Pro Bono Activities

Among other activities, we have investigated religious freedom in Pakistan and Iran, standards of cohabitation in Namibia, explored children's rights in Nepal, and developed a master's level human rights curriculum for a university in northern Uganda. If you are an organization interested in participating, please e-mail us at ihragrp@law.upenn.edu.

Comparative Analysis of Marital Property Rights: This project partners with Swayam, a Kolkata based non-profit organization committed to ending violence against women. It is estimated that around 2/3 of all married women in India are victims of domestic violence. Laws governing marital property rights have a profound impact upon women facing violence in their homes. In India, most property is held by male members of the household and upon filing for divorce, women are not entitled to a share of these assets. This legal framework functionally holds many women hostage, binding them to violent relationships by forcing them to rely upon their husbands for economic support. This project, a comparative study of marital property rights in the U.S., U.K., India and Australia, aims at developing a resource for advocates in India committed to challenging the current marital property regime. IHRA volunteers will work in teams to research the laws and judgments governing marital property rights in each country and compile these findings into a comparative report that will be published by Swayam.

 

Global Health Rights Project: Promoting the Right to Health Through Litigation. The Global Health Rights Project aims to make health rights litigation from around the world universally accessible for civil society, NGOs, lawyers, and governments seeking to promote legal accountability for the right to health. The project is being developed in order to facilitate the development of the right to health under law across the globe under international and regional mechanisms and domestic legal systems. A part of the project includes developing databases of all relevant domestic, regional, and international court judgments from North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, South Asia, and East Asia. The summaries will explain the issues arising and the decision of the court on each issue in the case. These summaries will be made freely available to advocates throughout the world through a website hosted by the Lawyers Collective (based in New Delhi, India) and collaborators.  IHRA volunteers will work in teams or individually to summarize cases relating to the right to health originating in English speaking and non-English speaking countries. 

 

South Africa, National Health Insurance and SECTION27: SECTION27 is a public interest law center based in Johannesburg, South Africa that seeks to influence, develop, and use the law to protect, promote, and advance human rights. SECTION27's activities include research, advocacy, and legal action to change the socio-economic conditions that undermine human dignity and development, prevent poor people from reaching their full potential, and lead to the spread of diseases that have a disproportionate impact on vulnerable and marginalized people. South Africa is currently in the very beginning phases of reforming their health care system by introducing National Health Insurance. NHI is meant to be in line with World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations on universal health care access - the government will serve as a single-payer in the health care system, with everyone earning above a certain income paying into a national fund that will be used to purchase health care services for all South Africans. There is a long way to go in this process, which will begin in 2012 with a five-year pilot period and then be rolled out over another seven years. SECTION27 has asked IHRA to conduct comparative research on health care reform and legal mechanisms in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Researchers on this project will look at mechanisms to ensure institutional accountability, decisions about what medical services to include in the basic package of services, methods to assure quality assurance, and more.

 

 

DeJusticia: Conflict Analysis and Reparations in Colombia

 

Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC): Tracking Civilian Casualty Data

 

 

The Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project  (IRAP)