University Network for International Training and Engagement for Human Rights

UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIPS: In 2022, the University Network for Human Rights, jointly with Wesleyan University, selected the first cohort of students in the Human Rights Advocacy Minor at the University. The Human Rights Advocacy Minor is the first of its kind at any university in the United States and is modeled on the intensive advocacy training model at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools. In September 2022, the first classes in the Minor were taught by the staff of the University Network for Human Rights (who also hold appointments with Wesleyan University). The Human Rights Minor is described in the following terms on the official Wesleyan University website: The Minor in Human Rights Advocacy seeks to educate the next generation of advocates by engaging students in supervised human rights fact-finding, documentation, and advocacy. In the 2022-2023 year, 16 students were admitted to the Minor. The Minor provides a rigorous, structured program of study of human rights through focused coursework, combined with supervised, reflective engagement in practical human rights projects in partnership with the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR). Students will gain multidisciplinary understanding of human rights norms, social conflict, and abusive conduct by state, corporate, and private actors, as well as practical training and actual engagement in human rights practice under the supervision of experienced, reflective advocates. The Minor combines practical experience with critical inquiry and self-reflection. More information is available here: httpswwwwesleyaneduhumanrights Over the course of 2022, the University Network developed the Wesleyan ACTS (Advocacy & Community-based Training Semester) for Human Rights program. That program is described here, on the Wesleyan website: httpswwwwesleyaneduhumanrights The ACTS (Advocacy & Community-based Training Semester) for Human Rights program at Wesleyan invites students from other campuses to take part in this innovative learning opportunity, the only one of its kind at a liberal arts college in the nation. Students selected for the Program will spend a semester at Wesleyan University, where they work alongside Wesleyan students. The University Network also promoted education in human rights practice by offering classes at other universities in the United States. In the winter term at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), Executive Director James Cavallaro co-taught with Board member Prof. Ed Telles, a class on human rights advocacy to undergraduate students. From January through April, Cavallaro taught at UCI law, a course on human rights. In the fall 2022 semester, the University Network continued its collaboration with Trinity College, offering a course on human rights advocacy (taught by staff member Camila Bustos). Between commitments at Wesleyan, Yale, UC Irvine and Trinity, University Network staff (Cavallaro, Thomas Becker, Tamar Hayrikyan and Bustos) taught human rights and human rights practice to over 100 students in 2022. Also in 2022, Cavallaro traveled to Mexico for a week of intensive work with partner Ibero-American university (Universidad Iberoamericana) in Mexico City. The week of teaching and training focused on best practices in interdisciplinary teaching of human rights and the development of effective clinical education programs across disciplines. Over the course of 2022, Cavallaro worked with partners in Portugal to establish the first interdisciplinary master's degree program inhuman rights practice, expected to be launched in late 2023, with the first class beginning in the fall 2024 semester. Also, during 2022, the University Network developed a partnership with the clinical program at the Seoul National University (SNU) School of Law. SNUis South Korea's leading law school. The University Network developed projects with SNU's clinic that focus on historical accountability for human rights abuse.

REPORTS, DOCUMENTATION AND PROMOTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: In 2022, the University Network for Human Rights worked on a number of projects. In each of the projects below, the University Network engaged students in the documentation and advocacy for human rights on behalf of the communities affected. Mapuche Land Rights in Patagonia The Mapuche and Tehuelche are the original inhabitants of Argentina's Patagonia region. During the "Conquest of the Desert," a brutal military campaign led by President Julio Roca in the late 19th century to extend Argentina's territory into the south, government forces killed thousands of Patagonia's indigenous. Today, only 120,000 Mapuches remain in Argentina, most living in Patagonia's Neuquen, Rio Negro and Chubut provinces. In the 1990s, Argentina privatized much of the country, selling off millions of hectares of land to foreign individuals and corporations. In recent years, Mapuche communities have sought to recover these ancestral lands, some through land occupation and others through legal processes. Landowners have responded by stigmatizing Mapuche communities, branding them as violent or terrorist, while the government has increased the presence of security forces. Both private and state actors have attacked Mapuche communities, resulting in several deaths and disappearances in recent years. Attorneys and students with the University Network for Human Rights have traveled to Argentina to document human rights and land abuses against Patagonia's original peoples. The team has interviewed indigenous leaders, human rights attorneys, victims and their family members, as well as officials to understand the complex situation of Mapuche communities in Argentina and to produce a report. Restorative Justice for Massacres in South Korea in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, South Korean authorities massacred and "disappeared" countless civilians in an effort to eradicate left-wing or communist political thought. At times, these massacres were tacitly overseen and approved by US forces; at other times they were perpetrated directly by US forces. These atrocities were forgotten during decades of authoritarian government, when it would have been very dangerous to speak publicly about such issues. Only recently has a quiet discussion of these issues begun to re-emerge, at a time when many in Korea prefer to look to the future rather than the past. The focus of this work is restorative