Global Justice Clinic
The Global Justice Clinic (GJC) partners with social movement and community organizations to prevent, challenge, and redress economic, racial, climate, and migration injustice, while training the next generation of social justice lawyers. GJC’s collaborative work includes supporting community self-determination and climate justice in Haiti, Guyana and Zimbabwe, advancing the rights of Haitian migrants throughout the Western Hemisphere, and working with jailhouse lawyers to know, use, and shape the law.
ongoing projects
Projects tackle situations of global injustice where the Clinic has a valuable contribution to make, and where it can support–and not displace–local expertise and capacity. Most projects are multi-year: the Clinic fosters long-term relationships of solidarity with partners. Over the last decade the Clinic has secured important legal and advocacy victories alongside our partners.
Project
Climate Justice and Reparations
GJC works with advocates and social movements to support and advance the intertwined struggles for climate justice and reparations for Haiti and beyond.
Project
Mining Justice and Self-Determination
GJC supports Haitian communities to know their rights in relation to extractive industry activity, to hold corporate actors to account, and to promote rural self- determination in areas affected by mining. GJC monitors mining on the Haiti-DR border and connects extractivism to climate justice and reparations.
Project
Indigenous Land Rights and Earth Defense
GJC collaborates with indigenous communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis and extractive sector activity to assert their territorial rights and self-determination, through legal, advocacy, and legal empowerment support.
Project
Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative
The initiative aims to challenge cycles of incarceration and re-conceptualize the role of jailhouse lawyers as agents of empowerment. A partnership with the Bernstein Institute at NYU and the Legal Empowerment Advocacy Hub.
Project
Haitian Migrant Rights
GJC advocates for the rights of Haitian migrants throughout the Americas. This Project coordinates the Rezo Emisferik pou Dwa Migran Ayisyen (REDMA, or the Hemispheric Network for Haitian Migrant Rights) that brings together Haitian migrant organizations and leaders from approximately a dozen countries in the Western Hemisphere. GJC works in solidarity with REDMA members and conducts legal research to support Haitian migrants to access their rights.
Project
Hanyanya Community Legal Empowerment
This project of the Bernstein Institute supports an indigenous women-led collective in Hanyanya, Zimbabwe to build the knowledge, tools, and collective strategies needed to mitigate harm and proactively defend their ancestral lands in the face of lithium mining.
Global Justice Clinic
GJC: The Global Justice Clinic prepares law students to be self-reflective, accountable, and innovative human rights lawyers. GJC:
- works in a rights-based manner that embraces critical legal empowerment aimed at shifting power to marginalized communities as they claim their rights;
- views human rights practice as a means to challenge structural oppression in partnership with directly impacted individuals and communities.
- draws on insights and works in collaboration with experts in other fields, including earth sciences, open source investigations, journalism, public health, forensics, sociology, and anthropology.
