Bay Kou Bliye, Pote Mak Sonje: Climate Injustice in Haiti and the Case for Reparations

CLIMATE & ENVIRONMENT

Bay Kou Bliye, Pote Mak Sonje: Climate Injustice in Haiti and the Case for Reparations

This report by the Global Justice Clinic at NYU Law and the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA Law, in collaboration with Haitian social movement organizations, illuminates the crisis of climate injustice in Haiti.

Bay Kou Bliye, Pote Mak Sonje: Enjistis Klimatik an Ayiti ak Demann pou Reparasyon se yon rapò ekri pa Klinik Jistis Mondyal nan Fakilte Dwa NYU ansanm ak Enstiti Promise pou Dwa Moun nan Fakilte Dwa UCLA. Se atrave kolaborasyon ak mouvman sosyal an Ayiti nou reyalize li. Rapò a prezante enpak dega klimatik sou popilasyon Ayisyen epi li montre jan istwa kolonizasyon ak enjistis rasyel kreye vilnerabilite klimatik Ayiti. Li bay egzanp pou montre kouman popilasyon Ayisyen ap degaje yo nan reyalite difisil la, epi li konkli reparasyon se nesese pou jistis klimatik ansanm ak jistis rasyel. Rapò a ansanm ak rezime egzekitif la disponib anba — klike sou ti kare a pou jwenn yo.

Report & Executive Summary

Rapò ak Rezime Egzekitif Kreyòl

The report outlines the impacts of climate harms on Haitian people and their human rights, the colonial construction of Haiti’s climate vulnerability, and the legal and moral arguments for reparations to advance both climate and racial justice. It also touches on grassroots efforts in Haiti for climate resilience and to advance land rights, environmental justice, and community self-determination.

Haiti is one of the countries most harmed by the global climate crisis. The country’s climate vulnerability is not just a product of its geography—it is also the result of centuries of racial injustice, originating in colonialism, slavery, and Haiti’s “independence ransom” to France. Haiti powerfully illuminates that the climate crisis is a racial injustice crisis. Yet there is little available research presenting the impacts of climate change—or climate disorder as Haitian activists term it—on Haitian people, analyzing the connections between racial and climate injustice, and presenting demands for climate justice, including critically for reparations. This report advances the case for reparations to Haiti, and demonstrates that reparations are essential to advancing climate justice.

December 10, 2024 Youssef Farhat Product

S. Priya Morley

S. Priya Morley
Project Advisor, Global Justice Clinic; Director, Racial Justice Initiative, Bernstein Institute for Human Rights

Global Justice Clinic

Before joining the Bernstein Institute, Priya was on the faculty at UCLA Law as Director of the International Human Rights Clinic and Racial Justice Policy Counsel at the Promise Institute for Human Rights, where she led academic, advocacy, and policy initiatives at the intersection of racial justice and critical approaches to human rights. She was affiliated with the Critical Race Studies and International and Comparative Law Programs at UCLA Law, as well as the UCLA Latin American Institute.

Priya was previously an Arthur Helton Global Human Rights Fellow at NYU Law, researching discrimination against Black African and Haitian migrant women in Mexico, and she supervised students in the Global Justice Clinic’s Caribbean Climate Justice Initiative, with which she continued to collaborate while at UCLA Law.

A Canadian attorney, Priya previously worked in employment law, public law, and human rights litigation at WeirFoulds LLP and clerked at the Divisional Court, Superior Court of Justice of Ontario. She also worked with the UN Team of Experts on Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict and several civil society organizations, including the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), Equality Effect, and Equitas International Centre for Human Rights Education.

Priya holds an LLM in International Legal Studies from NYU Law, law degrees from McGill University Faculty of Law, and a BA from the University of British Columbia. She is completing a PhD in Law at the Allard School of Law at UBC. Her research sits at the intersection of race, gender, and migration.

December 3, 2024 Dev Account Profile

Center Chair gives keynote talk in Brazil Supreme Court’s seminar on structural litigation

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

Center Chair gives keynote talk in Brazil Supreme Court’s Seminar on structural litigation

On October 7, 2024 as part of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice’s ongoing academic exchange with Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF), Professor César Rodríguez-Garavito gave a keynote talk in the seminar “Structural Litigation: Advances and Challenges” in Brasilia.

