In late January, Yale Law School, in partnership with the Washington D.C.-based Enough Project, released a study on justice and gender-based violence in Sudan that was completed by three students from Yale Law School’s Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. The study discovered that victims of gender-based violence, such as rape and human trafficking, in Sudan faced systemic obstructions of justice that kept the perpetrators of the crimes – including soldiers and government officers – from ever being punished for or charged.
The three Yale Law students, all members of the Class of 2010 or 2011, conducted the study over the 2009-2010 academic year, and released it a couple of weeks ago, just ahead of South Sudan’s secession from the North.
In addition to exploring barriers to justice, the Yale Law study also makes recommendations for actions that the Sudanese government and international human rights organizations can take to curb the violence. For example, the YLS students see the U.N. Security Council taking a more decisive stand against gender-based violence, and they hope that the United States would make the problems surrounding gender-based violence and support for victims a more central part of its policy in Sudan.
The Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, named in honor of Yale Law alumnus and US Congressman who dedicated his life to fighting racism in the US and in South Africa, was created in 1989 to give YLS students an outlet for contributing their legal knowledge to human rights efforts around the world.
The full-text version of the clinic’s Gender-Based Violence study is available on the Enough Project website.
