Please join the Leitner Center in welcoming Jamil Dakwar, head of the Human Rights Program at the ACLU.

In December 2008, the Campaign for a New Domestic Human Rights Agenda emerged from a coalition of US-based social justice organizations, including major human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and economic justice groups interested in taking advantage of the new political climate. Currently comprised of more than fifty domestic organizations, the Campaign advocates for more effective human rights protections and a strengthened US commitment to human rights at home and abroad based on the Blueprint ACS report authored by Fordham Law School Professor Catherine Powell.

The key objectives of the Campaign include influencing policy at the federal, state, and local levels by (1) revitalizing the Interagency Working Group on Human Rights to coordinate the efforts of federal agencies and departments to promote and respect human rights and to implement human rights obligations as US domestic policy, (2) transforming the US Commission on Civil Rights into a US Commission on Civil and Human Rights, (3) monitoring government compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which the US has ratified, and (4) strengthening federal, state, and local government coordination to support human rights.

January 2010 marked the end of President Obama’s first year in office.  Campaign Steering Committee member and Director of ACLU human rights program Jamil Dakwar will discuss both the Campaign's ongoing efforts to secure meaningful human rights protections and the work that remains to be done in the coming year.

Speaker:

Jamil Dakwar is Director of the ACLU's Human Rights Program (HRP) which is dedicated to holding the US government accountable to its international human rights obligations and commitments. HRP uses human rights strategies to complement existing ACLU legal and legislative advocacy and to advance social justice in the areas of national security, immigrants' rights, women's rights, racial justice, death penalty, and children’s rights. HRP conducts human rights education and training sessions, and engages in advocacy and litigation before US courts and international bodies, including the United Nations and regional human rights mechanisms such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Prior to joining the ACLU, Mr. Dakwar worked at Human Rights Watch, where he conducted research and published reports on issues of torture and detention in the Middle East. Before coming to the United States, he was a senior attorney with Adalah, a leading human rights group in Israel, where he filed and argued human rights cases before the Israeli Supreme Court. He is co-chair of the American Constitution Society's Working Group on International Law and the Constitution, which focuses on the relationship between international law and the Constitution and the implications of this relationship for human rights. He is also a steering committee member of the Campaign for New Domestic Human Rights Agenda.