The event was organized by STF Chief Justice Luís Roberto Barroso as well as other high-ranking Brazilian judges, including STF’s Deputy Chief Justice Edson Fachin and the Federal High Court’s Chief Justice Antonio Herman Benjamin.

In his opening remarks, Minister Barroso highlighted the significance of structural litigation—that is, constitutional cases addressing systemic policy issues that affect the rights of large groups. Among ongoing structural cases before the Brazilian Supreme Court are those dealing with violations of Indigenous rights in the Amazon, prison overcrowding, and police violence in informal settlements. He underscored that this emerging area is central to the Brazilian judiciary, urging judges to proactively identify such issues and ensure that relevant governmental institutions develop and implement effective solutions. Other judges on the panel echoed the importance of the judiciary’s authority to act in these matters and emphasized the need for effective monitoring of structural court decisions.

The seminar also featured discussions on the judiciary’s role in resolving complex structural conflicts. Professor Rodríguez-Garavito shared insights on how structural cases are handled in comparative law, focusing on their impacts and potential applications to climate litigation. He highlighted the STF’s contributions to the protection of constitutional rights through structural rulings and suggested ways forward to ensure the legitimacy and effective implementation of the Court’s rulings.

The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice’s participation in this seminar is one of many initiatives planned with high courts from around the world for the upcoming year, underscoring the Center’s commitment to supporting judicial engagement in innovative legal areas while protecting rights and advancing justice for all.

Photo Gallery

November 7, 2024 Youssef Farhat Event Summary

Emma Crowe

Emma Crowe
Research Scholar
The Earth Rights Research & Action

October 19, 2024 Bryan Gasaway Profile

Forming a High Level Expert Group to Strengthen Global Gender Justice

INEQUALITIES

Forming a High Level Expert Group to Strengthen Global Gender Justice

In a groundbreaking initiative to address gender-based injustices, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law together with the American Society of International Law, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s Women, Law, and Leadership Project and the University of Oxford’s Bonavero Institute for Human Rights formed the High-Level Expert Group on Gender Persecution and Gender Apartheid.

The High-Level Expert Group is led by Baroness Helena Kennedy of The Shaws KC, a Member of the House of Lords and founder of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights; Catherine Amirfar, Partner and Co-Chair of the International Disputes Resolution Group and Public International Law Group at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP; Rangita de Silva de Alwis, a Senior Fellow at Penn Carey Law and Member of CEDAW; and Ghizal Haress, a former Ombudsperson for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and visiting professor at the University of Toronto.

The group is comprised of an esteemed array of global experts and human rights defenders who bring to bear a wealth of knowledge and expertise, including José E. Alvarez, NYU School of Law Herbert and Rose Rubin Professor of International Law.

The High-Level Expert Group seeks to address gaps in the existing international legal framework addressing gender-based crimes, including by examining the basis for gender apartheid and gender persecution under international law, developing the definitions and framework for addressing these crimes, advancing accountability efforts against perpetrators of gender-based crimes, and centering the voices of victims and those directly affected by gender apartheid and gender persecution.

Through this newly-launched initiative, NYU Law students have the opportunity through research to be part of the ongoing efforts to achieve justice for victims of gender-based apartheid and/or persecution around the world. A myriad of legal research assignments on topics ranging from gender-based crimes under international law to human rights protections against gender-based discrimination will be carried under the direct supervision of pro-bono attorneys at a local NY firm supervised by Prof. Alvarez.

August 28, 2024 Youssef Farhat Student Program

Seizing the opportunity to improve Uganda’s national digital ID system

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Seizing the opportunity to improve Uganda’s national digital ID system

In 2014, Uganda introduced its first national digital ID system. Now, a decade later, as millions of ID cards are set to expire, the Government is planning a significant upgrade of the system and will soon begin a mass enrollment exercise to register all unregistered Ugandans. Given that many exclusions and harms have arisen from the current digital ID system, the Government’s plans to roll out a new system represent a key opportunity to learn from past experiences and ensure that the new system is more inclusive, equitable, and privacy-protecting.

