Upcoming events

Join us for a discussion with Women's Link on the environmental impact on women, girls, and gender-diverse people. Their roles in land defense, community organizing, and adaptation strategies are essential to any effective and sustainable climate solution - particularly as climate change intensifies other issues they face, increasing gender-based violence and undermining sexual and reproductive rights, while placing growing pressure on women environmental defenders who are increasingly targeted through violence and criminalization for defending both their territories and the rights of women and girls in their communities. This session invites students to engage with climate justice as an intersectional reality, drawing from Women's Link's litigation and legal advocacy experience.

Presented as part of: Climate Week NYC 2026

• When: Wednesday, September 24 | 1:30-2:30 PM 

• Where: WJW 416, 1125 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027

Speakers:

• Jovana Rios, Executive Director at Women's Link Worldwide 
• Muskan Tibrewala, CLS '25 LL.M, former fellow at Women's Link Worldwide

Moderator:

• Luna Borges, Deputy Director and Supervising Staff Attorney at the Human Rights Clinic, Columbia Law School

Lunch will be served.

Please register below:

• Register with my Columbia UNI
• Register as a Guest

Join the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute for a conversation with Anzhelika Bielova, founder of the Roma women's organization Voice of Romni, on the human rights and humanitarian impact of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine. Bielova will share perspectives from her work with Roma communities, internally displaced people, women, and children across Ukraine. Drawing on her experience providing humanitarian assistance, supporting evacuations, and advocating for marginalized communities, she will discuss the challenges people face during displacement and recovery, along with the important role of local organizations in responding to the war and ensuring that humanitarian and recovery efforts include communities that are often overlooked. This conversation offers a valuable opportunity to hear directly from a Ukrainian civil society leader working at the intersection of humanitarian response, human rights, and community resilience.

• When: Friday, September 25, 2026 | 4:00-5:00 PM
• Where: JG 807, Columbia Law School

Speaker: Anzhelika Bielova, Founder, Voice of Romni

• Register with my Columbia UNI

Join the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute for a book talk with Wolfgang Kaleck, founder and General Secretary of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), on his book The Power of Law.

For decades, Kaleck has worked to hold state and corporate actors accountable for serious human rights violations through courts in Germany and around the world. Drawing on this experience, he will discuss the role law can play in challenging injustice and powerful actors, as well as its limits as a tool for human rights and social change. Wolfgang Kaleck is a leading international human rights lawyer and the author of several books on law, justice, and accountability.

• When: Tuesday, September 29 | 12:30-1:30pm
• Where: JG Annex

Speaker: Wolfgang Kaleck, General Secretary, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR)

Lunch will be served.

Please register below:

• Register with my Columbia UNI
• Register as a Guest

Join us at the intersection of human rights, law, and technology to help build practical tools for fair trial advocacy and to fight authoritarianism.

Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute is excited to invite Columbia students and alumni to the TrialWatch FairTrial & AI Hackathon on October 9-10, 2026.

This event brings together participants across law, technology, data, and policy to build practical tools for the intersection of freedom of expression and fair trial advocacy.

• When:  October 9-10, 2026
• Where: JG Annex, Columbia Law School

Participants will work across three tracks:

• Track 1: Identifying Emblematic Cases-How can computational tools help rank and identify important cases earlier?
• Track 2: Observation to Legal Evaluation-How can we automatically detect fair trial violations from trial monitoring notes?
• Track 3: Advocacy, Accountability, and Early Warning- How can we identify recurring language across legal documents to reveal broader patterns of repression and/or inform our advocacy?

Stand up for human rights alongside an interdisciplinary community of Columbia students and alumni.

Prizes and networking included.

Please register here by October 6: https://luma.com/lzb07zxy

Event Contact Information:
Marian Da Silva
[email protected]

Join us for a screening of Gazelle (2025), a powerful independent drama following Yakup, a Turkish music teacher forced into exile in New York after political unrest at home. Undocumented and separated from his wife and daughter, Yakup confronts an impossible moral dilemma as legal pathways to reunite his family stall - a story that lays bare the psychological toll of displacement and the human cost of broken immigration systems. Directed by Nadir Sarıbacak and Samy Pioneer in their feature debut, Gazelle premiered at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival and offers a timely, deeply personal lens on exile, identity, and the fight to keep a family together. The screening will be followed by a discussion connecting the film's themes to the human rights and immigration issues at the heart of our community's work.

• When: Monday, October 19 | 6:00-8:30 PM
• Where: JG 107

Speakers: 

• Nadir Sarıbacak (Co-Writer / Co-Director / Lead Actor)
• Büşra Çoduroğlu (Assistant Director)

Food will be served.

Please register below:

• Register with my Columbia UNI
• Register as a Guest

Join the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute for a conversation with Steve Crawshaw, author of the new book, “Prosecuting the Powerful”. At a time of ongoing armed conflicts and growing challenges to accountability for atrocity crimes, Crawshaw will discuss the pursuit of international justice and what it takes to hold powerful actors accountable for the world's gravest crimes. The conversation will explore themes from the book alongside current developments in international criminal justice, including efforts toward a future Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity.

• When: Tuesday, November 17 | 12:30-1:30 PM
• Where: JG 107, Columbia Law School

Speaker: Steve Crawshaw, British author, journalist, and human rights advocate, and former Human Rights Watch UK Director and UN Advocacy Director

Lunch will be served.

Please register below:

Event Contact Information:
HRI
9172917093
[email protected]

• Register with my Columbia UNI
• Register as a Guest