children to cross into the United States illegally”, as Senator John Cornyn of Texas put it last week.
Obama’s move is all the more disappointing because effective alternatives to detention exist and are used in countries facing similar migration surges. Countries like Italy and Malta, prime entrances for migrants to the EU, have open reception facilities where migrant and asylum-seeking families can come and go at will – and Malta pledged to end immigration detention of children altogether in 2014. Though neither country has a spotless record – Italy summarily returns to Greece some unaccompanied migrant children and Malta sometimes detains unaccompanied migrant kids while authorities try to figure out their ages – their examples show that detaining kids with families is a choice, not a necessity.
Clara wrote another column for The Guardian on border removals in April.
In response to this flurry of activity, we at HRP have just two things to say: Thank you. And well done.
October 3, 2011
Posted by Meera Shah
Today, Raji Sourani, one of the foremost human rights lawyers and advocates in the Middle East, will come to speak at Harvard Law School. Personally, as someone who worked in the Middle East for several years, I am thrilled to have the opportunity to meet him. The founder of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza City in 1995, Sourani began his human rights career challenging Israeli prison conditions and defending Palestinians facing deportation in Israeli military courts. As a human rights defender, he was detained by Israeli authorities on multiple occasions, prompting Amnesty International to name him one of their Prisoners of Conscience in both 1985 and 1988.
With the creation of the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s, Sourani’s work took on another dimension, exposing and documenting human rights violations on the part of both Israeli and Palestinian officials. While this even-handedness was not always popular, it demonstrates Sourani’s commitment to a universal standard.
This principled stance and the courage to speak out continue to drive Sourani’s work. Today, he will be talking about the need for accountability for violations committed as part of Israel’s offensive in late 2008 and the human rights implications of the ongoing closure of the Gaza Strip. I hope you will join us for this important and timely discussion!
February 25, 2011
Posted by Joe Phillips, JD '12
This month marks the 66th anniversary of the World War II firebombing of Dresden, Germany—an event that demonstrated to the world the devastating power of incendiary weapons. From February 13 to 15, 1945, British and U.S. forces dropped hundreds of tons of incendiary and high explosive bombs on the mostly undefended cultural center of Dresden, where thousands of people had sought refuge from the Eastern Front. The resulting firestorm destroyed 1,600 acres of the city center and killed an estimated 25,000 to 100,000 people.
Based on his firsthand experience, Kurt Vonnegut describes the scene in his novel, Slaughterhouse-Five:
“Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn. . . . One thing was clear: Absolutely everybody in the city was supposed to be dead, regardless of what they were, and that anybody that moved in it represented a flaw in the design.”
During World War II, incendiary weapons generally brought to mind the firebombs used to destroy residential city centers. Over time, the nature of armed conflict has changed, as has the design of certain incendiary weapons, but militaries continue to use them—often at serious risk to civilians.
In 2004, the United States launched incendiary shells into the city of Fallujah, Iraq; witnesses reported seeing charred bodies of Iraqi civilians, echoing the scenes in Dresden in 1945. More recently, when Israel used white phosphorus in Gaza in 2008, the substance both injured civilians and set fire to a school, a hospital, and other non-military buildings.
The International Human Rights Clinic has worked for several years to protect civilians through