Race & Human Rights Reimagined Initiative

Our work on Race & Human Rights Reimagined was housed from 2019-2024 at the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA Law. Through this Initiative, we aimed to advance and support critical thinking regarding the role of human rights in achieving racial justice and equality. This work brought to bear the insights of Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), to foreground the operation of race and empire within the international human rights system, while at the same time exploring the potential of law to dismantle national and trans-national structures of racial and colonial subordination. In collaboration with others, we produced a range of resources for students, practitioners, and scholars interested in thinking critically about race and human rights.

Resources

Conceptualizing Race and Resisting Racism in International Law

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Gull, the Border God, and the Stateless Beyond

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American Journal of International Law’s Special Issue: Reparations in International Law (volume 119, issue 3, July 2025)

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Haitian Migration through the Western Hemisphere (2021)

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Genres of Universalism: Reading Race Into International Law, with Help from Sylvia Wynter

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UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs’s Symposium: Critical Perspectives on Race and Human Rights: Transnational Re-Imaginings (volume 24, summer 2020, number 2)

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Connecting Race and Empire: What Critical Race Theory Offers Outside the U.S. Legal Context

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Setting Institutional Priorities on Climate Reparations & Racial Justice: Learning from Social Movements

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Reparations for Colonialism & Slavery

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Understanding climate migration through a racial justice lens: Haiti as a quintessential example

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Amicus Brief Submitted to IACtHR for its Advisory Opinion on the Climate Emergency and Human Rights (2023)

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Primer: Critical Perspectives on Race & Human Rights

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