Most of the 17 GSIS and Law Students enrolled in the winter-spring (2003) Human Rights Advocacy course (INTS 4945) at GSIS have submitted their final Advocacy Reports, on such diverse human rights issues as Women Trafficking in China, Nigeria, Macedonia, Bosnia, and the Occupied Territories (Palestine); violation of the rights of refugees in Thailand and China to non-refoulement, discriminatory treatment of refugees in Australia and Kyrgyzstan, and the suppression of Albanians' political dissent in Macedonia.
Over the summer, DU law student interns went to Nicaragua to establish working relationships with indigenous universities in trying to establish a legal aid clinic to focus on indigenous land rights and to Uganda to collaborate with a legal aid program in advancing the legal rights of street children and juvenile offenders caught up in the criminal justice system. In addition, students from various law schools and a few GSIS students worked in internships, primarily with the Center's Asylum Project, advocating for clients fleeing to the U.S. from African countries, such as Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.
The Center's Asylum Project currently has some 40 "live cases", again mostly coming out of sub-Saharan Africa. Rather remarkably, recent victories were achieved for clients from Guinea (won under the authority of the Convention against Torture), and from Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Rwanda and Sudan (all granted political asylum). In addition, the Project has won an appeal on behalf of an Ethiopian asylum seeker who had been denied relief by the INS, as well as other favorable "status" changes on behalf of Mexican and Rwandan clients.
Sharon Healey, the Project director, has recently been joined by attorney Steve Bernstein in working with the Asylum Project's clients, assisted by seven law students. Bob Golten has been acting as the director of the Indigenous Rights Project. Current live cases include tribal land claims in Kenya and Botswana, reparations claims in Guatemala and Kenya, and an environmental damage case in Ecuador. Golten met in September in London with staff of Minority Rights Group International on the two Kenyan (Endorois and Nubian tribal) matters, and with Survival International personnel and lawyers on the Botswana (Bushmen, in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve) controversy.
The Center is about to submit a Petition to the UN Commission on Human Rights regarding the reparations claim of the Nubian tribe against Great Britain. The Center has also participated in putting together, under the sponsorship of Africa Today Associates, a one-day conference on the Human Rights situation in Zimbabwe. GSIS students Craig Murphy and Amelia Ali were instrumental in convening the conference. The Center's Disability Rights Project, again in collaboration with Africa Today Associates, has been working with a wheelchair-bound "Lost Boy from Sudan" in attempting to create a Disability Rights organization for East Africa in Nairobi. Finally, Golten recently returned from a U.S. State Department sponsored workshop assisting invitees in submitting successful funding proposals for establishing university-to-university partnerships in developing countries.
The State Dept.’s invitation was the result of the Center's having submitted two earlier proposals for establishing "clinical" relationships with university legal aid clinics in Azerbaijan and Uganda. While in Washington, D.C. Golten also met with other non-governmental organizations with whom the Center has had "networking" relationships, including the Amazon Alliance, the Center for International Environmental Law, the American Bar Association's African and Asian Law Projects, the International Law Institute, the Mental Disability Rights Project, and the [International] Advocacy Project. Additionally, fifteen students have enrolled in the Winter-Spring (2004) clinical course "International Human Rights Advocacy.”

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