30 Articles 30 Impacts

The University of Minnesota has long been at the forefront of encouraging honest debates about human rights and engaging academics and practitioners in conversation about how to advance human rights through academic research. This engagement provides the basis for the “Minnesota Model” for Human Rights Research, an effort to support this intersection of scholarship and practice. 

Learn more about the Minnesota Model

UMN student researchers collected data on dangerous conditions in meatpacking plants and the repercussions workers faced should they speak out, culminating in testimony before the MN House of Representatives to advance a Packinghouse Workers Bill of Rights.

The Human Rights Program honors the legacy of the late Congressman and Minneapolis mayor Donald Fraser and his wife Ambassador Arvonne Fraser—groundbreaking leaders in the defense of international human rights and women’s rights—by providing Fraser Fellowships to undergraduate students at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. The Fraser Fellowships invest in the next generation of human rights leaders by offering students field experience in leading human rights organizations.  

Read more about the Frasers’ enduring human rights legacy:

• “Don Fraser laid the groundwork on human rights, with longstanding impacts”

• “A tribute to Arvonne Fraser, women’s rights visionary”
   

The University of Minnesota has long been at the forefront of human rights and transitional justice scholarship. In 2017, the Human Rights Program and collaborating partners, hosted an international gathering of scholars, activists, human rights experts, jurists, United Nations officials, and filmmakers to contemplate issues of transitional justice in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Peace Commission Report for El Salvador, and the 20th anniversary of the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Guatemala. “Truth, Trials, and Memory: An Accounting of Transitional Justice in El Salvador and Guatemala,” fostered an unprecedented exchange of ideas among people connected to these two countries working on similar issues within different paradigms. 

The three-day conference brought together truth commissioners, judges, and prosecutors in charge of human rights trials, as well as family members, expert witnesses, government officials, and human rights defenders. Together, we explored the lessons learned from the transitional justice processes that both countries experienced. Themes of the panels included: round tables with the commissioners to discuss the history, challenges, and outcomes of the two commissions, the effects of amnesty laws and prosecutions, the contested truths and conflicting memories of the crimes, and the gendered implications of the work of the commissions.

The Human Rights Initiative (HRI) is a joint effort of the Human Rights Program, College of Liberal Arts, and the Humphrey School of Public Affairs to support interdisciplinary engaged research and teaching in the field of human rights. This groundbreaking research fund keeps the University of Minnesota at the forefront of human rights research and advocacy. Students have the opportunity to participate in research and hone skills that will serve them in their futures as human rights professionals. Faculty are able to explore new research ideas and projects and engage in policy advocacy that creates real change. This meaningful investment in faculty, staff and students has had significant impacts here in Minnesota and around the world. 

HRI also strengthens human rights practice and research.  At the heart of this work are our community partnerships. HRI takes a unique approach to research. We seek out and focus on research that engages with directly affected communities, listens to their voices, and follows their lead to ensure that we are doing work that will benefit the partners and communities we work with.

Since its inception in 2017, HRI has funded 36 projects. These projects include groundbreaking work on access to justice, artistic explorations of human rights, memory and representation, migration and immigration, and racial justice to name just a few. Impacts 6, 7, and 8 highlight three of these projects.

Deborah Levison PhD, professor in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, received funding from the HRI in 2018 to conduct a project on how Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children (UNCRC) could be used to develop innovative survey methods. Article 12 of the UNCRC states that children should be able to form their own views and express those views freely in all matters concerning the child. 

Through her years of research, Dr. Levison has noticed that “[children] tend to be treated as objects of research” in large-scale studies conducted on children, rather than individual persons with agency. Through the use of technology and animation, Dr. Levison wanted to “enable the views of children when being heard on a large scale for the first time ever.” 

She created a new methodology of collecting data that included stripped-down animations with narrated stories so as to not assume literacy–as opposed to surveys by larger international organizations that include specified language that is difficult to understand. The study found that Children typically understood the images and videos and this mode of survey was low-risk to children and time efficient.

Read more about “Animating Children’s Views: Implementing the UNCRC’s Article 12 Using Innovative Survey Methods.”

Greta Friedman-Sanchez, PhD, a professor from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, explored the gaps in accessing justice in Colombia in cases involving partner violence in her HRI-funded research project. To explore this, Professor Friedman-Sanchez met with officials and civil society organizations in Colombia. She and her research assistant found limited capacity and resources for “family commissioners” who work to support victims of domestic violence. 

