensively cited in this dialogue between Concerned Citizens of Mossville, University of Utah Environmental Justice Clinic, and Tulane Environmental Law Clinic and South African apartheid-era chemical company Sasol.
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Lawyers exacerbate the climate crisis: Here’s how we can help (American Bar Association)
Read Camila Bustos’ latest co-authored piece on how law schools, and the legal profession as a whole, are exacerbating the climate crisis and what they can do to diminish this impact.
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UNHR ED Critique of ICC
Read UNHR ED Jim Cavallaro’s written critique of the ICC.
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War and Peace: America's Humane War and the Crisis in Ukraine (New Books Network)
The discussion considers the recent book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, written by Samuel Moyn, and its relevance to the current war in Ukraine. The event featured the author (Moyn), as well as Silja Voeneky, of the University of Freiburg, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies and Frauke Lachenmann, of the Connecticut/Baden-Württemberg Human Rights Research Consortium. James Cavallaro, of the University Network for Human Rights, Yale Law School and Wesleyan University, was the moderator. The public address questions to the panelists in the second half of the event.
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Explained: Why was Bolivia’s former president Jeanine Áñez jailed, what is the political controversy surrounding it? (The Indian Express)
A joint report published in July 2020 by Harvard University’s International Human Rights Clinic and the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR) accused Áñez’s interim government of carrying out gross human rights abuses. It claimed at least 23 indigenous Bolivians were killed and over 230 injured by soldiers in the towns of Sakaba and Senkata, during protests against her government in November 2019. This was reportedly the second deadliest month in terms of civilian deaths by state forces since Bolivia became a democracy in 1982.
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EPA promises to review air pollutant standards in proposed deal with groups representing ‘Cancer Alley’ community
Cancer rates are significantly higher for the residents of St. John than what is considered likely — after controlling for the factors of age, race and sex — according to a study conducted by the University Network for Human Rights. Residents’ cancer rates were also positively correlated with their proximity to the Denka facility, according to the study. That’s a particularly important finding, Ruhan Nagra, director of the group’s environmental justice initiative, told The Lens.
“We’re making an assumption, which I think is a good one, that the closer you live to the facility, the higher your exposure to chloroprene,” Nagra said, “And we’re finding that there’s clearly something there.”
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