International Public Interest Lawyering Symposium:
Advancing Gender Equality through Human Rights
October 11-13, 2012 

Room 190 of the Classroom Building of the Law School

Each year the Levin Center hosts at least one symposium on a substantive topic that brings together academics, practitioners, and law students to reflect on a public interest issue. 

In October 2012, we launched our biennial international symposium to bring together lawyers litigating human rights cases in international tribunals, lawyers deploying international human rights frameworks to advance legal reform goals in their respective countries and public policy advocates pressing for legal reforms that are more protective of individual rights.

In our inaugural year we focused, as a case study, on achieving gender equality through strategic use of both international and domestic strategies. 

Keynotes included Christopher Stone, the President of Open Society Foundation and The Honorable Judge Patricia Wald.  Our panelists were Executive Directors or Presidents of innovative human rights and international justice organizations and public interest attorneys from leading public interest legal organizations in Nigeria, China, South Africa, Malaysia, Palestinian Territories, China and Chile.

Co-sponsors included the Stanford Law School Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law, Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law’s (CDDRL) Program on Human Rights, CDDRL’s Program on Social Entrepreneurship, and The Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford.

We would also like to recognize Stanford Law School student organizations for their support: Women of Stanford Law, International Law Society, International Law Journal, Stanford International Human Rights Association, American Constitution Society, China Law and Policy Association, and the Stanford Association for Law in the Middle East.

The schedule is available here. 

The October 2012 International Public Interest Lawyering symposium goals follow:

(1)   To learn about successes with respect to using international human rights mechanisms to mobilize domestic law reform;

(2)   To evaluate the extent to which international human rights mechanisms have had an impact on justice on the ground;

(3)   To strategize on how human rights litigators, domestic public interest attorneys and domestic public policy advocates can more effectively coordinate their work  in order to impact justice on the ground  through international human rights mechanisms;

(4)   To examine in-depth how the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and monitoring mechanisms are shaped by local activists and how local activists use the international documents and mechanisms to press for change on the ground; and

(5)   To examine the impact of local norms and practices on whether a global consensus is reached on international human rights standards and whether the standards are adopted in a domestic context.

Speakers included: 

• Zainah Anwar, Founding Member, Sisters in Islam (Kuala Lumpur, Malysia) and Director, Musawah, the global movement for equality adn justice in the Muslim family 
• Liu Xiaonan, Chair, Anti-Discrimination Network (Beijing, China)
• Hossam Bahgat, Executive Director, Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (Cairo, Egypt)  
• Antoine Bernard, Executive Director, International Federation for Human Rights (Paris, France)  
• Gaston Chillier, Executive Director, Centro de Estudios Legales y Socialies (Buenos Aires, Argentina)  
• Innocent Chukwuma, Executive Director, CLEEN Foundation (Lagos, Nigeria)  
• Janet Love, National Director, Legal Resources Center (Johannesburg, South Africa)
• Sawsan Zaher, Staff attorney, Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel  (Tel Aviv, Israel)  
• David Tolbert, Executive Director International Center for Transitional Justice   (New York, NY)
• James Goldston, Executive Director, Open Society Justice Initiative  (New York, NY)
• Nancy Northup, President, Center for Reproductive Rights   (New York, NY)
• Johanna Krellick, Domain Manager, Human Rights Program, Hauser Center, Harvard University  (Cambridge, MA) 
• Viviana Krsticevic, Executive Director, Center for Justice & International Law (Washington, DC) (Covers Latin America)  
• Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Director of Women’s Leadership Initiatives, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington DC)

Review their full biographies here.

Some of the materials for this year's symposium included:

• Haleh Esfandiari, Introduction: Is the Arab Awakening Marginalizing Women, Wilson Center Occasional Paper Series, Summer 2012 (p. 1)
• Rangita de Silva de Alvis, Some Lessons from Other Post-Conflict Communities, Wilson Center Occasional Paper Series, Summer 2012 (p. 4)
• Fatima Sbaity Kassem, A Cup Half-Full or Half-Empty, Is a Women's Spring Inevitable in Democratic Transitions, Wilson Center Occasional Paper Series, Summer 2012, (p. 8)

For the Levin Center's twitter page, with recorded live tweets, see here: https://twitter.com/levincenter.

Follow the links below to view videos of the symposium panels and the Honorable Judge Patricia Wald's keynote:

Panel 1: http://bit.ly/UbPXnl

Panel 2: http://bit.ly/TsZzgW

Panel 3: http://bit.ly/XKVqDz

Panel 4: http://bit.ly/QC2WxO

Judge Wald's Keynote: http://bit.ly/VvxU0e