About

Following the recent climate advisory opinions of the IACtHR and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), our current focus is developments in the African human rights system, as where the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR) is seized with a climate advisory opinion.

Organized convening "Lost in Transition: Race, reparations and environmental justice," hosted at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. Participants explored how a racial justice lens and the frameworks of reparations, just transition, and transitional justice could be used to understand and respond to the global ecological crisis.

Launched report “Bay Kou Bliye, Pote Mak Sonje: Climate Injustice in Haiti and the Case for Reparations”, which illuminates the crisis of climate injustice in Haiti.

Launched our work on Climate Justice, Racial Justice & Regional Human Rights Systems, currently housed at the Bernstein Institute for Human Rights at NYU Law, which brings racial justice to the center of legal, policy, and academic work to combat environmental degradation, climate change, and related displacement.

Collaborated with regional partners to present a thematic hearing on human mobility in the context of the climate emergency before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Drawing on our amicus brief previously submitted to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), we asked the Commission to understand climate-induced migration as a racial justice crisis.

Participated in the oral hearing for the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ (IACtHR) Advisory Opinion in relation to the climate emergency, after submitting an amicus brief to the IACtHR. Our primary intervention in the brief was to underscore that a racial justice and equity lens is crucial for understanding and responding to the differentiated impacts of climate change.

Collaborated with regional partners to present a thematic hearing on human mobility from an ethno-racial approach before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The hearing focused on the racism experienced by Black, Indigenous and Latinx people in their migrant journey through the Americas and engagement with the Mexican and U.S. immigration systems specifically.

Organized convening “Setting Institutional Priorities on Climate Reparations and Racial Justice: Learning from Social Movements” that brought together experts from the United Nations and Inter-American human rights systems, and regional social movements to discuss the disproportionate impacts of the global climate crisis on racially marginalized peoples in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean–particularly people of African and Indigenous descent.

Launched the UNSR Racism E. Tendayi Achiume’s final thematic report on environmental racism and climate justice, which analyzes climate (in)justice as rooted in colonial histories and the persistent impacts of extractivism and structural racism today. The report relied on oral testimony and written submissions from civil society experts and activists around the world working on the frontlines of climate injustice and environmental racism. The civil society launch event included commentary from scholars and activists on how the global climate crisis is impacting Caribbean peoples.

Launched, with a series of educational events, the Race & Human Rights Reimagined Initiative, with resources for students, practitioners and scholars who are interested in thinking critically about race and human rights. These included the report “Trans-National Re-Imaginings”, a series of Executive Summaries on global racial justice issues and the role of international human rights law in addressing them, Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) scholarship, and more. Each of these materials is digestible, easy to share, and illuminates racial injustice and the role of international human rights law in addressing it. The implications of what's discussed echo widely, both domestically and globally.

Organized “Transnational Legal Discourse on Race and Empire” Symposium that brought together Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholars to continue the conversations initiated at the Race, Empire and International Law workshop in 2019. Many of the papers presented here were subsequently published in the Law Review's April 2021 issue.

Organized “Critical Perspectives on Race and Human Rights: Transnational Re-Imaginings” Symposium that brought together Critical Race Theory (CRT), Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), and human rights scholars to think critically about the role of human rights in achieving racial justice and equality. Some of the papers presented at this symposium were subsequently published in JILFA's Spring 2020 issue. 

Two related workshops were held in conjunction with this Symposium: In the first, law students and early-career scholars were given the opportunity to present their work and receive feedback from senior scholars. In the second workshop, entitled “Race, Empire and International Law”, CRT and TWAIL scholars came together to think through the convergences and divergences between these two theoretical approaches and consider what a combined analytical approach to international law would bring to bear.

Prof. E. Tendayi Achiume was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council as United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, a position she held until 2022.