After collecting her findings, her team submitted a shadow report to the UN Human Rights Council, as well as recommendations on the issue to the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women when Colombia was under review. As a result, Colombia enacted a new law in August of 2021 to better protect women from intimate partner violence which included many of the changes suggested by Professor Friedman-Sanchez, including placing family commissioners under the Ministry of Justice; removing responsibilities not connected to addressing domestic violence; and increasing the number of commissioner offices around the country.

Read more about “Family Commissioners: Fostering Justice, Security and Peace in Colombian Families in the Post-Conflict Era.”

Sonja Kuftinec, PhD, is a professor of the Department of Theatre Arts & Dance in the College of Liberal Arts. She began this project to engage with issues of forced migration using artistic representation. “A Contested Home: Memory, Commemoration and Rights around Forced Migration of Palestinians in the Galilee” explores how dialogue between Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and Jewish Israelis can be had. There are several rights issues within this conflict, including Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that “everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” 

The group was led through workshops that dealt with Palestinian testimonies and worked to grapple with the ethical dynamics of taking on the story of the other. At the end of the project, a 3-day exhibition was conducted with the artists of the exhibition and numerous community members. By finding partners on both sides of this conflict, the workshop ultimately resulted in individual transformation, powerful realizations, and recognition of Palestinian people, stories, and rights in the present moment. 

Read more about "A Contested Home: Memory, Commemoration and Rights around Forces Migration of Palestinians in the Galilee."

Children of Incarcerated Caregivers (CIC) is a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that works to support the evidence-based creation of policies, laws, and programs that promote the best interests of children who have an incarcerated parent or caregiver. Since its creation in 2015, dozens of human rights students at the University of Minnesota have partnered with them on various projects. Most notably, undergraduate and graduate students have worked with CIC on their Prison Nursery Project. This project conducts research on prison nurseries around the world to understand how different countries have thought about the needs of children in criminal sentencing, incarceration, and parole processes, with the goal of designing policies that put the needs of the child at the center. 

The Human Rights Program continues to partner with CIC, giving undergraduates the chance to intern with them through the Human Rights Internship course in the spring, and graduate students the opportunity to work with CIC as a part of their master's capstone project. With the help of human rights students at the University of Minnesota, CIC has produced several country reports related to prison nurseries, as well as a five-part podcast series that includes experts from around the world to better understand the varying perspectives surrounding the use of prison nurseries as an alternative to child and caregiver separation. 

In spring 2024, a joint CIC and student research team will produce a report on laws and policies related to the best interests of children of parents in pre-trial custody, and to make recommendations for advocacy on behalf of these children. The Human Rights Program looks forward to a continued partnership with CIC.

Life, liberty, and security of person is established in Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 5 prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. But in Mexico over 61,000 people have disappeared since 2009 with the country’s government providing little to no investigation into these enforced disappearances. The University of Minnesota Human Rights Program has partnered with the Observatory on Disappearances and Impunity in Mexico to analyze the extent and quality of news reporting on these disappearances.

For four years, a trained team of U of M students coded Mexican press coverage of these cases and built a database that can analyze patterns regarding victims, perpetrators, and state responses in these cases. The database, launched publicly in April of 2021, allows us to demonstrate and explain the gaps in existing information about the disappearances, which has been primarily controlled by the Mexican government. 

Students not only learned coding, but some also participated in meetings of the Observatory and its partners in Mexico. Our work with the Observatory and its partners provides a tool to further examine these disappearances and helps to explain how the press can advance a culture of accountability for human rights violations in Mexico.

Read more about this partnership to prevent disappearances.

Around the world, people promote and protect human rights under difficult, often dangerous, conditions. As they challenge injustices, confront perpetrators of human rights violations, and work to dismantle systems of oppression, they have been subject to risks, threats, and attacks. Numerous reports highlight how human rights defenders have been harassed, stigmatized, criminalized, subject to violence and abuse, even tortured, killed, or disappeared. 

The definition of “human rights defender” (HRD) is inevitably broad and under debate; at the core an HRD is a person who, individually or with others, acts to promote or protect human rights. 

The Human Rights Defenders Project at HRP is dedicated to research and advocacy that promotes the rights and wellbeing of those who promote and protect human rights. Through this project, we have:

Provided vital research to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to advance their research and advocacy through multiple shadow reports and research visits. 

Developed important relationships with civil society both in Minnesota and around the world

Learned how best to support current and future HRDs, for example, we developed an important webinar on Academic Freedom in an Era of Globalized Education that discussed how transnational repression undermines Article 19 of the UDHR

Trained over 15 graduate and undergraduate students in human rights and community-based research, as well as provided opportunities for students to intern with the United Nations and visit the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

With the goal of preventing future atrocities, the Human Rights Program and the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies started The Ohanessian Dialogues on Mass Atrocities and Their Aftermaths in 2014. The Dialogues raised awareness of past human rights violations such as the mass killings of American Indians, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Cambodian killing fields, Mayan killings in Guatemala, the Rwandan genocide, and the Darfur genocide. This initiative worked to promote the ideals of Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”

The Dialogues documented mass atrocities through conferences, student training, and the use of video and social media platforms to educate a global community. Notable events included an international conference on transitional justice in El Salvador and Guatemala, the release of the updated Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death, student research training on disappearances in Mexico, and a workshop on "Gender and Genocide" for K-12 educators. 

The Ohanessian Dialogues aimed to make resources on genocide and mass atrocities accessible to as large of an audience as possible. These activities reached a rich variety of audiences, locally and globally, and led to fruitful global partnerships. Through social media, workshops, and global partnerships, the Dialogues worked towards truth, justice, reparation, and prevention of recurrence in the face of divisive rhetoric and actions worldwide.

The Human Rights Program equips students for advocacy. As an example, in early 2006 undergraduate students in Prof. Barbara Frey’s Human Rights Internship course were asked to partner with the Hmong Community in Minnesota to address the disinterment and abuse of Hmong graves at the site of a former refugee camp in Thailand. Hmong religious beliefs include the veneration of ancestors and the grave of an ancestor is an important part of the family legacy. Thus the desecration of these graves was a violation of Article 18 of the UDHR, which states that “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.”

HRP students worked with the Hmong community to collect over 170 personal testimonies and develop a campaign to bring attention to this rights violation. In collaboration with community partners HRP brought international attention to the desecration of the Hmong graves and organized a visit by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, Professor James Anaya, to Minnesota where he met with affected individuals and families and collected testimony that informed his recommendations for action directed at the Thai Government. Recommendations included the return of the disinterred bodies and the establishment of a memorial park.

From October 2012 to July 2015, the Human Rights Program, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota Law School’s Human Rights Center, formed a project with four law schools in Medellin, Colombia, called The University of Minnesota-Antioquia Human Rights Partnership. Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the project aimed to build legal infrastructure to protect human rights by enhancing human rights education, research, and clinical legal representation in Medellin.

The partnership focused on strengthening the capacity of Colombian law schools in the areas of human rights and the rule of law, improving the ability of legal clinics to protect vulnerable populations, and fostering human rights leadership in Antioquia. Throughout the partnership’s tenure, we worked to educate community leaders, students, and faculty on human rights leadership and litigation.

Key accomplishments of the partnership include establishing the Universidad Católica de Oriente’s legal clinic, hosting courses and intensive training sessions on the rights of women and human-rights litigation, and creating externships for Colombian faculty and students at the U of M. This partnership was a collaborative effort to strengthen their capacities to teach, research, and provide clinical legal representation toward the promotion of international human rights and the rule of law.

Although the partnership ended in 2015, the Human Rights Program maintains strong ties with the faculty and students from the Alianza and keeps open the possibility of future collaborative work. 

The Midwest Coalition for Human Rights (MCHR) was a network of organizations, service providers, and university centers working on human rights issues common to the Midwest Region of the United States. The MCHR, which at its height had 56 members, was housed in the Human Rights Program (HRP) at the University of Minnesota and coordinated by former HRP associate director Rochelle Hammer. Using human rights standards, members of the MCHR worked together to educate, advocate, and promote policy change on national and international human rights issues. 

The coalition had three subcommittees focused on torture, labor conditions, and immigration. The subcommittee on torture and ill-treatment investigated the rules for the use of taser guns by law enforcement, monitored allegations of ill-treatment in prisons, and developed possible resolutions to condemn the use of torture by US public officials. The subcommittee addressing labor rights helped pass the Packinghouse Workers Bill of Rights. The third subcommittee on immigration detention systems worked on mapping the locations and conditions of detention for immigrants detained in the Midwest, which resulted in shadow reports to the UN and various petitions to state and international human rights bodies. 

The MCHR offered dozens of internships to graduate students which not only provided extra hands to the coalition but also contributed to many reports within the Midwest Coalition’s subcommittees, including one to the United Nations Committee on Torture regarding the Chicago police torture cases. While the MCHR concluded its work in 2013, the coalition’s work across the Midwest was essential in producing a wide network of information sharing, investigations, and educational programs.

The Stephen and Chacke Scallen Lecture Series in Human Rights highlights leaders and thinkers—“Principled Voices” —who distinguish themselves by carrying out their passion for human rights, cultural awareness, democratic principles, fairness, and dignity, often despite great odds and at significant personal risk. The lecture series was established in 2016 with a generous gift from Stephen and Chacke Scallen with a particular focus on exploring the erasure of cultures and understanding the role of corruption in human rights violations. Edmon Marukyan of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia and Chairman of the Council of Bright Armenia oppositional party spoke at the inaugural lecture in 2017. His reflections on fighting corruption and advocating for human rights and a strengthened civil society in Armenia set the tone for subsequent lecture events. 

Throughout the years, the Scallen lectures have addressed press protection in Myanmar, the contribution of indigenous voices to environmental policy, and reporting disappearances in Mexico. Each lecture has had a profound impact on audiences, educating communities on the importance of upholding human rights when governments fail to do so. The 2023 lecture addressed the weaponization of food and the use of starvation as a tool of genocide. The conversation included scholars, students, and members of directly impacted communities who reminded us that government policy can mean life or death for human beings. A public awareness of human rights violations is crucial for putting pressure on governments and holding them accountable to the principles of equal rights and justice. 

The Human Rights Program equips and empowers students to change their world even before they graduate. Your gift to  the HRP  funds enrichment opportunities for students in the classroom, scholarly and applied  student research, and faculty/staff-led human rights research with collaborative student teams. 

In Spring of 2022, Senior Fellow at the Humphrey School, Dr. Diana Quintero, led human rights graduate students in a workshop to better understand how local and international human rights issues intersect. Her students prepared a formal submission on the rights of indigenous children and youth in Guatemala to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. This submission was used in a later thematic report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Rapporteurship on the Rights of the Child (links to external site), which will ultimately be used to help those at risk hold their government accountable. 

Victor Molina graduated from the Masters of Human Rights (MHR) Program in the Spring of 2022, but not before writing his professional paper as part of his MHR degree on LGBTQ+ rights in Latin America. He stated that  “As a Venezuelan queer human rights defender [my research] focused on advancing equality and non-discrimination in the Global South using participatory approaches and [research].” Victor’s paper, which looked at the trends of the ‘Pink Tide’ in Venezuela compared to the rest of Latin America, was eventually published in the International Journal of Human Rights, and received an award for Excellence in Global Policy from the Humphrey School. 

Finally, MHR graduate Shoni Krengel worked with Deborah Jane (Outreach Coordinator of the Institute for Global Studies) on a project which sought to identify and help tackle barriers that K-12 teachers face in incorporating human rights curriculum into their classroom. Shoni helped facilitate workshops with K-12 teachers in the U.S. on how to implement human rights education into their classrooms. This allowed for open conversations between researchers and teachers, through which the team was able to identify potential struggles and ideas for implementation in this classrooms. Additionally, teachers wrote plans for how they will apply human rights in their curriculum and the project has helped to develop, revise, and strengthen these plans. 

The HRP continues to support the phenomenal work of our human rights students, as they mobilize knowledge to advance human rights. 

The "Save Yar Campaign" and its subsequent evolution into "Child Protection International" (CPI) was a student-led, hands-on project supported by the Human Rights Program, dedicated to ending child abduction in South Sudan. The Save Yar Campaign was initiated by students in a Human Rights Advocacy seminar in 2007, responding to the abduction of two young girls—Yar and Ajak—nieces of Kou Solomon, then a student of the Human Rights Program.

The campaign focused on researching and advocating for an end to child abductions in South Sudan and neighboring countries, aiming to reunite abducted children with their families. The project brought attention to the alarming pattern of child abduction in the region, despite declarations by local leaders to end the practice. Research conducted by HRP students of the Save Yar team shed light on the complex causes of child abduction in South Sudan, such as resource depletion and security issues. To address the lack of information, the Save Yar Campaign targeted governmental and intergovernmental organizations, as well as the international media to raise awareness and secure the release of abducted children.

In 2008, students from the campaign traveled to South Sudan to continue their work, despite travel advisories. They also organized a briefing in the US Capitol on child abduction in South Sudan, bringing together various stakeholders. Subsequently, the students established their own NGO, Child Protection International (CPI), to continue their efforts. They advocated for universal birth registration in Southern Sudan to tackle the problem of child abductions, met with UN Special Rapporteurs, and participated in events and campaigns to support their cause.

CPI expanded its work to investigate the situation of Sudanese youth in Nebraska and produced a report on the causes of youth delinquency in Nebraska's Sudanese refugee population. This research aimed to address the challenges faced by refugee families, particularly in language acquisition and cultural adaptation. It is an illustration of the ways the Human Rights Program empowers and equips students to change their world.

The Mass Violence and Human Rights (MVHR) Interdisciplinary Graduate Group—formerly the Holocaust, Genocide and Mass Violence Workshop) —was initiated in the fall of 2012 by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS), the Human Rights Program (HRP), and the Department for Sociology for graduate students and faculty of all departments in the humanities and social sciences at the University of Minnesota. It was founded with the intent of supporting research and fostering conversations on subject areas ranging from genocide and memory to transitional justice and representations of violence and trauma. Additionally, participating MVHR graduate students are provided with opportunities to receive funding to present their research at academic conferences. 

Workshops are held bi-monthly, and their demand is such that the program has begun to schedule additional presentations beyond the traditional schedule. Students who have benefited from this program have gone on to do extraordinary work–like Paula Cuellar Cuellar, who’s work on genocide and mass atrocities in El Salvador led her to, among many other accomplishments, produce a documentary film detailing the experiences of women who suffered sexual violence during the Salvadoran civil war. Funding from this program has also allowed students to travel around the world to present their research.

The MVHR Interdisciplinary Graduate Group has created a space in which academics from many areas of study can grow in their research, knowledge, and advocacy of highly important, relevant, and often overlooked issues of the past and present. Learn more about the MVHR Group and join their mailing list. 

In honor of the upcoming International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, we highlight our past and future International Women’s Day (IWD) celebrations.

After the Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing, China in 1995, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was adopted with the objective of the advancement and achievement of gender equality in 12 critical areas of concern. Since then, Minnesota activists who attended the Beijing Conference shifted their focus on IWD to be a time for people to work towards these 12 areas of concern. Since 2004, the Human Rights Program has been working in partnership with people and organizations from around the world to put on IWD events for this purpose. 

Co-sponsoring seven consecutive IWD events with the Advocates for Human Rights (2004-2010), the Human Rights Program has featured numerous workshops, keynote speakers, and performances based on the Beijing Platform for Action, and has managed to draw in over 700 participants in past years. 

Themes for IWD celebrations have revolved around sex trafficking in Minnesota, reproductive rights, HIV/AIDS, Latina leadership, women’s activism in the Muslim world, poverty, education, health, violence, armed conflict, and the environment. Even with the impact of COVID-19 in recent years, the HRP has managed to continue partnering with local organizations and institutions, and campus partners, as well as international activists, to host virtual webinars. Themes have broadened to include current affairs, but the impact of these events has remained the same: empowering and inspiring people to advocate for the continued improvement of women’s human rights.

The "Reframing Mass Violence: Human Rights and Social Memory" initiative was a joint project of the Human Rights Program and the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies. Supported by the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Advanced Studies, the two-year project explored the transnational connections of social memories in societies marked by dictatorships, state terror, and grave human rights violations in Latin America and southern Europe. 

The initiative conducted a series of ten public lectures that provided a platform for experts to discuss their work, engaging scholars, students, and the public. These discussions focused on reinterpreting and reframing past atrocities, transitional justice models, and the impacts on contemporary society. A keynote lecture by Prof. John-Paul Himka, discussing the reception of the Holocaust in post-Communist Europe, attracted about 75 attendees and was later broadcasted by Minnesota Public Radio, reaching a wider audience. The subsequent symposium featured panel discussions led by 17 scholars, exploring various aspects of public remembrance of mass violence in post-Communist Europe. 

The series emphasized the significance of prolonged transitional periods, the diverse ways societies handle their contested pasts legally, artistically, and through commemoration. It highlighted the use of memories for political purposes and the potential pitfalls of externally shaped transitional justice policies, which might inadvertently propagate reductionist narratives. Overall, the project illuminated the complex dynamics of memory, politics, and justice in the aftermath of grave human rights violations. It underscored the importance of nuanced, long-term policies that truly reevaluate a nation's history, rather than superficial or expedited approaches influenced by external forces.

Since the early 1800s, entire generations of Native American children were removed from their families through boarding schools, adoption, and foster care, with impacts that reverberate today. A Human Rights Initiative grant supported a collaborative effort to provide Native boarding school survivors, adoptees, fostered individuals, and their descendants the opportunity to document their experiences and the varied intergenerational impacts. This research has been rooted in a decolonizing research approach that centers Native values such as spirituality, reflection, reciprocity, and community-based interactions. The anonymous survey used in the research included both quantitative and qualitative questions regarding their memories from boarding school and/or adoptive/foster care life, effects into their adult life and intergenerationally, and their work toward healing any related wounds. 

The collaborative research team included: Sandy White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota) of First Nations Reparation Institute, Samuel Torres (Mexica/Nahua) of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, Sara Axtell and Carolyn Liebler of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (UM-TC), and recent UM-TC graduates Maggie Greenleaf (Red Lake Nation) and Chris Mann. The research team hosted a Wopila ceremony in September 2022 to thank the community for participating. Results have been shared with tribal communities, policymakers, legislators, and academics through a dedicated website and a book. Early results have been shared with tribal communities at Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation and Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, as well as via testimony for U.S. House (HR 5444) and U.S. Senate (S 2907) resolutions for a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding Schools in the US.

The perpetration of gun violence has led to the deaths of thousands of Americans since the beginning of the pandemic. Unfortunately, this issue is not a result of COVID-19, but rather the consequence of weak international laws around arms trades, unmediated accessibility to light weapons, and little attention paid to the human rights violations that occur due to arms proliferation.

During her term as UN Special Rapporteur on the Prevention of Human Rights Violations Committed with Small Arms and Light Weapons, Barabra A. Frey, then director of the Human Rights Program, investigated several key research questions related to the impact of weapons availability on human rights and the responsibilities of states in regulating the transfer and use of small arms. The study examined responses from 35 member states of the UN to a questionnaire distributed by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2005. It was found that small arms and light weapons are not only used in killings but also contribute to various human rights violations, including injury, torture, coercion, displacement, and rape. 

Frey highlighted the increased accessibility of guns, making vulnerable groups even more susceptible to harm. This report was adopted by the Human Rights Council in 2006, and created a framework of principles for human rights in regards to the misuse of arms.

Frey later worked with Professor Jennifer Green to supervise students in drafting shadow reports to the UN Human Rights Committee, to address states’ obligations to prevent small arms-related violations of the right to life in various countries.

In 2008 and 2009, the Institute for Advanced Study supported a research collaborative that brought together faculty and graduate students from across the University of Minnesota—including then-director of the Human Rights Program Barbara Frey— to discuss research interests in transitional justice and collective memory. The collaborative, convened by Professor Emeritus Kathryn Sikkink, hosted international expert speakers, co-hosted a colloquium, and works-in-progress discussions by many of our professors and graduate students. 

In the spring of 2009, the University of Minnesota Graduate School officially made Human Rights and Transitional Justice an Interdisciplinary Graduate Group. In doing so, it raised the visibility of our research initiatives, academic offerings, internships, and programmatic activities in human rights and transitional justice to prospective graduate and professional students and supported funding requests for research and programmatic activities. 