Download Recommendations

In this document, we raise 5 urgent recommendations that the Government must adopt to put Uganda on the path towards a digital ID system that centers inclusion, equity, privacy, transparency, and accountability. Drawing on research and lessons learned from Uganda’s existing national digital ID system, as well as incorporating lessons from other countries’ experiences and from international best practices, we recommend that the Government should:

Improve communication and transparency about plans for the new digital ID;
Proactively facilitate participation, particularly of vulnerable communities and of civil society organizations, in policy and design choices;
Conduct a comprehensive Human Rights Impact Assessment to identify risks arising from the ID system and the registration process;
Take steps to ensure that marginalized and vulnerable groups are proactively included in enrollment and renewal processes;
Put in place concrete plans for a transition period to ensure that no rights are violated as the Government works to introduce new digital components

This is not intended to be an exhaustive list but instead focuses on short-term, actionable recommendations that will help concretely improve the Government’s approach in the immediate term and avoid further entrenching the well-documented problems and weaknesses that have affected the current system.

July 25, 2024.

July 25, 2024 Youssef Farhat Product

New Casebook—International Human Rights by P. Alston available in an Open Access Publication

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

New Casebook—International Human Rights by P. Alston available in an Open Access Publication

Philip Alston’s International Human Rights textbook is now available free of charge in a comprehensively revised edition and on an Open Access basis starting July 8, 2024.

Digital Access

This book examines the world of contemporary human rights, including legal norms, political contexts and moral ideals. It acknowledges the regime’s strengths and weaknesses, and focuses on today’s principal challenges. These include the struggles against resurgent racism and anti-gender ideology, the implications of new technologies for fact-finding and many other parts of the regime, the continuing marginality of economic, social and cultural rights, radical inequality, climate change, and the evermore central role of the private sector.

The boundaries of the subject have steadily expanded as the post-World War II regime has become an indelible part of the legal, political and moral landscape. Given the breadth and complexity of the regime, the book takes an interdisciplinary and critical approach.

… imaginative and stimulating materials with thought-provoking commentary… a wonderful teaching tool, as well as a valuable starting point for research.

Judge Hilary Charlesworth, Judge of the International Court of Justice.

Features include:

A focus on current issues such as new technologies, climate change, counter-terrorism, reparations, sanctions, and universal jurisdiction;
Expanded focus on race, gender, sexual orientation, disability and other forms of discrimination and the backlash against efforts to combat them;
Introductory chapters that provide the necessary overview of international law;
An interdisciplinary approach that puts human rights issues into their broader political, economic, and cultural contexts;
Diverse and critical perspectives dealt with throughout;
Sections dealing with political economy of human rights and the challenge of growing inequality;
Issues of international humanitarian law are widely reflected; and
Focus on current situations in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, Venezuela, and others

Major themes that run through the book include the colonial and imperial objectives often pursued in the name of human rights, evolving notions of autonomy and sovereignty, the changing configuration of the public-private divide in human rights ordering, the escalating tensions between international human rights and national security, and the striking evolution of ideas about the nature and purposes of the regime itself.

This book is a successor to previous volumes entitled International Human Rights in Context (1996, 2000 and 2008, all co-authored with Henry Steiner and in 2008 also with Ryan Goodman) and International Human Rights: Text and Materials (2013, co-authored with Ryan Goodman). “All four volumes were published by Oxford University Press, and I am grateful to them for reverting all rights to the author in order to enable this Open Access publication” says Alston.

The comprehensively revised edition will be available free of charge and can be downloaded in either a single pdf file for the entire book or separate files for each of the eighteen chapters.

June 26, 2024 Youssef Farhat Product

Recommendations to Funders to Improve Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Human Rights Field

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Recommendations to Funders to Improve Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Human Rights Field

Improving and maintaining well-being is essential to individual health, to organizational functioning, and to the sustainability and effectiveness of the human rights field as a whole. There are many concrete, immediately actionable reforms that are achievable in the near-term and which address a variety of causes of distress, or which can support efforts to transform the field over the long term. Such steps should be taken while the human rights field works toward deep transformation.

Download Recommendations

Human rights advocacy can be a source of significant joy, purpose, political agency, belonging, and community. Yet advocates can also experience harms, and trauma in their efforts to advance justice and equality, including those caused by heavy workloads, time pressures, discrimination and bullying in the workplace, vicarious exposure to trauma and human rights abuse, and direct experience of threats and attacks. Advocates can experience suffering, sometimes very severe, as a result, including demotivation, alienation, anxiety, fear, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. How advocates experience their work and any resulting harms can vary widely, and may be highly contextual and culturally specific.