and transitional justice, and especially what that still entails 70 years after the end of active hostilities in the Korean War. This project is being carried out in partnership with the Law Clinics at Seoul National University School of Law. It seeks to help the survivors and their families reclaim their long-silenced voices. It Fracked Gas in North Brooklyn Corporate Utility National Grid sought to expand fossil fuel infrastructure in New York City, despite widespread opposition from the public. National Grid's Metropolitan Reliability Infrastructure Project, also known as the North Brooklyn Pipeline, would transport fracked gas under seven miles of predominantly Black and brown communities, beginning in the neighborhood of Brownsville and ending at the Company's Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) facility in Greenpoint. This pipeline - the fifth and final phase of which remains to be constructed and is currently on hold - is part of a larger project by National Grid to expand fracked gas infrastructure in North Brooklyn and saddle its customers with the costs. The Company also seeks to install two new LNG vaporizers at the pipeline's destination facility in Greenpoint - which is located in and near state-designated "Potential Environmental Justice Areas" - and transport LNG to the Greenpoint facility by truck. LNG trucking is currently banned in New York City due to the catastrophic dangers of a potential explosion of this highly volatile fossil fuel. In November 2020, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) found that National Grid's proposal to install two new LNG vaporizers at the Greenpoint facility would have no significant adverse environmental impacts and issued a "negative declaration" under the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA). If allowed to stand, the negative declaration would halt the environmental review process and an Environmental Impact Statement for the project would not be required. The University Network has partnered closely with the Sane Energy Project, a Brooklyn-based grassroots organization working to hasten a just transition to renewable energy, to fight National Grid's proposed fracked gas expansion in New York City. We have submitted three public comments opposing DEC's negative declaration. Along with Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic, we are representing Sane Energy, Cooper Park Resident Council, and three individuals in an Article 78 legal challenge against DEC and National Grid in New York State Supreme Court. During 2022, we represented Sane Energy and Cooper Park Resident Council in a hybrid Article 78 and declaratory judgment proceeding against the City of New York and National Grid to halt the Company's illegal LNG trucking-related construction activities. Environmental Racism in Mossville, LA Founded in 1790 by formerly enslaved people and their families, the community of Mossville, Louisiana is one of the earliest pre-Civil War settlements of free Black people in the South. Since the 1940s, at least fourteen industrial facilities - including the South African chemical company Sasol - have steadily encroached on the community's historic boundaries. In December 2012, Sasol announced plans to expand its Louisiana complex with the addition of two new facilities - an ethylene cracker and a gas-to-liquid plant. Sasol began approaching property owners whose property was considered essential for the planned expansion. The company engaged in one-on-one negotiations with these property owners, who were predominantly white, to acquire their properties. In July 2013, Sasol announced the launch of its Voluntary Property Purchase Program (VPPP), a buyout scheme through which residents of two areas - Mossville, which was 90% Black, and Brentwood, which was 90% white - could sell their properties to the company through a fixed and formulaic process that did not allow for negotiations of property sale values. A preliminary version of the report by the University Network for Human Rights, released in Late 2021, was the result of a two-year investigation of the Sasol buyout of Mossville. In 2022, the University Network promoted the report and advocated to advance the human rights of members of the Mossville community. First, through qualitative analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with former Mossville residents from 32 households who participated in the VPPP and relocated, we found that (1) interviewees from 22 households experienced the VPPP as forced displacement; (2) interviewees from 22 households were unsatisfied with the amount of financial compensation they received, and for a number of these interviewees, compensation was insufficient for relocation to a home of similar quality; and (3) interviewees from 20 households experienced emotional and psychological distress as a result of the VPPP, and this distress was often rooted in feelings of profound loss and injustice. As one interviewee said, "They didn't pay us for our memories." Second, through quantitative analysis of all sales of residential property to Sasol during the buyout period, we found that (1) outside the VPPP area - that is, in the predominantly white areas where property owners were able to negotiate their sale prices - property transaction amounts were, on average, about 82% higher than those in Mossville; (2) in Brentwood - that is, the 90% white area that was part of the VPPP along with Mossville - property transaction amounts were, on average, about 88% higher than those in Mossville; and (3) there was no statistically significant difference between average property transaction amounts in Brentwood and outside the VPPP area. When considered alongside social science literature on the contemporary housing appraisal system, these data strongly suggest that the VPPP was racially discriminatory. Moreover, we conclude that the VPPP's use of appraisals based on comparable properties (the "comps-based" approach) may have resulted in buyout o?ers that did not reflect the true value of homes in Mossville. Third, we found that Sasol failed to adhere to international norms, standards, and best practices for industrial buyouts, which include (1) community consultation; (2) individual negotiation and compensation at full replacement cost; (3) an option for community resettlement; (4) livelihood restoration and improvement; (5) a right to project benefits; and (6) respect for marginalized groups. Fourth, we found that, far from being "the most generous buyout in history," Sasol's buyout was on pa