In 2014, Professor Emeritus Kathryn Sikkink and Senior Research Fellow Leigh Payne of the Human Rights Program launched the public portion of their groundbreaking research on transitional justice with the launch of their project website. The Transitional Justice Research Collaborative presents data on three primary transitional justice mechanisms—human rights prosecutions, truth commissions, and amnesties—for 109 democratic transitions in 86 countries, from 1970-2012. It has been used by scholars and practitioners around the world to examine the causes and impacts of transitional justice mechanisms that address human rights violations.

The Minnesota Human Rights Archive (MHRA) is a new and exciting initiative between the HRP, Archives and Special Collections, and several campus programs and centers, seeking to capture, preserve, and publicize Minnesota's rich and complicated history of human rights activism and scholarship. This emerging archive contains unique collections of primary sources unavailable anywhere else and is the only major human rights archive housed at a public university in the United States. We envision MHRA as a living, evolving collection that informs contemporary human rights advocacy and scholarship by preserving key records that play a crucial role in telling these stories.

Our hope is that the MHRA will help enrich conversations around justice and human rights in several ways. The archive collects and preserves important sources about human rights activism in a way that links the human rights community in the state of Minnesota to international activism and advocacy work. In addition, the MHRA gives a unique insight into the mechanics of doing human rights work as it is commonly practiced in human rights organizations. Materials contained in the archive can be used by instructors teaching in college, university, or K-12 settings. A useful resource for human rights scholars, the archive is also available to activists who want to gain insights into the work of peers, and to impacted persons who might seek information to fight for justice or as part of a process of healing. By preserving memory, the MHRA supports research and future activism to address persistent human rights challenges in Minnesota and beyond.

Since 2006, the Human Rights Program has partnered with the Department of English to offer the “Scribes for Human Rights” fellowship to support a master of fine arts (MFA) student from the Creative Writing Program to work as a writer-in-residence on human rights topics. Each scribe is supported to write a publishable work under the guidance of the Human Rights Program and the Creative Writing Program. 

When human rights are difficult to understand, artistic expression allows us to more easily understand difficult subject matters and reach new audiences. Through the work of our Scribes for Human Rights, the HRP has showcased the importance of the fine arts in upholding human rights values and making visible human rights violations around the world. 

We have funded ten scribes since the partnership began. Our scribes have written about the refugee crisis and resettlement, worked with incarcerated students to lead workshops, produced pieces on the importance of arts in prison, and made visible the forgotten stories of Cambodian genocide survivors. Not only does creative writing open an opportunity for the public to better understand the situation of human rights, but in doing so, it often brings attention to many of the rights violations that are not documented by the media. We are pleased to announce the continuation of this important program. Watch for our call for applications for our 11th Scribe for Human Rights in spring 2024.

As a hub of interdisciplinary research, teaching, and outreach, the Human Rights Program (HRP) works to mobilize knowledge to advance human rights. Our mission is threefold: 1) advance human rights scholarship through support of research and publications; 2) educate the next generation of human rights scholars and professionals; and 3) engage with serious human rights issues through timely and meaningful projects and public programs. Founded in 2001, HRP has been building partnerships between scholars, practitioners, and students in Minnesota and across the world for more than 20 years. Today’s human rights program was the brainchild of the internationally acclaimed human rights scholar Kathryn Sikkink who was a professor in the University of Minnesota’s political science department. With seed funding from the College of Liberal Arts and a home within the newly established Institute for Global Studies, HRP was envisioned as a partner program to the Human Rights Center established by David Weissbrodt in the law school. The idea was to create opportunities for undergraduates and graduate students in CLA to participate in engaged human rights research and activism. Human rights lawyer and advocate, Barbara Frey was chosen to serve as its inaugural director – a post she held until her retirement in May 2022. 

The three thought partners - Sikkink, Weissbrodt, and Frey - recognized the value of bringing social scientists, artists, historians, and other humanities scholars more prominently into conversations on human rights. They understood that human rights change is not only about passing laws but also about understanding the causes of human rights violations, using data to shape effective responses, and building empathy through storytelling. During the early years, the three met regularly to plan out activities on campus, grow an interdisciplinary community of human rights scholars, strengthen campus and community partnerships, incubate faculty research projects, develop a robust human rights curriculum, and nurture developing writers, scholars, and practitioners.

