Human Rights Centers

ANNEX 1

Human Rights Centers¹

From this issue on, Sur Journal will publish key information on university-based human rights centers. Our goal is to disseminate their work and to create opportunities for cooperation between them and our readers.

CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

FACULTY OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA

The Centre for Human Rights at the Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, focuses primarily on human rights law in Africa. Highlights in its history since it was established in 1986 include the involvement of members of the Centre in writing the South African Constitution and Bill of Rights, and its contribution to legal education in human rights on the African continent through its academic programmes and research outputs. The Centre was awarded the 2006 UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education.

The Centre offers two Masters of Laws (LLM) Programmes on Human Rights: the LLM on Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa. This is a unique programme to which 30 outstanding law graduates from all African countries are admitted to study each year. The second programme is the LLM on Human Rights and Constitutional Practice. This LLM aims at providing students with a solid grounding in general human rights law (both international and South African human rights law), with an in-depth focus on the practice of human rights law in South Africa. The Centre for Human Rights also presents a series of short courses throughout the year as part of its Good Governance Programme.

Aside from its educational purpose, the Centre publishes the African Human Rights Law Journal (AHRLJ), which is accredited by the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences and contributions are peer-reviewed. The contributions deal with human rights related topics that are relevant to Africa, Africans and scholars of Africa. The AHRLJ is published bi-annually - in March and October. The Centre also publishes the annual African Human Rights Law Reports (AHRLR), which contain legal decisions of relevance to human rights law in Africa. These include selected domestic decisions from the whole continent, as well as the decisions of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights and the United Nations treaty bodies, dealing with African countries. The AHRLR are fully indexed, to facilitate access and make research easy. The AHRLR are published in English and French. The Centre for Human Rights organizes the African Human Rights Moot Court Competition. This competition is unique in giving the youngest and brightest future African lawyers the opportunity to critically examine the human rights situation on the continent, with a view to improving it through the use of the persuasive tactics of logical legal arguments based on the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. Since its establishment in 1992, the African Human Rights Moot Court Competition has brought together 773 teams from 118 universities representing 45 African countries.

HUMAN RIGHTS CENTER

FACULTY OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CHILE

The Human Rights Center, an institute attached to the Faculty of Law of the University of Chile, is committed to academic excellence in training Latin American professionals who work with human rights, to the strengthening of democracy and also to the strategic planning of these issues.

The Center currently plays a regional leadership role in broadening respect for human rights and in consolidating democracy in Latin America, through:

• education and training of excellent quality;

• research and publications;

• development and support of networks of professionals who work with human rights; and

• coordination of strategic activities on a regional level.

The Center's work team is highly specialized and directed by Cecilia Medina and José Zalaquett. The main activity of the Center is the coordination of graduate courses on human rights. Moreover, with the intent of contributing to the implementation, education and dissemination of human rights, the Center has organized a series of research projects, which have been recently published. These publications are available at www.publicationescdh.uchile.cl. Also, since 2005, the Center has published the Annual Report on Human Rights in Chile, available at www.anuariocdh.uchile.cl.

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF LEGAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH/NALSAR UNIVERSITY OF LAW, HYDERABAD

NALSAR University of Law in Hyderabad is an institution focusing on the field of legal education and research. The University was established in 1998 and has since then played an important role for setting new standards in legal education, not least in the field of Human Rights. With the outspoken mission of educating capable, competent and humane lawyers, the University is providing India with a new generation of socially engaged lawyers.

Students in the five year B.A, LL.B.(Hons.) Degree Programme finish their law degree with courses in Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law and Refugee Laws.

NALSAR University of Law is the source of numerous projects and publications engaged in the social movement and struggle for Human Rights in India. Examples of this are the Legal Assistance Programme for Land (LAPL) which educates law students in collaboration with the Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP). Strengthening Criminal Justice and Human Rights is a program that included twenty nine intensive workshops where students interacted with Judicial Officers, Disability Rights Activists, Human Rights Activists, Adivasi groups and Senior Journalists, debating issues related to the Criminal Justice System and Human Rights. The Citizens' Guide on Access to Justice, a handbook created with the purpose of raising legal awareness among the public, by translating booklets on Human Rights to local Indian languages such as Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam, constitutes another way that the University increases citizen access to legal facilities. The " Convention on the Rights of the Child – Andhra Pradesh State Report" and the " The Andhra Pradesh Child Labour Abolition and Compulsory Education Bill, 2003" are examples of legal documents produced by the University.

1

. This document was written by Fred Hasselquiste and Victoria Schulsinger; and it was in part revised and in part translated to English by Barney Whiteoak.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  28 July 2008
• Date of issue
  2007