30 Years of Impact

Every year since 1994, the Human Rights Center has provided fellowships to University of California students for human rights fieldwork, research, and journalism in collaboration with a wide variety of organizations around the world. This year, our fellows spent their summers working in California, Uganda, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Colombia, and beyond on issues including reuniting families separated at the U.S. / Mexico border, gender-based violence, environmental justice, violence against journalists, and more. 

After being rescued at sea, thousands of migrants face uncertainty and danger as they attempt to settle in Europe. They must confront the visceral and traumatic journey behind them, as well as the physical and psychological obstacles ahead. These themes and more are explored in a new documentary film “The Borders of Paradise,” co-produced by Investigations Lab student Fraser Byers. We held a screening of the film and post-film Q&A with Byers and Professor Debarati Sanyal of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative on April 2 at Berkeley Law along with the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, the Center for African Studies, the Institute for South Asia Studies, and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. 

Every year, our Investigations Lab trains dozens of students to use social media and other publicly available, internet-based sources to document human rights violations for purposes of legal accountability, investigative reporting, and public advocacy. Students work on open source investigative projects in teams with external partners around the world, including Amnesty International, the Associated Press, Human Rights Watch, and many others. Our annual student showcase provides an opportunity for students to show their work from the last academic year. Projects at the showcase included documenting violence against protesters in Iran, investigating targeted destruction in Gaza, researching weapons used against civilians in Myanmar, and more.

The Human Rights Center and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program partnered to demonstrate the latest digital investigative techniques at our third annual Open Source Investigative Reporting Workshops. We hosted four hands-on workshops: Introduction to Open Source Investigative Reporting with Gisela Pérez de Acha and Sasha Schell; New Tools and Tactics for Conflict Reporting with Alexa Koenig, Joe Dyke, Emily Tripp, and Jackie Geis; Networks of Money and Power: How to Report on AI with Karen Hao and Lam Thuy Vo; and Investigating Digital Election Ads with Craig Silverman. The workshops were offered in concert with the 16th annual Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting.

HRC hosted a panel event at Berkeley Law on climate change’s impact on California’s people, environment, and future with Julia Olson of Our Children’s Trust, HRC’s Betsy Popken and Linda Gordon, and the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment’s Louise Bedsworth. Gordon, HRC’s climate research manager, described the importance of engaging communities in HRC’s California Wildfires project, and Olson, Our Children’s Trust’s chief legal counsel, described Genesis v. EPA, a new California climate youth plaintiff case on harmful air pollution.

HRC Executive Director Betsy Popken spoke in conversation with Kelly Matheson of Our Children’s Trust, the legal nonprofit behind Juliana v. United States, Genesis v. EPA, and the victorious Held v. Montana, among other cases. Matheson discussed OCT’s approach to climate litigation representing youth plaintiffs against states and the federal government, and how this approach is also used internationally. This event was held in partnership with the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment and the Environmental Law Clinic at Berkeley Law, and the Berkeley Climate Change Network.