About the Center
Staff
Philip Alston, Faculty Director and Chair
Smita Narula, Faculty Director
Margaret Satterthwaite, Faculty Director
Paul van Zyl, Transitional Justice Program Director
William Abresch, Project on Extrajudicial Executions Director
Patricia Armstrong, Fellowship Coordinator
Jayne Huckerby, Research Director
Veerle Opgenhaffen, Program Director
Sarah Knuckey, Research Scholar, Project on Extrajudicial Executions
Amna Akbar, Clinical Contract Attorney, International Human Rights Clinic
Lama Fakih, Fellow, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice
Michelle Williams, Clinic Administrator and Paralegal
Kelly Ryan, Program Assistant
Philip Alston
Faculty Director and Chair, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice
John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law (Faculty Profile)
Philip Alston is an international lawyer whose research and teaching interests focus primarily on Human Rights Law and the Law of International Organizations. In 2004 the United Nations Commission on Human Rights appointed him Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions. In 2005 he was elected to chair the Annual Meeting of U.N. Human Rights Special Procedures, which brings together all of the Special Rapporteurs, Working Groups, Special Representatives and Independent Experts working on human rights in the U.N. system (almost 50 in total). In 2005-06 he will chair the Coordinating Committee set up to enhance and promote coordination among these different mechanisms.
He has also been the Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Law since 1996.
Born and educated in Australia (Law and Economics) and California (JSD), Alston taught during the 1980s at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and at Harvard Law School. He then became Professor of Law and Foundation Director of the Centre for International and Public Law at the Australian National University, a post he held until 1995. From 1996 to 2001 he was Professor of International Law, and for part of that time Head of Department, at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. He was also co-Director of the Academy of European Law and organized the Academy's summer programs in human rights law. Other posts he has held include chief of staff to a Cabinet Minister in Australia during part of the Whitlam Government, and Discrimination Commissioner for the Australian Capital Territory ( Canberra) for three years.
In the field of international law Alston has been Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Law since 1996 and prior to that was the Co-Editor of the Australian Yearbook of International Law. He co-founded the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law and was founding Vice-President of the European Society of International Law.
He was an official of the United Nations, working in Geneva on human rights issues from 1978 to 1984. He has worked as a consultant to the ILO, the UNDP Human Development Report, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNESCO, OECD, UNICEF and various other inter-governmental organizations.
He has also worked extensively with the non-governmental sector. He worked with the Anti-Slavery Society in London in the late 1970s, was an adviser on human rights and development issues to the International Commission of Jurists in the early 1980s, was the only lawyer on the founding Board of Physicians for Human Rights in the late 1980s, and is currently the President of the Board of the Center for Economic and Social Rights.
Within the United Nations context Alston was the first Rapporteur of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, from 1987 until 1990 and then chaired the Committee for eight years until the end of 1998. He played a central role in efforts to reform and streamline the UN's supervisory system. In 1988 he was appointed as an Independent Expert by the U.N. Secretary-General at the request of the General Assembly, to report on measures to ensure the long-term effectiveness of the U.N. human rights treaty bodies, and subsequently submitted reports on this issue in 1989, 1993 and 1997. He participated in the Meeting of Chairpersons of United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies from 1988 through 1998, chairing the Meetings in 1990, 1993, and 1997-98, and acting as Rapporteur in 1988, 1990, 1992, and 1997-98. At the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, in Vienna, he was elected to chair the first-ever meeting held which involved the Presidents and Chairs of all of the international human rights courts and committees (including the European and American Human Rights Courts and the African Commission).
In the area of children's rights he was UNICEF's only legal adviser on children's rights from 1985 to 1992, a period which encompassed the drafting of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the subsequent campaign which led to the Convention becoming the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history with 192 States Parties. He was subsequently a Member of the Technical Advisory Group chaired by Graça Machel which led to the publication of the United Nations Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children in 1997. He continues to be actively involved in this area, especially in co-authoring a Commentary on the Convention which will be published in 2006 by Oxford University Press.
In Europe he directed a major project funded by the European Commission which resulted in the publication of a Human Rights Agenda for the European Union for the Year 2000 and a volume of essays entitled The E.U. and Human Rights, published in both English and French language versions. The project has had a major impact on the evolution of the European Union's human rights policies in recent years.
