Big Moments, Small Moments That Make Up A Year

Posted by Tyler Giannini

Big moments, small moments; during graduation week, we are often flooded with the memories we have created over the past year, working closely with students.  It seems like a natural time to reflect.  But where to start when there are so many good memories?

I think about the small moments in the field, like when a student makes a breakthrough.  Earlier this year, I was shadowing two students in Thailand as they interviewed a refugee through a translator, and the student leading the interview kept turning to me, asking for advice.  I told her to stop; I told her she could do this—I had seen her do it—and that she needed to work now with her partner, not me.  She finally got it, trusting herself and the talent and skills she already possessed.

I think about the seemingly small moments in advocacy work that do not get a lot of media attention but are major victories for the protection of civilians, like when Bonnie and her team of students joined a group of nongovernmental organizations in defeating a proposal that would have weakened the absolute ban on cluster munitions.  For the students in Geneva who opposed the proposal, the moment—indeed the precise minute—it was defeated is indelibly etched in their minds: 7:05pm on Friday, November 25, 2011. The students wrote about it here.

I think about the big moments that come together after years of effort with partners, like the groundbreaking work out of Latin America that Fernando and Deborah did this year with several crack teams of students.  In August, they obtained critical measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to protect prisoners at the largest detention center in Latin America. Then, within weeks, they turned around and, working with their local partners, helped strike a landmark settlement with the state of Brazil that promises large-scale reform within the infamous Urso Branco Prison.

Fact-Finding in Libya: Documenting Risks from a Revolution

Posted by Cara Solomon

Note: This story was originally published on the Harvard Law School homepage, where there is also a slideshow of the team’s trip.

There she stood, in northern Libya, a spread of explosive weapons before her: mortars and rockets and surface-to-air missiles almost 20 feet long. For all her work in post-conflict zones, senior clinical instructor Bonnie Docherty ’01 had never seen anything like it. The weapons stretched on for miles.

John McFarlane, technical field manager for Mines Advisory Group Libya, shows the team weapons that deminers have gathered for controlled destruction.

It was March, five months after the revolution had ended, and Docherty was supervising a team from the International Human Rights Clinic on a trip to assess the humanitarian risks of abandoned weapons. As the team traveled from city to city, the scale of the problem was startling.

“We saw huge quantities of weapons—particularly in bombed-out bunkers—many of which were inadequately secured,” said Docherty, a lecturer on law, as well as a senior researcher with the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch.  “In our view, these weapons represent a real threat to the safety and stability of Libyans.”

Over the course of eight days, the team traveled to Misrata, the focus of Col. Gaddafi’s bombing campaign; Sirte, where rebels finally defeated the dictator; and Zintan, where NATO bombing had destroyed a complex of more than 70 bunkers full of weapons. Their research will feed into a larger body of work on Libya by the nongovernmental organization CIVIC and the Center for American Progress.

The students prepared for weeks for the trip, researching the scattering of Gaddafi’s abandoned stockpiles, the efforts underway to deal with the weapons, and the relevant legal frameworks. Still, being there, post-revolution, was something else entirely.

“It felt momentous,” said Nicolette Boehland ’13, who is returning to Libya this summer with CIVIC, which promotes assistance for civilians victims of armed conflict. “It definitely felt like a place that was changing by the day.”

In their conversations with locals, the students said they sensed tremendous pride and enthusiasm for what had been accomplished in the revolution; the energy was palpable in the streets. But from the team’s perspective, there were also serious risks for civilians.

Incendiary Weapons: Growing Support for Stronger Protections

Posted by Michael Jacobson, JD ’13, and Patricia Villa Berger, LLM ’13, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy At Tufts University

Support is growing for strengthening regulations of incendiary weapons, according to a new paper published by the International Human Rights Clinic and Human Rights Watch. In addition to analyzing countries’ positions, the paper highlights recent use, stockpiling, and production of incendiary weapons, which demonstrate the urgent need for better international law.

