LAW 737TUT - Human Rights Practicum: Critical Refugee Law and Advocacy

The practicum will be guided by two goals. The first is scholarly: to refine an account of critical advocacy in the field of refugee and asylum law. A comparative study of refugee and asylum systems in the United States and Europe will be our main object of consideration, guided by literature from critical refugee studies, TWAIL, and other sources of international legal theory. Students will become familiar with international and domestic standards for refugee protection, contemporary practices of border externalization and migration management that threaten to violate the prohibition on refoulement, and the mobilizations by lawyers and civil society to challenge such practices. The second goal is practical: to conduct human rights advocacy in collaboration with refugee communities and refugee resettlement and advocacy organizations in Buffalo and with international partner organizations abroad. The shape of this advocacy will vary some issues will be ripe for amicus brief research; others for human rights report-writing. Some projects will be oriented toward issues of housing, employment, social integration, and education here in Buffalo. Others will look outward, detailing rights violations of refugees or migrants at the border or on the journeys made to reach destination states or, further still, detailing the conditions in countries of origin that cause people to flee. Students will collaborate with refugees and asylees, not as clients but as co-participants in an effort to seek accountability and to raise public consciousness. In this work, students will apply international legal standards in human rights report-writing; conduct written and oral preparation of legal arguments; and learn about the ethics of human rights research-gathering and interviewing, guided by trauma-informed approaches to working with partner organizations and community groups.

Credits: 3