In 2002 he was appointed by the late Sergio Vieira di Mello as Special Adviser to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and his representative on the Millennium Project Task Force on Poverty and Economic Development, chaired by Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
Smita Narula
Faculty Director, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice
Assistant Professor of Clinical Law (Faculty Profile)
Before joining NYU in August 2003, Smita Narula spent six years at Human Rights Watch, first as the organization’s India researcher and later as Senior Researcher for South Asia. In this capacity, she oversaw Human Rights Watch’s work on India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, and helped coordinate the organization’s response to the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.
Narula has conducted numerous human rights investigations in Asia on topics such as: bonded child labor; abuses related to the HIV/AIDS epidemic; caste discrimination; state-sponsored massacres; the marginalization of religious minorities; gender-based violence; and violations of the right to education. She has also regularly briefed U.N. agencies, international human rights treaty bodies, government officials, and the English, French and Hindi/Urdu media on her findings.
She has authored a variety of reports and articles on caste discrimination worldwide and the rise of religious nationalism in South Asia, including a book-length report titled Broken People: Caste Violence Against India’s ‘Untouchables for which she received the 1999 Human Rights Award from India’s Dalit Liberation Education Trust, presented by former Indian Supreme Court Chief Justice J.S. Verma.
In 1998 Narula helped form the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights in India, a grassroots movement to help expose and eradicate ‘untouchability and other grave abuses against India’s population of 160 million Dalits or so-called untouchables. In 2000 Narula co-founded the International Dalit Solidarity Network, which brings together international organizations, donor agencies, and non-governmental groups to build a world-wide movement against caste discrimination in Asia and Africa. She is also a founding Board member of the Legal Access Network for South Asians in New York.
In 1997, Narula graduated from Harvard Law School, where she was Editor-in-chief of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. Before law school, Narula received a Masters in International Development from Brown University and worked on HIV and public health at UNICEF and the United Nations Development Fund. Narula has also taught human rights advocacy and documentation at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Human Rights. Her research interests include caste and racial discrimination, religious intolerance, human rights abuses in the “war on terror, social and economic rights, and the accountability of transnational corporations and international financial institutions for human rights violations.
Margaret Satterthwaite
Faculty Director, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice
Assistant Professor of Clinical Law (Faculty Profile)
Margaret Satterthwaite is a Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law, and Assistant Professor of Clinical Law of the International Human Rights Clinic. She also serves as Faculty Direcor of the Root-Tilden-Kern program. Her recent scholarship includes Rendered Meaningless: Extraordinary Rendition and the Rule of Law (published in the George Washington Law Review in 2007) and Human Rights Advocacy Stories (co-edited with Deena Hurwitz and Douglas Ford, forthcoming), a volume in the Law Stories series.
Satterthwaite joined the NYU faculty in 2006 after many years in the human rights field. Her human rights career began before law school: between 1990 and 1996, she co-founded and then directed Amnesty International USA's program on the human rights of those persecuted on the basis of their sexual orientation. Satterthwaite also completed a Master's Degree and served as International Programs Coordinator for the human rights education organization Street Law, where she helped develop curriculum in human rights and legal literacy, as well as conducting workshops and training sessions for human rights advocates and legal professionals. In 1995, she was employed as a human rights investigator by the Haitian National Truth and Justice Commission.
After receiving her law degree from NYU in 1999, Satterthwaite clerked for Judge Betty Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The following year she was the Furman Fellow at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, where she focused on emergency law and collusion in Northern Ireland. In 2002, Satterthwaite clerked at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Between 2002 and 2003, Satterthwaite was a human rights consultant for the United Nations, working with the human rights section of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). In 2003, she was hired as Research Director of NYU's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. She joined the full-time faculty in January 2006.
Satterthwaite's research interests include human rights in the "war on terror," economic and social rights, and the human rights of migrants. She a member of the National Security Task Force of the City Bar of New York and is Co-Chair of the Human Rights Interest Group of the American Society of International Law.
Paul van Zyl
Adjunct Professor of Law
Director, Transitional Justice Program, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (pvanzyl@ictj.org)
Paul van Zyl has acted as an adviser and consultant to human rights organizations, governments, international organizations, and foundations on transitional justice issues in numerous countries, including Colombia, Indonesia, East Timor, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. From 1995 to 1998, he served as executive secretary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, helping to establish the Commission and develop its structure and modus operandi.
He has also worked as a researcher for the Goldstone Commission, as a department head at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in Johannesburg, and as an associate at Davis Polk and Wardwell in New York. Mr. van Zyl was recently director of Columbia University Law School's Transitional Justice Program, and now teaches law at both Columbia and New York University Law Schools. He obtained a BA and an LLB from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, an LLM in International Law from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, and an LLM in Corporate Law at New York University, where he was a Hauser Scholar.
William Abresch
Director, Project on Extrajudicial Executions (AbreschW@juris.law.nyu.ed)
William Abresch is a graduate of the NYU School of Law. His research interests include amnesty laws and the interaction between human rights law and humanitarian law. His article on the right to life in internal armed conflicts was recently published in the European Journal of International Law. He has participated in human rights fact-finding missions to Guatemala, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka.
Patricia Armstrong
Fellowship Coordinator, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (armstron@juris.law.nyu.edu)
Tish Armstrong, a graduate of Washington University School of Law (St. Louis), practiced law in New York for 14 years before joining the staff of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First). From 1993 to 1999, she headed its International Financial Institutions Program and focused attention on World Bank-supported initiatives in the area of legal and judicial reform and programs with implications for freedom of association, in addition to monitoring the Bank's developing thinking on the role of human rights in its work.
An independent consultant since 1999, she has undertaken projects for the International Center on Human Rights Policy, Ford Foundation, Public Interest Law Initiative, OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch. Her primary areas of interest are the rights of non-governmental organizations and development and human rights. A recent publication is “The Limits and Risks of Regulation: The Case of the World Bank-supported Draft Handbook on Laws Relating to NGOs," in Jordan and Van Tuijl, eds., NGO Accountability: Politics, Principles and Innovations (Earthscan, forthcoming 2006).
Jayne Huckerby
Research Director, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (huckerby@juris.law.nyu.edu)
Jayne Huckerby joined the Center in September 2005. She holds a BA.LLB (Hons 1) from the University of Sydney (2002) and a LL.M. (2004) from NYU, where she was a Vanderbilt Fellow and was awarded the David H. Moses Memorial Prize for the LL.M. student with the highest cumulative academic average. During her time at NYU, she also served as Graduate Editor on the Journal of International Law and Politics and was awarded an International Law and Human Rights Fellowship which she undertook at the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) in Geneva.
Prior to joining the Center, she worked as a Human Rights Officer at the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) in Geneva. She has also worked as a consultant to the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) on gender and transitional justice and to the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) on gender budget initiatives and human rights law. Jayne was also an Associate in the Litigation Department of Baker & McKenzie, Sydney, Australia in 2002 and 2003.
Her research interests primarily include: gender; human rights and terrorism; caste discrimination; transitional justice; law and security; and the relationship between domestic and international law. She has written or contributed to academic and other publications or reports on topics such as: gender, media and criminal law; returning refugees and transitional justice; gender and the “war on terror trafficking and human rights; gender and the International Criminal Court (ICC); and cross-border movement, including the rights of unaccompanied and separated children.
Veerle Opgenhaffen
Program Director, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (opgenhaffen@juris.law.nyu.edu)
Veerle Opgenhaffen joined the Center in December 2007. She holds a B.A. in International Affairs from Antioch College and an M.A. in International Affairs from the New School University, where she concentrated on global justice and human rights. Her Master’s Thesis, The Force of Memory against Forgetting: Justice, Impunity, and Reconciliation in the Context of Algeria’s Blanket Amnesty, analyzed international legal principles to challenge the legitimacy and potential consequences of Algeria’s amnesty law for crimes committed during its brutal civil war.
Prior to joining the Center, she spent several years at the New York office of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), first as a research intern, then as the program assistant in the Middle East and North Africa unit, and, most recently, as the Communications Associate, where she was responsible for most of the drafting and editing of public-facing collateral, as well as publications and outreach. She also has previous experience as senior editor of a human rights publication; research assistant to a medical anthropologist in Haiti; and research assistant at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica.
Born in Belgium and raised in the Central African Republic, Morocco, and the United States, her research interests have often focused geographically on the Great Lakes and North Africa, while thematically she has focused on transitional justice; the use of amnesties; gender-based inequality; international health; poverty as a human rights violation; security system reforms; and genocide prevention and recovery.
Sarah Knuckey
Research Scholar, Project on Extrajudicial Executions (knuckeys@juris.law.nyu.edu)
Sarah Knuckey has worked with non-governmental and international organisations in Australia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Cambodia, the UK and the USA, leading human rights fact-finding missions, reporting on human rights violations and providing humanitarian and human rights legal and policy advice. Her work has addressed a range of humanitarian and human rights concerns, including refugee rights and detention, indigenous rights, counter-terrorism, torture, rape, the right to life, forced relocation, and the liability of transnational corporations and other non-state actors for human rights abuses. Previously, she was a Clerk to the Hon Justice Michael Kirby at the High Court of Australia, Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar, Lionel Murphy Postgraduate Scholar, Harvard Human Rights Program Summer Fellow, and Everett Public Interest Internship recipient (at Human Rights Watch). She has a BA and LLB (Hons) (University of Western Australia), an LLM (Harvard), and is currently a PhD candidate (University of London).
Amna Akbar
Clinical Contract Attorney, International Human Rights Clinic (akbara@juris.law.nyu.edu)
Prior to joining the Center, Amna Akbar oversaw the Asian Battered Women's Project at Queens Legal Services Corporation, where she represented Asian immigrant battered women in civil and immigration matters; and worked with community-based organizations to address the nonlegal needs of local Asian battered women. In conjunction with Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute, she coauthored a chapter of a New York City-centered Shadow Report to the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, documenting the failures of New York's courts, legislature, and police to satisfy human rights obligations to battered immigrant women and women of color.
After receiving her law degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 2004, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Law Review, she clerked for Gerard E. Lynch, United States District Court, Southern District of New York. Prior to law school, she worked for former Democratic Whip David Bonior (D-MI), advising him on international affairs and human and civil rights.
Her research interests include the applicability of human rights norms to "private" actors; the privatization of the war on terrorism; and the ways that laws construct and maintain, and present opportunities to challenge, the intersecting realities of gender and race. Also interested in the relationship between media and law, she co-produces a weekly radio show on the Pacifica Network's WBAI in New York City, which focuses on Asian American politics, news, and culture.
Lama Fakih
Fellow, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (fakihl@juris.law.nyu.edu)
Lama Fakih joined the Center as a Fellow in August 2008. She holds a B.A. in Middle East Studies from Sarah Lawrence College (2003) and a J.D. from New York University School of Law (2008), where she was awarded the Ann Petluck Poses Memorial Prize for her work in NYU’s International Human Rights Clinic.
During law school Lama interned at CHRGJ, the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, and the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. Prior to law school Lama conducted research as a Fulbright Fellow on the Implementation of Islamic Law in the Egyptian National Courts.
Lama’s research interests include the modernization of Islamic family law, human rights abuses in the “war on terror”, and gender-equality.
Michelle Williams
Clinic Administrator and Paralegal (williams@juris.law.nyu.edu)
Michelle began her career on Wall Street, first as an Institutional Sales assistant, then as a Roadshow Manager, planning and implementing global Initial Public Offerings and Investor Relations meetings to institutional organizations and private investors. During a hiatus in 1998, she traveled to India and Nepal where she volunteered for "seva" (service) to survivors of leprosy. She has worked at NYU as a Clinic Administrator/Paralegal since 1999.
She is a graduate of NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies and has an advanced degree in Paralegal Studies. She is currently pursuing a degree in Teaching, minoring in Religious Studies.
She is a member of The Dalai Lama Foundation, International Campaign for Tibet, Tibet House, and sponsors a Tibetan refugee attending school in India.
Kelly Ryan
Program Assistant (ryank@juris.law.nyu.edu)
Kelly Ryan joined NYU and the Center in 2007. She is a 2006 graduate of the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia with a BA in International Affairs and a concentration in Spanish language and Latin American studies. She spent a semester studying Spanish at the Universidad de Deusto in Bilbao, Spain in the spring of 2005.