The Clinic and Human Rights Watch urge states to open diplomatic discussions on incendiary weapons as soon as possible and to move towards amending current international law with the goal of enhancing humanitarian protection.

An IHRC team found this white phosphorus munition at one of Qaddafi’s abandoned weapons depots in Libya in March.

The law in question is the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), an international treaty regulating weapons that cause unnecessary suffering or have indiscriminate effects. Incendiary weapons pose a significant threat to civilians, causing severe burns, asphyxiation, and, in some cases, death. States adopted CCW Protocol III to regulate the weapons in 1980.

But according to the Clinic and Human Rights Watch, the protocol has multiple loopholes; for example, it does not cover use of dual-purpose weapons with incendiary effects, like white phosphorus munitions, which have been used since 2003 in Afghanistan. Protocol III also establishes inconsistent regulations for weapons that produce the same harm.

In letters as well as statements during meetings of the CCW, about 20 countries have expressed their concerns about the harm caused by incendiary weapons and the inadequacy of the protocol. A few states have already explicitly called for amendments, while many others have indicated openness to considering the issue in the CCW forum. Australia and Germany have called for a group of experts to begin discussions on strengthening the protocol, which would be the first step toward legal change.

The paper recently released by the Clinic and Human Rights Watch is the latest contribution to a joint campaign that advocates for greater regulation of incendiary weapons. In earlier papers, the team outlined the shortcomings of Protocol III, described the humanitarian suffering produced by incendiary weapons, and outlined various options for strengthening Protocol III.

The need for change is pressing. Over the past year, both the United States and insurgents have used white phosphorus in Afghanistan, endangering civilians there. In addition, the Clinic and Human Rights Watch separately documented white phosphorus shells abandoned after the recent conflict in Libya. These shells pose a high risk to civilians because they have been left unsecured and could also easily detonate in the summer heat, setting off a chain reaction of nearby weapons.

The Clinic and Human Rights Watch recommend that states adopt a definition of incendiary weapons that encompasses all weapons with incendiary effects. In addition, they argue that a ban on such weapons would have the greatest humanitarian benefits. At a minimum, states should eliminate the false distinction between ground- and air-launched incendiary weapons, as well as consider establishing a presumption that use is unlawful and prohibiting the targeting of combatants.

Michael Jacobson, JD ’13, Harvard Law School, and Patricia Villa Berger, LLM ’12, The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University, compiled and analyzed the recent statements by parties to the CCW, researched current use and stockpiling of incendiary weapons in conflict zones, and drafted the paper that was presented and distributed at a conference of CCW States parties in Geneva in late April. Senior clinical instructor Bonnie Docherty supervised the project.

Where in the World is the Human Rights Program?

Post by Susan Farbstein

This week is spring break at the law school, but folks around HRP won’t be sitting on a beach in Florida.  Seven clinicians and 18 clinical students will be on field missions in five foreign countries and right here at home.

Fernando and Deborah will be in Brazil with their team, as well as Celina Beatriz Mendes de Almeida, LLM ’10, presenting a briefing paper about prosecution of dictatorship-era crimes at a workshop with federal prosecutors.

Later in the week, Deborah will return to Massachusetts and, with another team, conduct interviews related to Occupy Boston for a multi-clinic report examining freedom of expression and assembly in the United States.

Mindy and her team will be in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, investigating access to sexual and reproductive health services, including abortion, and the effect on women’s lives.

Meera and a student will be in Israel and the West Bank, presenting research from last semester and meeting with human rights organizations to develop new clinical projects.

She’s still waiting for the visas to come through, but Bonnie plans to have a team in Libya researching the humanitarian effects of abandoned arms, which have proliferated widely in the wake of the recent conflict there and have the potential to harm civilians as well as destabilize the country.

And Tyler and I, along with six students, will be conducting interviews in refugee camps along the Thai/Burma border, examining human rights violations committed by the Burmese military against villagers.

Here’s wishing everyone a productive “break”!

Reflections on a Partnership: Advancing Assistance for Civilian Victims of War

Posted by Bonnie Docherty

The International Human Rights Clinic’s newest publication—on the legal foundations for “making amends”—has its origins in a friendship formed 10 years ago on the dusty streets of Kabul.

Marla Ruzicka, founder of CIVIC, talks to civilians in Kabul in 2002. The Clinic has worked with CIVIC on several projects over the years.

In early 2002, just out of Harvard Law School, I traveled to Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch to investigate civilian casualties from the U.S. air campaign. There I met Marla Ruzicka, an idealistic young activist who seemed to know every civilian victim in the capital city.  She served as our guide, taking us to mud house after mud house to interview the families of survivors, each of whom she treated with compassion and respect.

Marla would go on to found the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), a nongovernmental organization dedicated to advocating for civilian victims of war. In my capacity as a researcher in Human Rights Watch’s Arms Division, I continued to work with Marla at home and in Iraq, until she was killed by a suicide bomber in Baghdad in 2005.

In the year that followed, I joined the Clinic at Harvard, and Sarah Holewinski took the helm at CIVIC, upholding and expanding its mission admirably. We initiated a partnership shortly thereafter. While I had previously investigated why civilians are killed during war, this work allowed me to deal with what can be done to help victims afterward.

CIVIC pioneered the concept of “making amends,” which calls on warring parties to recognize and provide assistance to civilian victims for harm caused by their lawful conduct. In the Clinic’s first project with the organization, a team of students contributed to designing and drafting the organization’s “Making Amends Guiding Principles.”

Since then, the Clinic-CIVIC collaboration has generated a series of projects and helped inspire several of our students to pursue careers in the field of international humanitarian law. To date, 10 clinical students have done work produced with CIVIC or related to its mandate.

The publication released today—“Legal Foundations for ‘Making Amends’ to Civilians Harmed by Armed Conflict”—builds on CIVIC’s idea and exemplifies the Clinic’s legal advocacy. Because making amends fills a gap in international law, there is no direct precedent for it; in this paper, however, we argue that individual elements of the concept are grounded in established practice and precepts. Clinical students Andrew Childers, J.D. ’11, and Anna Lamut, J.D. ’10, researched and co-wrote the paper.

Rebecca Agule, J.D. ’10, interviews a woman whose husband was executed by Nepalese government forces during the country’s 10-year armed conflict.

In addition to legal advocacy, the Clinic has done fieldwork in association with CIVIC. In 2010, I led a team of three students on a fact-finding mission to Nepal to investigate the needs of civilian victims of the country’s decade-long armed conflict and how those needs are—or are not—being addressed.

We interviewed dozens of individuals who had experienced or witnessed horrific events. A man described how Maoist rebels broke his legs over a log and beat him to the point his mother thought he was dead. A woman told us in tears how government forces inexplicably executed her husband, a state-employed postman, and left him on the side of the road. This trip made us better appreciate Marla’s close, on-the-ground engagement with victims of war.

Reflections on a Major Weapons Victory: Overcoming Powerful Opposition, Ban on Cluster Munitions Strengthened

Posted by  Anna Crowe, LLM ’12, Nicolette Boehland, JD ’13, Robert Yoskowitz, JD ’13

“We are the voices of victims, not just diplomats. . . . If we have to pay a political price, if we can just save one single life, it is worth it.  And I think we are not alone.” 

- Representative of Costa Rica, the Fourth Review Conference of the Convention on Conventional Weapons

At precisely 7:05pm on Friday, November 25, the chair of the Fourth Review Conference for the Convention on Conventional Weapons concluded that there was no consensus in the room on the adoption of a proposed protocol regulating cluster munitions.  This seemingly banal statement marked the end of a decade of deliberations and political machinations, and hundreds of days of diplomatic meetings.  More important, it marked a victory for the supporters of the Convention on Cluster Munitions and its goal of eliminating these weapons and the harm they cause.

Nicolette Boehland, JD '13, and Anna Crowe, LLM '12, at the Fourth Review Conference of the Convention on Conventional Weapons in Geneva.

As the Clinic had argued in a joint paper with Human Rights Watch—and in other documents distributed at the Conference—adding a new treaty to the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons would have constituted an unprecedented step backwards for the laws of war.  The proposed weak treaty would have legitimized rather than stigmatized future use of cluster munitions, and we are thrilled that it was rejected.  The outcome was in no way certain.

The Clinic has been working for years first to help create and then to promote the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits not just the use of these weapons, but also their production, stockpiling, and transfer.  Currently, 108 states have signed on to the ban, which took legal effect last year, and 66 are full states parties.

The United States, however, wanted to produce a separate treaty that would have allowed cluster munition use under the Convention on Conventional Weapons framework. 

Dispatch from Geneva

Posted by Nicolette Boehland, JD ’13, and Anna Crowe, LLM ’12

Diplomats from more than 100 countries are currently engaged in heated deliberations in Geneva over a proposed protocol, put forward by the United States and others, that would allow the use of certain cluster munitions indefinitely.  The International Human Rights Clinic has joined a group of nongovernmental organizations in arguing against the proposal, which would threaten the impact of an existing international treaty that protects civilians by absolutely banning the weapons.

Senior Clinical Instructor Bonnie Docherty consults with NGO delegates on a new version of the proposed weak treaty on cluster munitions. Photo by Gemima Harvey/CMC

If adopted, the proposed protocol would directly compete with the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a treaty that seeks to eliminate the devastating effects of cluster munitions on civilians.  More than 108 countries have signed on to that convention, which went into force August 2010, and 66 states are full parties, bound by all its provisions.  The convention prohibits use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions and obliges states to provide assistance to victims of past use.

The United States, which is not a party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, has led the charge for the new protocol over the last week at the Review Conference of the Convention for Conventional Weapons (CCW) in Geneva.  The protocol would be attached to the CCW framework convention, an umbrella treaty with protocols governing specific types of weapons.  Protocol supporters argue that certain major stockpilers and users of cluster munitions who are not currently party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions might join this proposed protocol because it is not a complete ban.

But the Clinic argued in a paper distributed to delegates last week that the new protocol would constitute an unprecedented step backwards in terms of international humanitarian law.  The international community has never adopted a treaty that provides weaker protections for civilians from armed conflict than a treaty already in force.

Setting the Terms: Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas

Posted by Sarah Fenstemaker, JD ’12

In preparation for this week’s United Nations Security Council debate on the protection of civilians in armed conflict, the International Human Rights Clinic and Human Rights Watch have released a briefing paper on the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.

The paper examines the concept of “explosive weapons in populated areas,” an emerging term in the field of international humanitarian law.  Although the term is new, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has for decades documented and sought to minimize the significant effects on civilians of the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.  Explosive weapons, which cause injury through blast and fragmentation, range from hand grenades to air-dropped bombs.  Earlier this year, HRW helped found the International Network on Explosive Weapons, which seeks to raise awareness of the concept and reduce the human suffering explosive weapons cause.

This paper released on Friday  illuminates the humanitarian problems associated with the use of explosive weapons in populated areas through three recent case studies—Sri Lanka, Somalia, and Libya.  For each, the paper provides information, drawn from past HRW research, about users and types of explosive weapons, patterns of use in populated areas, and civilian harm.

The case studies exemplify the ongoing nature of the problem as well as the range of responsible actors, categories of munitions, and location of attacks.  The case studies also shed light on the shared characteristics of the harm to civilians, which include death and bodily injury, destruction of infrastructure, and long-term effects on individual lives and livelihoods.  Commonalities in the use of these weapons and the harms they produce underline the need for the international community to focus on and address the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.

