Read our conversation with 2026 Research Award Winner Rebeca Lopez-Anzures
2025-26 Advocate Christopher Rutledge's opinion article on the defining contradictions of South Africa’s constitutional democracy has been published by Independent Online (IOL).
2023-24 Advocates Andrea Tock of Guatemala and David Samuel Mejía travelled to Zimbabwe through NYU's Legal Empowerment Learning Exchange Lab to work with community members on using Participatory Action Research and Legal Empowerment tools to make their voices heard and their rights respected.
This is the second installment in a series of profiles of the Advocates in our 2025-2026 cohort, written in their own voices. This time we have Christopher Rutledge, Executive Director of MACUA-WAMUA Advice Office (MWAO), a South African non-profit established to support mining-affected communities.
On Monday, May 4, 2026, the ISHR community gathered to mark the end of the academic year and celebrate graduating human rights students. Faculty, staff, students and their families were treated to a special evening that featured student performances and celebrated the hard work and accomplishments of ISHR’s graduating class.
The Institute for the Study of Human Rights congratulates the human rights students who received departmental honors and prizes in 2026. Read more below.
The 2025-26 Advocates sat down to share their work with viewers of the HRAP YouTube Channel.
This is the first in a series of profiles of the Advocates in our 2025-2026 cohort, written in their own voices. We begin with Maiya Shang, Asia Pacific Grants Coordinator at the International Indigenous Women's Forum (FIMI), who has spent this spring as an HRAP Advocate at Columbia while attending her first session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
ISHR is delighted to announce that two undergraduate human rights students were selected for the 2026 Truman Scholarship.
Seven HRAP advocates from Belarus, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, South Africa, and Tanzania closed their fellowship at a farewell reception hosted by ISHR at Columbia University on Wednesday, April 29, 2026.
Christopher Rutledge of the 2025-26 cohort of the Human Rights Advocates Program (HRAP) joined a Columbia Law School panel on 28 April 2026 reflecting on pathways into human rights work, drawing on three decades of grassroots organizing in South Africa. Rutledge serves as Executive Director of Mining Affected Communities United in Action and Women Affected by Mining United in Action Advice Office.
ISHR wishes to congratulate the winners of the 2026 Human Rights Thesis Competition.