Improving and maintaining well-being is essential to individual health, to organizational functioning, and to the sustainability and effectiveness of the human rights field as a whole.

Positively transforming mental health and well-being in the human rights field will require significant reforms and both structural changes and close attention to the contextually-specific needs of individual advocates and organizations. The causes and dynamics at play are complex, and there are no quick fixes that can address the cultural shifts required. As efforts are taken to improve well-being, it is important that the field avoids tick-the-box or commodified approaches. Improving the wellbeing of human rights advocates requires a holistic response and a movement-wide prioritization of well-being, with careful attention to context, culture, and the diverse needs of advocates and organizations.

Recognition of the deeply-rooted problems requiring radical change or of the complexities of the issues and the difficulty of defining a clear set of recommendations applicable across the board should not operate as an excuse to take no action now to improve well-being. There are many concrete, immediately actionable reforms that are achievable in the near-term and which address a variety of causes of distress, or which can support efforts to transform the field over the long term. Such steps should be taken while the human rights field works toward deep transformation. Some of these steps include the following recommended actions, which are drawn from our research with advocates around the world.

June 25, 2024 Dev Account Product

Carbon Markets, Forests and Rights: An Introductory Series for Indigenous Peoples

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

Carbon Markets, Forests and Rights

An Introductory Series for Indigenous Peoples

Indigenous peoples are experiencing a rush of interest in their lands and territories from actors involved in carbon markets. Many indigenous communities have expressed that to make informed decisions about how to engage with carbon markets, they need accessible information about what these markets are, and how participating in them may affect their rights.

In response to this demand for information, the Global Justice Clinic and the Forest Peoples Programme have developed a series of introductory materials about carbon markets. The materials were initially developed for GJC partner the South Rupununi District Council in Guyana and have been adapted for a global audience.

English

French

Spanish

Indonesian

Portuguese

The explainer materials can be read in any order:

Explainer 1 introduces key concepts that are essential background to understanding carbon markets. It introduces what climate change is, what the carbon cycle and carbon dioxide is, and the link between carbon dioxide, forests and climate change.
Explainer 2 outlines what carbon markets and carbon credits are, and provides a brief introduction to why these markets are developing and how they function
Explainer 3 focuses on indigenous peoples’ rights and carbon markets. It highlights some of the particular risks that carbon markets pose to indigenous peoples and communities. It also highlights key questions communities should ask themselves as they consider how to engage with or respond to carbon markets
Explainer 4 provides an overview of the key environmental critiques and concerns around carbon markets
Explainer 5 provides a short introduction to ART-TREES. ART-TRESS is an institution and standard that is involved in ‘certifying’ carbon credits and that is gaining a lot of attention internationally.

English

French

Spanish

Indonesian

Portugese

May 30, 2024 Dev Account Product

The Time is Now: Mexico Must Grant Haitians Refugee Protections under the Cartagena Declaration

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

The Time is Now: Mexico Must Grant Haitians Refugee Protections under the Cartagena

This report published by Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Matías de Córdova A.C. and the Global Justice Clinic shows why Mexico–and, by extension, all countries that have signed the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees–must grant Haitians refugee status.

English

Kreyòl

Español

Haitians living outside of Haiti often lack access to basic human rights, face anti-Black discrimination, and in many countries, live under the threat of being sent back to Haiti. Pathways to legal status in other countries are essential for Haitians seeking safety, but governments rarely grant legal status to Haitians and, when they do, protections are often temporary.

Mexico is one of the many countries that Haitian people have migrated to in the past decade. Tens of thousands of Haitians enter Mexico every year. Mexico has incorporated the Cartagena Declaration–which provides a broader definition of “refugee” than the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1966 Protocol–into its domestic law, legally binding it to grant refugee status to people who, based on an objective analysis of the circumstances in their country of origin, meet the elements of the declaration. This report establishes how three of the Declaration’s elements–generalized violence, massive violations of human rights, and other circumstances that seriously disturb public order–are pervasive in Haiti.

Advocacy

The Global Justice Clinic and Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Matías de Córdova A.C. launched the report in Mexico City in late April 2024, and met with representatives of Mexican government agencies, including the Comisión Mexicana de Ayuda a Refugiados (Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance) and the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (Secretariat of Foreign Affairs) to urge them to apply the Cartagena Declaration to Haitian nationals.

Additional resources

May 23, 2024 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized