The Human Rights Clinic is an experiential learning program in which students gain practical human rights lawyering experience in domestic and international settings, while critically reflecting on the role of law and lawyers in advancing human rights at home and in our region. Attending the clinic on campus two days each week, students have significant responsibility working for, or in collaboration with, individual clients or organisations in Australia and Asia, under the Clinic Director’s supervision. The clinic’s casework and projects involve law, clients, partners or rights violations that extend beyond Australia’s borders, and focus primarily on advancing the human rights of noncitizens including migrant workers and refugees in Asia and Australia. The clinic seminar focuses on ethics and accountability issues in human rights work. It develops students' capacity for critical reflection as well as their practical skills in areas such as interviewing; human rights report-writing; law reform submission-writing; advocacy and the media; international and comparative legal research; working within different cultures and legal systems; and working with disadvantaged clients as well as with culturally diverse clients and partners.

Students’ clinic projects are intended to have a systemic impact on law or policy. They may involve, for example, supporting organisations in Asia and Australia to bring or intervene in public interest litigation within national courts to implement international human rights standards; drafting communications to UN human rights bodies on behalf of individual noncitizen clients or communities; documenting systemic rights violations, and producing an advocacy report; drafting rights-based guidelines, manuals or other educational materials for lawyers and/or communities; drafting letters of advice to Asian NGOs on the application of international human rights treaties in their domestic context; drafting white papers and law reform submissions; or filing freedom of information requests.

Jenni Whelan
Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law
Email: j.whelan@unsw.edu.au

Coursework or experience in public international law, international human rights, refugee law, immigration law, public interest litigation, or similar subject highly desirable.