The International Human Rights and Development Clinical Program students will travel to the University of Cape Town for the quarter to participate in international human rights work in South Africa. The program will include a one-week intensive course at SLS prior to departure. The purpose of the intensive course is to prepare students with the relevant substantive and theoretical background such as the history of apartheid in South Africa and the impact of race on our work, defining human rights and cultural relativism, international women’s rights, human rights and development, customary law and the role of traditional courts in South Africa and refugee law in the African context. In preparation for the in-country projects, the intensive course will also include skills training on the tools of international human rights advocacy, the role of social science and anthropology in international human rights fieldwork, interviewing skills, working with an interpreter, interacting with survivors of trauma and researching South African, regional and international law.
The in-country portion of the program will last the duration of a quarter, approximately 12 weeks. Once at the University of Cape Town, students will be placed on one of two projects. The Refugee Rights Project will give students the opportunity to work with the refugee populations that are arriving in South Africa at increasing rates, providing unique insight into international refugee law in the African context. Students will be engaged with interviewing potential clients, reviewing case files, developing legal strategy and working with the Department of Home Affairs to advance the cases. The second project is the Rural Women’s Project, which examines the South African Customary Law Act using a gender lens in order to address the unique issues that affect women under that law. Students will assist in gathering information and preparing reports on statutes, case law, customary law, gender issues and traditional courts in order to assist the Rural Women’s Project’s to build a body of knowledge that will stand up in court as evidence of how living customary law affects women. In the course of their work, students are likely to participate in fieldwork within traditional communities in order to meet the tribes and better understand the context of their research.
While in-country, students will continue to develop their understanding of many of the issues addressed in the intensive course described above. They will do this through their work with the faculty at the University of Cape Town and weekly long-distance seminars with an SLS faculty supervisor.
Please see the Mills Legal Clinic website for consent application to this course.
International Human Rights and Development Clinic - Clinical Practice Section.