The Clinic’s Explosive Weapons team—Ian Boyle Harper, LLM ’12, Anna Crowe, LLM ’12, and Sarah Fenstemaker, JD ’12—researched and drafted the paper under the supervision of Senior Clinical Instructor Bonnie Docherty.  Their work  is part of an ongoing partnership between the Clinic and HRW.

Sarah Fenstemaker, JD’12, is a member of the Clinic and a student in Bonnie’s seminar The Promises and Challenges of Disarmament.

Inside the Classroom: Using Literature and History to Introduce Disarmament Law

Posted by Bonnie Docherty

"Gassed," by John Singer Sargent (1918), a reminder of what motivates advocates for disarmament. Imperial War Museum.

Before my first class this fall, a student approached me to say she had spent the previous evening at the kitchen table reading her assignment and crying. Normally I would feel that I had failed as a teacher if I made a student cry, but this time I was both touched by her reaction and pleased that the initial readings for my course had had an impact.

In my new seminar “The Promises and Challenges of Disarmament,” students will spend much of the semester poring over the negotiating histories and provisions of international weapons treaties.  They will have ample opportunity to analyze legal sources in depth.  But to start off, I felt it was important for the students to grasp the reasons for and the value of the law governing weapons.

Drawing from my training as an undergraduate history and literature concentrator, I turned to readings that are atypical for a law school class but that had affected me personally and would help the students understand what motivates most modern disarmament advocates, including myself.

Over the course of a decade of war zone field research, I have been moved by the testimonies of survivors of armed conflict.  I wanted the students, too, to see human suffering from an individual perspective.

For the opening reading, I chose a poem, a reminder that literature can have a place in the study of law.  In “Dulce et Decorum Est,” World War I poet and soldier Wilfred Owen describes a comrade who had inhaled poison gas “guttering, choking, drowning. . . . with white eyes writhing in his face.”

To show the impact of a nuclear weapon, I then gave them excerpts from journalist John Hersey’s Hiroshima, which was originally published in 1946 but banned in Japan by US occupying forces. Hersey recounts the stories of six survivors of the atomic bomb and the unprecedented horrors they witnessed.

When I pulled out my copy of Hiroshima this summer, I saw I had annotated in college a passage about the skin slipping off a victim’s hands “in huge, glove-like pieces” with the note that it was the most gruesome description I had ever read.  I have since seen first-hand many of the effects of armed conflict—gaping wounds, lost limbs, body parts of a dead child—but I still find Hersey’s image as haunting as I did then.

To highlight the harm from types of munitions used in contemporary armed conflict, I turned to the story behind an iconic image: Nick Ut’s famous Vietnam War photograph of a naked girl, Kim Phuc, fleeing a napalm attack.  Passages from a biography of  Phuc illustrate the excruciating and enduring pain caused by incendiary weapons.  These weapons can burn at almost incomprehensible temperatures of up to 1,200° C; according to one of Phuc’s doctors, treatment for the wounds they cause is comparable to being “flayed alive.”

Finally, I included Ken Rutherford’s account of losing both his legs to a landmine while he was a humanitarian aid worker in Somalia in 1993.  He describes how, immediately after the explosion, he saw a foot on the floorboard of his Land Cruiser.  Realizing it was his own, he kept trying to reattach it.

Ken and me at the 2008 signing ceremony for the Convention on Cluster Munitions

My friendship with Ken, whom I met during the campaign to ban cluster munitions, gives his tale special resonance for me.

As a teacher, you never know how students will react to readings, particularly when the course is new.  But during class, students opened up and shared their personal responses.  They wondered aloud how people could design such cruel weapons as napalm, which spreads burning gel across the body as a victim instinctively tries to wipe it off.  One student related to Ken’s experience because she could envision being a field worker someday; another said she could imagine reacting to a nuclear bomb like the witness who ran around Hiroshima in disbelief for hours after the attack.

