The International Human Rights Clinic is the first of several international programs the Stanford Mills Legal Clinic expects to create in the next few years. In prior years, the overseas program has focused on investigating the effectiveness of the complex, volunteer dispute resolution system in Buduburam, a 17-year old Liberian refugee camp located outside of Accra, Ghana.
In the fall of 2007, Leah Kaplan Distinguished Professor of Human Rights Law (visiting) Professor Olshansky taught the law school's first course on Guantanamo, the War on Terror, and the Clash with International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law. In the spring of 2008, Professor Olshansky and Human Rights Teaching Fellow Kathleen Kelly formally launched the law school's first in-country International Human Rights Clinic. Ten students had the opportunity to spend seven weeks during the Spring Quarter in Namibia, southern Africa, working on five unique projects they had developed with the guidance of the University of Namibia Law School, the Law School's Human Rights and Documentation Centre, the Justice Training Centre, and the Legal Assistance Centre, one of the premier impact litigation law firms in the country.
In the fall of 2008, the International Human Rights Clinic will incorporate work on the war on terror and its humanitarian aftermath into the beginning Human Rights Clinic. Students will work on challenges to the legality of military detention without charge or trial in U.S.-operated prison facilities in other countries (including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Bagram, Afghanistan), resettlement applications for former U.S. detainees and political prisoners seeking refuge in third countries, and coordinating international teams of medical and psychological experts to provide free services to former detainees and their families and train local public health personnel how to provide such services on an on-going basis.
In 2008, Professor Barbara Olshansky and Teaching Fellow Kathleen Kelly launched the International Human Rights Clinic's Namibia program, which allows IHR Clinic students the opportunity to spend the Spring Quarter participating in human rights work on the ground in Namibia, a flourishing democracy in southern Africa, only 18 years out of Apartheid. The ten students worked closely with the University, the Ministry of Justice, and various NGO partners on the following projects:
Students worked with the former Dean of the Law Faculty of the University of Namibia, Professor Sam Amoo:
IHR Clinic students worked with the HIV/AIDS Project of the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC), Namibia's premier human rights NGO, to assist the organization in filing a groundbreaking HIV/AIDS discrimination case on behalf of women who have been forcibly sterilized during cesarean sections based of their HIV positive status. The case is the first of an anticipated 20 additional cases that the LAC will file over the next several months with the assistance of Stanford students participating in the advanced IHR Clinic.
Presently, there is a lack of transparency surrounding the administration of the mining law in Namibia and the application process for drilling for water (needed for both the exploration and the mining processes) and uranium. The lack of adequate public participation in the application process and the issuance of permits that exceeded the amounts permitted by even the outdated law resulted in egregious environmental and human impacts, including the draining of water that would provide irrigation for 36 years of local farming in a period of only three months. The desertification of the country is at stake in this test case, which involves not only the issue of whether citizens own the water on their land, but also whether the country must put into place a comprehensive plan for water use and conservation. IHR Clinic students worked with the Land, Environment and Development Project at the Legal Assistance Centre to file the first environmental test case in Namibia and to prepare a factual assessment of the problems around the lack of transparency in the process of obtaining mining licenses in Namibia and the resulting environmental damage and human impact in terms of access to water. The case is still proceeding and students participating in the advanced IHR Clinic in the fall of 2008 will continue to work on the litigation.
Working in conjunction with the International Justice Network, a U.S.-based NGO, the Justice Training Center of the University of Namibia, and the Namibian Ministry of Justice, IHR Clinic students assisted in the creation and implementation of a sustainable open source web-based system that will enable Namibian judges to collaborate with each other, review important opinions immediately, and access key domestic and international legal materials. The new virtual law office extranet site is intended to assist the country's magistrates, who run the courts of first instance in Namibia, in avoiding communication problems among them and make it easier for them to develop the country's common law in more a consistent and regularized fashion. Specifically, students administered a comprehensive needs assessment to the magistrates across the country in order to develop a set of specific recommendations for how the magistrates might be able to best collaborate effectively in their efforts to create judicial institutions anchored in the rule of law. In the second phase of this project, students will be working with a Fulbright fellow now in Namibia to identify and upload the content selected by the magistrates for the extranet site, create training materials, and design other systems to enable the country's judges to access international law opinions from around the world at no cost.
IHR Clinic students researched the issue of countries' implementation of U.N. Convention Against Torture ("CAT") in order to draft comprehensive proposed legislation that had been requested by members of the Namibian Parliament. After meeting with political leaders and Parliament members during the clinic, a decision was made to introduce the legislation in Parliament later this year. Through their work on this project, the students met with numerous government officials and doctoral students at the University, and spoke experts from around the world. For their supporting memorandum, the students provided research on the following issues: