The Israel-US Civil Liberties Law Program
2009 marks the twenty-fifth year of the New Israel Fund's Israel-US Civil Liberties Law Program. Co-sponsored by the American University Washington College of Law (WCL), the program and its graduates have transformed the Israeli legal scene by offering two years of academic and professional experience to Israeli lawyers specializing in civil rights advocacy. Professor Herman Schwartz (of WCL and the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law) was a major catalyst in establishing this program in 1984.
Each year, two participants - an Arab Israeli citizen and a Jewish Israeli citizen - travel to Washington, DC and enroll as LLM candidates at WCL. In addition to their academic studies, participants also gain hands-on experience as interns at human rights and civil rights organizations in the United States including the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, and the Children's Defense Fund. Following the year of study and work in the United States, the particpants return to Israel to work with local human rights NGOs such as Adalah (The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights), ACRI (The Association of Civil Rights in Israel) and Itach-Maaki (Woman Lawyers for Social Justice).
Graduates of the program have pursued a variety of career paths and have joined the Justice Ministry in Israel, taught in academia, and established or joined human rights organizations all in an effort to promote social justice in their communities. Alumni have affected legislation, policy and practice in diverse areas of Israeli life and have influenced legal education in Israel.
In a 2004 article about the Israel-US Civil Liberties Program, the Haaretz newspaper praised the program for it has "played a central role in changing the human rights map in Israel." For more information about the program's past and current participants, click here.
The New Israel Fund (NIF) is the leading organization committed to democratic change within Israel. For twenty-eight years, NIF has fought for social justice and equality for all Israelis, believing that Israel can live up to its founders' vision of a state that ensures complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, without regard to religion, race or gender.
| Media Update: Israel-US Civil Liberties Law Program participant Rawia Aburabia featured in Washington Jewish Week (11/27/08) |
