Columbia Law School – RightsViews

by Rowena Kosher, a blog writer for RightsViews and a student in the School of General Studies at Columbia University On November 20, students, professors and human rights colleagues gathered in Columbia Law School’s Jerome Greene Hall for a discussion on economic, social and cultural rights led by Catarina de Albuquerque, the former United Nations special rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation. Originally from Portugal, de Albuquerque began her career in human rights as part of the Portuguese Foreign Service, moving on to become the chairperson-rapporteur for negotiation of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a protocol adopted in 2008 that establishes an individual complaints mechanism to recognize important rights like the right to education, the right to health, and labour rights, among others. Following these positions, de Albuquerque took on her current role as executive chair of the Sanitation and Water for All Partnership, a global partnership to catalyze political action, improve accountability and use...

by Genevieve Zingg, a blog writer for RightsViews and a M.A. student in Human Rights Studies at Columbia University On Monday, the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School hosted an event on counterterrorism and human rights under the Trump administration. The event featured Laura Pitter, senior national security counsel at the United States program of Human Rights Watch, speaking on the new human rights challenges posed by counterterrorism policies emerging under President Trump. Prior to working with HRW, Pitter was a journalist and lawyer with the U.N. in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Under the Obama administration, she worked on accountability for past instances of torture and the prevention of government-sanctioned torture. Specifically, she worked to document torture that had not yet come to light prior to the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. Human rights concerns under the Obama administration centered on detention practices at Guantanamo and the use of drone strikes. During this time, HRW focused on...

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Counterterrorism and Human Rights under the Trump Administration