Fall 2024 Human Rights Newsletter: NEW annual report, UNHR in Portugal, welcome back students & more
In this edition:
Read about a year of human rights work and impact in UNHR’s 2023-2024 Annual Report
Wesleyan ACTS Program students join UNHR for summer intensive at NOVA Law School in Lisbon, Portugal
Looking forward to the academic year ahead
UNHR students, supervisors travel to Armenia for sixth fact-finding trip to document abuses against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh
Raising awareness about disappearances in Mexico
Meet Mica Borovinsky, our new Human Rights through Arts Coordinator
UNHR in the News
Read about a year of human rights work and impact in UNHR’s 2023-2024 Annual Report
The University Network for Human Rights is excited to announce the release of our latest annual report! Covering April 2023 through August 2024, the report provides an overview of our work advancing human rights in the field and in the classroom.
In the report, you can find updates on our 17 active research and advocacy projects across the globe; read about our student training programs, including the Human Rights Advocacy Minor and ACTS for Human Rights at Wesleyan University; see news coverage of our landmark reports and victories; and learn how our organization is expanding with new members of the team and the forthcoming launch of our master’s program at NOVA School of Law in Lisbon, Portugal.
It has been a difficult year for human rights. It has been a difficult year in academia. … This past year, we at UNHR have had our moments of doubt and despair. In the face of this we have opted to intensify our work with students to advance global justice. We have not caved to cynicism. We hope to build a stronger and more just world, one project, one report, one advocacy campaign, and one student at a time.
Executive Director Jim Cavallaro
Wesleyan ACTS Program students join UNHR for summer intensive at NOVA Law School in Lisbon, Portugal
Eleven students from Brown University, Wellesley College and Williams College traveled to Lisbon and Madrid in late August to participate in UNHR’s inaugural intensive human rights standards course. As part of the UNHR's Advocacy and Community-Based Training Seminar (ACTS) program, the intensive course provides necessary background on human rights norms and mechanisms before the students arrive on Wesleyan’s campus to begin the year-long program in human rights advocacy.
The ACTS Program intensive took place on the campus of the NOVA School of Law in Lisbon, Portugal, a leading European institution focusing on undergraduate and graduate training in international law and human rights. Professors in the training include Jim Cavallaro (UNHR and Wesleyan), Catia Confortini (Wellesley College), Francisco Pereira Coutinho (NOVA Law), Nausica Palazzo (NOVA Law), and Aua Baldé (Catholic University of Portugal and Chair, UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances).
The course addresses the precursors to human rights, the basic framework of international law, global and regional human rights treaties and oversight bodies, and the protection of groups in situations of vulnerability. Alongside coursework, students also visited the Aljube Museum of Resistance and Freedom.
Looking forward to the academic year ahead
Looking forward to the academic year ahead
UNHR welcomes students back for the 2024-2025 school year! This is our fifth year at Wesleyan University and the second year of our ACTS program. In the months ahead, students from Brown, Wellesley, and Williams colleges, in addition to students from our home campus, will study human rights intensively at Wesleyan and work with communities affected by abuses.
We have expanded our classes this year, which will include Introduction to Human Rights Advocacy; Advanced Human Rights Advocacy; Advanced Human Rights Standards; Public Health, Migration, and Human Rights; Writing for Advocacy; and a new course on the United Nations and Human Rights Advocacy.
We’re also launching our LLM program at NOVA Law School in Portugal (for both non-lawyers and those trained in law!) which will begin in Fall 2025. Applications will open soon! Learn more about the LLM here.
UNHR students, supervisors travel to Armenia for sixth fact-finding trip to document abuses against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh
In August, four students from Wesleyan, Yale, and Trinity traveled alongside three UNHR supervisors to Armenia nearly one year after Azerbaijan’s genocidal assault on Nagorno-Karabakh that emptied the region of its ethnic Armenian inhabitants.
In Armenia, the University Network followed up on the three years of research that culminated in our recently published report, We are No One: How Impunity for Three Years of Atrocities is Erasing Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians. Students and supervisors interviewed people displaced by the September 2023 violence about their experiences during the ethnic cleansing and in Armenia since. We also met with and built on relationships with local community and human rights organizations seeking accountability.
Work on this project, including ongoing documentation of human rights concerns and advocacy for accountability, will continue this year. Read more about the project on our website.
Raising awareness about disappearances in Mexico
On August 30, the International Day of the Victims of Forced Disappearances, UNHR and our partner FUNDAR launched a social media campaign to pay tribute to the thousands of direct and indirect victims of enforced disappearances in Mexico. Over the coming weeks, we will share interviews with members of the Collective in Search of Truth and Justice (Colectivo en Búsqueda de Verdad y Justicia), who have become the voices of their disappeared loved ones.
Read more about the ongoing UNHR project, “Disappearances in Mexico: Right to Truth, Justice, and Reparation,” on our website.
Share our thread on X (Spanish) here.
Meet Mica Borovinsky, our new Human Rights through Arts Coordinator
UNHR welcomed a new staff member to the team this summer.
Mica Borovinsky
Mica is a multidisciplinary artist and illustrator with experience coordinating art projects dedicated to promoting social impact and justice through creative expression. Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, she earned her BFA in Illustration and a minor in Art History from Ringling College of Art and Design.
Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, she earned her BFA in Illustration and a minor in Art History from Ringling College of Art and Design. During her freshman year, she co-wrote and managed a Davis Project for Peace award in El Salvador that sought to mitigate child gang recruitment through art, teaching painting and sculpting workshops with more than 50 children participants. In 2023, she led art programs for refugee and immigrant communities as the Art and Wellness Coordinator and served as lead art teacher of the Summer Learning Program for Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS) in Hartford, CT. Mica's illustration work has also been featured in a comic celebrating underrepresented women artists, produced in collaboration with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Most recently, Mica worked on an advocacy project in Mexico with the University Network for Human Rights, illustrating the stories of the disappeared, amplifying the voices of those affected by violence and displacement. Through her art and teaching, Mica aims to inspire hope, empathy, and social change, leveraging the power of visual storytelling to humanize complex issues and foster a more just and compassionate world.
Mica speaks Spanish, English and German.
UNHR in the News
“La CIDH ante el caso Ayotzinapa: Notas sobre mi experiencia como Relator,” Jim Cavallaro, IBERO
“Azerbaijan Ethnically Cleansed Armenians. It Should Pay a Price | Opinion,” Thomas Becker, Newsweek
Accountability after ethnic cleansing: University Network for Human Rights and Karabakh, Civilnet