Students were also able to look beyond the narratives to identify how weapons differ in technology, use, and the harm they cause.  It was gratifying for me as an instructor to see them so engaged.

I know from experience that when one is absorbed in the minutiae of arms treaty work, it is possible to lose sight of the suffering that makes it a humanitarian imperative.  My hope is that our discussion of literature and history will continue to remind students of the individuals whose protection underlies disarmament law.

Course readings:

• Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est” (1917)
• John Hersey, Hiroshima ( both 1946 and 1989 editions)
• Denise Chong, The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph, and the Vietnam War (1999)
• Kenneth R. Rutherford, Disarming States: The International Movement to Ban Landmines (2011)

Demining (and Dancing) in Lebanon

Posted by Nicolette Boehland, JD ’13

Several days ago, on a sunny morning in southern Lebanon, my clinical instructor, Bonnie Docherty, and I witnessed the explosion of a submunition left from a cluster munition attack in 2006.  After the blast, which happened so close to us I felt the earth move as a result of its force, I smiled broadly at Bonnie.

Nicolette Boehland, JD '13, and Senior Clinical Instructor Bonnie Docherty on a field visit to see demining efforts in Lebanon.

Why was I grinning in response to such a ground-shaking jolt and ear-splitting boom? Because this was no accidental submunition explosion; it was a controlled detonation conducted by the Lebanese military as a part of a clearance campaign for the village area of Nabatieh.  The detonation of this dud submunition, which dated to the Lebanon war five years ago, represented one small but necessary step in the effort to eradicate the remnants of war from the area, and to restore the property and livelihoods of the community.

Bonnie and I had traveled to Lebanon to support this effort, serving as representatives of the International Human Rights Clinic, Human Rights Watch, and the Cluster Munition Coalition at the Second Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.  At the meeting, which began last Monday and ended Friday, around 600 representatives of states, international organizations, and civil society convened to promote the implementation and universalization of the Convention, which prohibits all use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions.

Nicolette examines a cluster munition during the field visit to the village of Nabatieh.

Cluster munitions are large weapons that release dozens or hundreds of smaller submunitions.  They cause civilian casualties during attacks due to their wide area effect, and for months or years afterwards because many of them do not explode on impact and become de facto landmines.

Lebanon seemed an especially fitting base for the meeting, since, according to the UN Development Program, Israel dropped an estimated 4.2 million submunitions over the country during the conflict in 2006.  These submunitions contaminated approximately 54.9 square kilometers, including residential neighborhoods, homes, schools, hospitals, and farmland.  At this point, the Lebanese military, humanitarian organizations like the Mines Advisory Group, and other members of the international community have worked tirelessly to clear more than two-thirds of the contaminated land.

Bonnie and I participated in the field visit to Nabatieh in advance of the meeting, hoping to see first-hand how various actors in Lebanon, are working together to clear land contaminated by cluster munitions.

In this mock drill, members of the military evacuate a deminer who has been injured.

As the call to prayer echoed through the hills surrounding the village, the military shuttled us first to a mock “CAS-EVAC” drill to show us how they would evacuate a deminer if he or she were injured on the job. Then, after the submunition detonation, they gave us a tutorial on proper equipment and protective clothing for clearance.  Finally, since we were in Lebanon after all, we were treated to cheese and zatar sandwiches, strong Arabic coffee, and an impromptu traditional Arabic dance (“debke”) session, where soldiers, NGO workers, state delegates, cluster munition survivors, and doctors held hands and danced their hearts out.

To me, the unexpected and joyous scene looked like a blessing for a community that once seemed permanently damaged by the effects of cluster munitions— that, too, made me smile.

At the end of the field visit, participants gather for an impromptu dance.

Click here for more from Human Rights Watch on last week’s meeting in Beirut.

Nicolette Boehland, JD ’13, recently returned from Afghanistan, where she worked this summer with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.  This semester, she is a member of the Clinic and a participant on Bonnie’s cluster munitions team.