Harvard Law School Human Rights Program

The Human Rights Program (“HRP”) seeks to give impetus and direction to international human rights work at Harvard Law School. Now in its twenty-second year, the Program fosters course work and participation of students in human rights activities through its summer internships, clinical work, speaker series, applied research and scholarship. The Program brings into the Law School the worldwide problems of the powerless and abused, problems at the core of much internal and international conflict. It forges cooperative links with a range of human rights organizations in this country and abroad, and works closely with student organizations such as the Harvard Human Rights Journal and the Harvard Law Student Advocates for Human Rights. HRP plans and directs international conferences and workshops on human rights issues. It also develops and supervises student clinical work, advises students wishing to conduct research projects with human rights organizations, and provides counseling on careers in the field. Through all of these activities, the Program seeks to make international human rights an integral part of a Harvard Law School education. It seeks to educate students who will be among the future leaders of the human rights movement, and to foster progress within the movement through its scholarship, criticism and suggestions.