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Home || About the Human
Rights Center || Applied Human Rights Research || Educational
Tools || Field and Training Opportunities || Human Rights On-Line || Learning Communities & Partnerships || Co-Directors
and Advisory Board
Other Potential Placements
Below is a list of other potential Fellowship placement opportunities. This page is intended to supplement the lists of Fellowship placement opportunities located on our Past Fellowships pages as well as our 2009, 2010, and 2011 Fellowship pages. This page will be updated as we receive more opportunities from organizations so check back frequently for new information.
Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia (BABSEA) CLE Legal Studies Internship:
Contact: [email protected]
Application Deadline: March 1, 2012
The internship program focuses on four main areas:
The program begins on May 21, 2012 and finishes on August 12, 2012.
The activities of the program include a variety of community based legal education teachings, service projects with local and rural communities and many different educational events and cultural experiences. Interns work with the BABSEA CLE International Legal Education team as well as local lawyers, legal educators and community organizations in Southeast Asia.
The BABSEA CLE program focuses on specific issues such as prisoner rights, juvenile justice, equal access to healthcare, HIV/drug use laws, children legal rights, human trafficking, environmental issues, and the criminal law and procedure of the host countries. Most BABSEA CLE legal interns participate in a variety of Community Legal Education activities including University Based Clinical Legal Education programs and working with grassroots organizations focusing on delivering community legal education to the communities in which they work.
Country Breakdown:
Thailand: The CLE program focuses on a wide range of community legal education programs including prisoner rights, juvenile justice, discrimination, citizen rights, child rights, statelessness and environmental issues, access to health care, sex worker rights as well as adding support to the Chiang Mai University's Legal Clinic office.
Laos: Interns work with the various partners including United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Laos Bar Association, Village Focus International, Care International and the National University of Laos.
Vietnam: The CLE program primarily works with universities and organizations, including the Institute for Policy and Law Development, to assist in the establishment of University Based Clinical Legal Education programs. In addition, previous interns have worked with our partners to improve the quality of legislative drafting.
Cambodia: Interns mainly focus in the areas of housing rights and land law issues. The Community Empowerment and Legal Awareness (CELA) program supports community organization at the grassroots level by networking, educating and advocating on behalf of disadvantaged individuals.
Malaysia: CLE programs focus on enforcing the standards created by the Committee on Rights of the Child (CRC).
Interns will be engaged in a variety of tasks, including but not limited to legal research, reading curriculum for substance as well as proofreading/formatting lesson plans, helping to create and revise lesson plans with the BABSEA CLE and CLE university teams, joining our teams to assist and monitor provincial trainings, evaluating curriculum through the trainings themselves, and synthesizing the participants' evaluations and evaluating through direct observations in order to improve and revise curriculum. The interns will also be writing a small- group legal research article on a relevant legal area that BABSEA CLE focuses on. These tasks will all be done in a supportive and progressive atmosphere that is committed to nurturing public service, developing the capacity of local communities, as well as promoting social justice in the Southeast Asia region.
Each intern will need to maintain a volunteer log and will be responsible for completing 50 hours of additional volunteer work with BABSEA CLE projects and with BABSEA CLE partners. The volunteer coordinator/country supervisor will sign off on the hours after completion. Legal interns will also be encouraged to take weekend trips and volunteer with local law students or legal trainers to teach with some of our partner organizations.
Interns will participate in a Community Immersion week in Northern Thailand. Interns live and work marginalized/poor Thai families for one week. During this time, interns will participate and share in the activities with their host family and village. Most of the family homes have limited luxuries; interns maybe living with households that have cold showers, no running water, limited electricity and camping style sleeping arrangements. Interns will share meals with their family, eating local foods.
Legal interns will be expected to:
· work a minimum of 40 hours per week for the entirety of the Legal Internship Program
· complete a minimum of 50 hours of volunteer community service with our projects and partners organizations
· participate in all planned BABSEA CLE legal internship activities
· travel on local transport, bus or train when traveling between BABSEA CLE projects and countries - NO FLIGHTS. Many grassroots and local people must travel this way in the region. It is also an opportunity for the interns to see first hand the diversity and differences throughout the region.
Program Cost: USD $2,700 Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia Community Legal Education is a grassroots organization where many of the staff and directors receive a very small amount of income for their work. Nevertheless, in order to function, our organization does incur a low level of administration expense. This cost helps us cover these overheads to administer the internship while being able to continue our work in the region. The Program Cost includes:
- Accommodation - shared accommodation
- Administration, legal supervision & coordination costs
- Support for our Community Legal Education partner programs
The Program Cost does not include other costs including:
- Airfare
- Visas, travel, health or theft insurance or other travel documents
- Optional activities such as cooking, exercise and language classes
- Food and personal incidentals
- Costs incurred for or during activities to complete the "Volunteer Log"
- Daily transit to and from work
- Transportation between regional partners for options outside of Thailand
Additional Costs:
Check the PDF file for additional cost information
Corte InterAmericana de Derechos Humanos (Inter-American Court of Human Rights):
Contact: [email protected]
Application Deadline: March 1, 2012
Internship Program:
Interns have the opportunity to work directly with the lawyers of the Court’s legal department and provide assistance with the work performed by the Court’s Secretariat. The objectives are the program are to offer an understanding of the operation of the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights, the applicable international instruments and the activities of the Tribunal, to provide a practical experience that serves to complement the participant’s academic and professional development, which may be applied later in the different work environments that the interns arrive at upon completion of the internship or professional visit, and to promote the participation of people of different nationalities, who come from different judicial systems.
