Hear from our amazing speaker lineup at the2025 Human Rights & Humanitarian Forum
At the Crossroads:
Driving Integrated Action
for a Resilient Future
This year's Human Rights and Humanitarian Forum will feature a number of remarkable speakers from across UCLA. If you haven't registered for your spot, use the promo code and button below to save your seat!
At a time of intensifying global challenges, the 2025 Human Rights and Humanitarian Forum seeks to spark new, integrated approaches to tackling these issues. Hosted by The Promise Institute for Human Rights in partnership with the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, the Forum will bring together eminent thinkers, frontline humanitarians, academics, legal advocates, and emerging leaders committed to advancing human dignity, justice, and sustainable peace.
By convening diverse voices under one roof, the Forum aims to seed lasting partnerships, inspire innovative solutions, and move us from "business as usual" towards a future where respect for human rights and effective humanitarian action go hand in hand.
Hear from extraordinary individuals including UCLA professors and scholars, Aurora Prize Laureates Marguerite Barankitse, Mirza Dinnayi, and Julienne Lusenge, as well as Pulitzer Prize Winner Dele Olojede, human rights and anti-corruption activist John Prendergast — and more!
Speakers Include:
Chelsea Clinton, PhD- Vice Chair, Clinton Foundation & Clinton Health Access Initiative
- Adjunct Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management, Columbia University
Alina Dorian, PhD- Associate Dean, Public Health Practice, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
- Adjunct Associate Professor of Community Health Sciences, UCLA
- Former Senior Health Associate, International Services, American Red Cross
Dr. Eric Esrailian, MD, MPH- Board Member, Aurora Humanitarian Initiative
- Founding Donor, The Promise Institute for Human Rights
- Emmy-nominated film producer, The Promise
Leymah Gbowee, MA- 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate
- Founder and President, Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa (GPFA)
- Executive Director of the Women, Peace and Security Program, Columbia University
Safiya Noble, PhD- MacArthur Fellow
- David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair of Social Sciences and Professor, UCLA
- Director, DataX Initiative, UCLA
Ayisha Siddiqua- J.D. Candidate, UCLA School of Law
- Climate Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General
- Founder & Executive Director, Future Generations Tribunal
Anna Spain Bradley- Professor of Law and Faculty Director for The UCLA Promise Institute for Human Rights and The Promise Institute Europe, UCLA Law
- Former Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, UCLA
Driving Integrated Action
for a Resilient Future
Wednesday, May 7, 2025
UCLA Luskin Conference Center
🐻 UCLA Students, Faculty and Staff!
Use code PROMISE at checkout to attend for free 🐻
The Promise Institute for Human Rights acknowledges our presence on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples.
At a time when the rules based international legal order seems to be imploding, it feels like it has never been more urgent to support international human rights law. But in order to defend human rights law, we must first understand why it was created in the first place. What is it that one is defending and why?
Join us to hear Prof. Frédéric Mégret in discussion with Prof. Máximo Langer. Prof. Mégret will shed light, not only on why the international human rights system emerged, but also on why we may want to continue investing in it despite all of its frailties. What might international human rights law achieve, in particular, that well developed cultures of constitutional guarantees of rights cannot achieve just as well? Prof. Mégret aims to problematize why we would want to guarantee human rights internationally, given some of the obvious limitations of doing so.
- Prof. Frédéric Mégret
- James S. Carpentier Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law and Professor of Law at McGill Faculty of Law, senior fellow at the University of Melbourne, and Visiting Professor at Sciences Po Paris
- Prof. Máximo Langer
- David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Chair, Professor of Law and Director of the UCLA Transnational Program on Criminal Justice at UCLA School of Law
Monday, April 14
12:15 PM Pacific Time
UCLA Law, Room 1430
Register to Attend
The Promise Institute Europe continues to explore the intersections of economic, social and cultural rights with the crime of ecocide.
In the latest study to measure the impact of law school faculties based on their research and writing, 14 UCLA School of Law professors have been recognized as leaders of legal scholarship.
Join us at an event based on Judge Brower’s book, Judging Iran: A Memoir of The Hague, the White House, and Life on the Front Line of International Justice, where he and Prof. Spain Bradley will discuss the wisdom, insights, and lessons from Judge Brower’s decades of experience.
A judge of the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal for four decades, Charles N. Brower is an internationally recognized leader in arbitration and has handled cases on six continents. With quick wit and a keen eye for adventure, he takes readers on a tour of his extraordinary career.
As a young lawyer fresh from Harvard, Brower quickly made partner at a Wall Street firm. After just four months, however, he left the expected path to join the U.S. State Department, embarking on a career that put him in the thick of Cold War Europe and led to a lifelong focus on international law.
Brower’s drive carried him to the heart of pressing issues, including globalization, governmental ethics, environmentalism, and human rights. At each stop, Brower encountered criminals and victims, advocates and miscreants, especially at the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal, where heated disagreements between judges once erupted into physical violence. His work at The Hague was interrupted only by his time as an advisor to President Ronald Reagan at the height of the Iran–Contra scandal, and Brower eventually became the most-appointed American judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice.
Judging Iran is a frank insider account of the highest echelons of international law. As an active judge to this day, Brower offers a nuanced history of modern arbitration between nations, from our earliest concept of international law to today’s efforts for justice. And, as a global citizen, he argues that the law is essential in our work for peace.
*books will available for purchase at the event with a book signing to follow in the Lincoln Alcove
Sponsors: International & Comparative Law Program, Promise Institute for Human Rights
Coming soon in 2025, JD candidates at UCLA Law can apply to The Promise Institute Europe’s new exchange program with the Amsterdam Law School, which will offer students from both institutions the chance to study abroad for a semester.
Holding Corporations Accountable for Human Rights Violations: The Case Doe v. Chiquita Brands in the Context of the Justice and Peace Process in Colombia
Holding Corporations Accountable for Human Rights Violations: The Case Doe v. Chiquita Brands in the Context of the Justice and Peace Process in Colombia
Hear from attorney Marissa Vahlsing of EarthRights International as she shares a behind-the-scenes look at Doe v. Chiquita.
The first in a series of trials on the matter, this case has been in litigation for over 17 years but ultimately the plaintiffs — victims of terrorism, torture, and extrajudicial killing by Colombian paramilitary squads acting with financing from Chiquita — prevailed and were awarded $38M by a jury.
Vahlsing will discuss the opportunities and pitfalls in litigating Colombian tort claims in U.S. courts, what this victory means for the plaintiffs, the justice and peace process in Colombia, and the future of holding corporations accountable for their complicity in human rights violations. She will be joined by advocates in Colombia.
- Marissa Vahlsing
- U.S. Litigation Director, EarthRights International
- U.S. Litigation Director, EarthRights International
- Daniel Marín López
- Political and Legal Scholar, National University of Colombia
- Political and Legal Scholar, National University of Colombia
- Juan Pablo Guerrero
- Subdirector of Programs, CINEP (Colombia)
This event is co-sponsored by Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular/Programa por la Paz (Cinep/PPP), UCLA's Latin American Institute, and the Area of Global Debates at the Universidad de los Andes School of Law.
Tuesday, December 3
12:00 PM Pacific Time
Online Only
*The event will be in Spanish with simultaneous English interpretation*
Prof. Rick Abel will discuss his forthcoming book on judicial independence as seen in the various cases against Donald Trump. He will evaluate how judges decide these cases and what the effect on the rule of law in America has been.
Prof. Stephen Gardbaum will moderate, putting these cases in a comparative perspective with other democratic systems.
Speakers
- Prof. Rick Abel
- UCLA Law's Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus
- Distinguished Research Professor
- Prof. Stephen Gardbaum
- UCLA Law's Stephen Yeazell Endowed Chair in Law
Friday, October 25, 2024
12:15 PM Pacific Time Zone
Hybrid: Online and In-Person at UCLA School of Law, Room 1457
Register Now