Today the University of Minnesota human rights community is robust and spreads across the entire campus, including but extending beyond both CLA and the Law School. As this year’s 30 Articles, 30 Impacts campaign has highlighted, the work of HRP continues and flourishes, demonstrating the power of an idea when backed by passion, expertise, hard work, and financial investment. Throughout this campaign we have celebrated the past in order to inspire us in the present and to help us envision a bold, rights-based agenda for the HRP’s next 20 years. We are honored to carry forward the legacy of our founders.

The Human Rights Program strives to make opportunities for human rights education, scholarship, and hands-on work accessible to all students at the University of Minnesota. Our undergraduate students have proven to be dedicated and promising future human rights leaders. Undergraduate activism for human rights comes in many different forms. 

Students pursuing a B.A. in Global Studies can select a human rights concentration and take classes taught by human rights faculty members, like International Human Rights Law, Human Rights Internship, and more. Our Fraser Fellowships give students the opportunity to participate in a summer internship with local human rights organizations like Global Rights for Women and the Advocates for Human Rights. The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) and Dean’s First-Year Research & Creative Scholars (DFRACS) fund human rights students to participate in faculty-mentored research. With the recent addition of the HRP Undergraduate Working Group, now, undergrads can be involved in advocacy and organizing, planning events, and ensuring that the voices of undergrads are included in decisions shaping the curriculum and programming of HRP. Most recently, members of the Working Group helped organize a Human Rights Advocacy Workshop, in which they designed materials and led other students in a short training on effective advocacy tactics. 

With the new semester ahead, the Working Group is looking forward to engaging with peers and other student groups in a variety of human rights-related events, and providing undergraduates with a platform to showcase their research and voices to advance human rights. HRP will also welcome its first Hrant Dink Memorial Fellow who will work with the Director to expand the program’s capacity to respond to mass atrocity crimes as they unfold.

The graduate minor in human rights provides students enrolled in a University of Minnesota graduate or professional program the opportunity to gain interdisciplinary expertise in the study of human rights law, policy, and practice. The program includes both classroom and field experience. Students study human rights history, policy, advocacy, and law with our dozens of award-winning human rights faculty, fostering interdisciplinary conversations and innovative solutions for pressing human rights problems. Our grad minors mobilize their knowledge to advance human rights through field placements with human rights organizations across the Twin Cities and abroad. They gain valuable professional skills while helping to further the human rights mission of their NGO hosts.

Since the HRP welcomed its first cohort in 2002, the grad minor has graduated hundreds of students representing more than two dozen degree programs across the College of Liberal Arts and professional colleges, studying fields such as education, social sciences, law, health, policy, arts, and the humanities. Our PhD graduates have secured academic and research positions at institutions of higher education and in global and regional organizations. Master’s graduates are working in NGOs, foundations, and government offices where they carry out research, monitoring and evaluation, fact-finding, and reporting, or manage IT and communications. Our network of graduate minors comprise a diverse community of human rights scholars trained in the Minnesota Model of human rights research. These scholars create long-term partnerships with practitioners aimed at producing real-world knowledge that enhances human rights scholarship while increasing the capacity of local actors to defend human rights in their communities. These former students become teachers continuing our legacy of preparing the next generation of human rights scholars and professionals.

In a world that needs visionaries, the Master of Human Rights (MHR) degree program prepares students to engage in global human rights challenges through research, policy analysis, and advocacy. The popularity of HRP’s graduate minor in human rights amongst public policy students prompted the creation of the Master of Human Rights - a degree program jointly offered by the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and the College of Liberal Arts. This two-year, interdisciplinary degree program provides a solid grounding in diverse substantive and methodological approaches to the study and practice of human rights from across departments and disciplines. The MHR admitted its first cohort of 9 students in 2016 and boasts six graduating classes. MHR students come to the University from Minnesota, across the United States, and from around the world including places like Mongolia, Kenya, Mexico, and Scotland.  

Our program is designed to support emerging leaders who can draw upon many types of knowledge and experiences in a field that demands innovative responses to complex issues. MHR graduates have gone on to pursue careers in non-profit organizations, government entities like the U.S. Foreign Service, international human rights organizations, and the academic sector.  

The MHR degree program encourages students to employ their pre-existing skills from past educational and career experiences in tandem with the new  knowledge they gain from their classes to make human rights change. Our MHR students and alumni have the passion and skills to change communities and are eager for opportunities to put theory into practice at the local, national, and global level.