Interns and visiting professionals are assigned to work within the Court’s legal department, in accordance with the needs of the Tribunal, and, when possible, with the areas of interest of the intern and visiting professional. Given the amount of work and the complexity thereof, the tasks assigned will depend upon the experience and preparation of each person, taking into consideration their ability to respond and complete the tasks assigned in a timely and professional manner.
The work consists of, inter alia, researching human rights issues, writing reports, analyzing international human rights jurisprudence, assisting with the process of contentious cases, advisory opinions, provisional measures and supervision of the compliance of the Court’s judgments, providing logistical assistance during public hearings and developing legal arguments for specific cases. Furthermore, interns and visiting professionals may also be required to conduct more intensive research about specific issues of law. The interns and professional interns must also participate in the daily activities of the Court, such as the review and translation of documents, and other administrative tasks.
Requirements:
- Applicants must be students committed to the subject of human rights, who have at least completed their second year of university. Law students will be given priority, as legal assistance is the chief necessity of the Tribunal. However, applications from students in different areas related to the work of the Court will also be considered.
- A minimum of 3 months of availability is required. Applications for internships longer than three months are highly valued.
- It is essential to have good oral and written skills in Spanish and English. Spanish is the principle language used at work. Additionally, knowledge of other official languages of the Court, such as Portuguese and French, are greatly valued.
- Completion of the online application
South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies (SAILS):
Contact: Dr. Uttam Kumar Das, [email protected]
No application deadline
Internship Program:
The South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies (SAILS) is an organization to promote legal knowledge and respect for human rights throughout South Asia. It aims to be a regional center of excellence in legal and human rights education, research and publications. It is located in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The Institute is run by a Governing Council headed by the Eminent Jurist, Dr. Kamal Hossain. In addition, renowned Legal Academics and Practitioners from home and abroad are part of the Academic Committee.
SAILS is now running training and research projects and is hosting lecture series by renowned visiting scholars and practitioners in the area of law and human rights. SAILS offers internship opportunities for students and fresh graduates (i.e., in the area of law, human rights, social science and liberal arts) for a period of maximum three months.
Interns are hired for general administrative works, research projects and event management. It is a unique opportunity for an individual to earn practical knowledge and experience with a dynamic team working in the in the area of law and human rights.
Those who are interested should forward their resume (not more than two pages) and a statement of purpose for the proposed Internship (maximum 500 words) to the following address.
There is no deadline for forwarding an application; the process is rotating.
Corporación de Estudios DECIDE:
Contact: Dr. Maria del Rocio Bermeo Sevilla, [email protected]
For further information: http://www.corporaciondecide.org/
No application deadline
Fluency in Spanish
Internship program:
DECIDES is a non-profit organization, approved by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion. The organization promotes and develops scholarly studies and research on fundamental rights, the exercise and enforcement mechanisms, and promotes the formation processes and dissemination of rights. DECIDES’ members are professionals who come from diverse backgrounds and have expertise in knowledge in:
- Human Rights
- Conflict Management
- Specific legal and administrative procedures for the protection and guarantee of rights
- Education and training in rights and enforcement mechanisms
- Process design
- Construction for the exercise of participatory citizenship
The internship programs that are available for this summer will be run in conjunction with the Catholic University of Quito’s Law School and Fellows will have the opportunity to work with professors and law school students from the school. The first internship program will focus on developing information on human rights for vulnerable groups who live in rural areas in northern Ecuador. The goal of this project will be to upload information to an online database, where the information can be made more accessible for these people. The second project will focus on conducting research on the legal technical language and rhetoric used within human rights law to create new material for an upcoming course at Catholic University’s Law School. This course’s focus will be human rights law.
Participacion Ciudadana:
Contact: Dr. Maria del Rocio Bermeo Sevilla, [email protected]
For further information: http://www.participacionciudadana.org/pc10/
No application deadline
Fluency in Spanish
Internship program:
Participacion Ciudadana or the Citizen’s Participation Corporation is an Ecuadorian NGO based in Quito, whose work promotes accountability and transparency between the national government and Ecuadorian citizens. It also functions as a corporate watchdog organization and deals a lot with clarifying and developing an understanding of different social control mechanisms.
The focus of the internship project at Participacion Ciudadana is to take all the archived information from the institutions website, including the results of different direct democracy activities that the organization has participated in and projects it has worked on, and translate this information to English. During the course of the internship, the intern will have the opportunity to join the teams that visit local governments and help to organize various direct democracy activities within the local communities.
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