The Human Rights Brief
AUWCL’s Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law established the student-run Human Rights Brief as part of its long-standing commitment to human rights education and excellence in legal analysis and writing. For nearly 30 years, the Center has worked with students, faculty, and the international legal community to provide and support concise, cutting-edge legal analysis of human rights issues. The Human Rights Brief continues to enjoy great success contributing articles, editing pieces, representing the Center at human rights events around Washington, D.C., and working with practitioners around the world to further human rights scholarship.
The Latest Issue

Volume 26, Issue 1
In Spring 2020, the Human Rights Brief made the switch to an issue-based publication model. This page will be updated quarterly with the latest in human rights coverage, developments, and legal analysis. Past issues of the Brief can be found AUWCL's archive, Digital Commons.
Read moreInside the Latest Volume
practitioner articles
- White Silence and Violence: Positionality and Storytelling in Women’s Rights Movements
- Inka Boehm
- Capital Punishment and the ‘Acnestis’ of its Modern Reformation
- Sudarsanan Sivakumar
student columns
- When Jail & Prison Sentences Become Death Sentences: How Willfully Exposing Incarcerated Persons to COVID-19 Amounts to Cruel & Unusual Punishment
- Arielle Aboulafia
- The Right to Assembly Should Extend Online in China
- Gracie Kreth
- The Peace Corps is Failing to Keep Volunteers Safe
- Marnie Leonard
- Brazil’s Violence Against Indigenous Peoples
- Andre Taylor
Regional Systems coverage
- Romanian Government Will Implement Measures to Prevent Further Violations of Rights of People with Mental Health Conditions or Disabilities in Accord with the Decision of the European Court of Human Rights
- Tesa Hargis
- Chocholá? v. Slovakia: Prisoners, Porn, & Morality in Human Rights
- Amanda Lorenzo
- Overcoming the Westphalian Notion of "Absolute Sovereignty": The Venezuelan Case with the Inter-American Convention of Human Rights
- Gabriel Ortiz
Special Joint COVID-19 Issue

Special Joint COVID-19 Issue
The pandemic has both demonstrated and exacerbated massive inequalities in our global system; it has provided an excuse for governments to claim authoritarian powers, and it has caused vulnerable communities to suffer disproportionally. This issue aims to provide both an overview of a few responses to the pandemic as well as a few legal frameworks in which to begin to address the underlying problems.
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