The gender hierarchies prevailing across much of Africa today were shaped by colonial encounter, not indigenous tradition. That was the working premise that HRAP advocate Nyawira Wahito brought to a Columbia symposium on Friday, April 24, where she argued that the work of African feminist liberation is closer to recovery than to reform. The symposium asked how rights frameworks become real institutions, curricula, and care structures.
As civic space narrows across much of the world and social movements contend with state repression, rising surveillance, and the fraying of community life, what can the Global South offer those seeking to organize for a more just future? That question animated a panel discussion at Barnard College on April 22, where three participants in Columbia University's Human Rights Advocates Program (HRAP) shared lessons drawn from their work in Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa.
In late March 2026, the Daily Maverick featured 2014 Advocate Carol Dyantyi and her decades-long commitment to caring for children left behind by the HIV/AIDS crisis in South Africa.
ISHR congratulates the winners of the 2026 Human Rights Essay Contest.
The 2025-26 Advocates attended a new workshop called The Courage To Be Happy led by longtime HRAP instructor Jeremiah Kyle Drake of The Riverside Church.
On February 26, 2026, Qin Gao, member of ISHR’s Steering Committee, was interviewed on “The U.S.-China Fight to Understand and Address Inequality,” by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (NCUSCR).
As part of an Alliance project between Columbia, Sciences Po and Paris-1 universities on 'Women in Crisis', Jackie Dugard (ISHR, Columbia) and Angela Greulich (Sciences Po) produced a 4-minute video on the relationship between fertility and climate change, surveying the literature on whether having fewer or no children should be a (voluntary) consideration in Global North countries.
On the afternoon of March 27th, students at the Center for Human Rights & Global Justice at NYU Law School welcomed the HRAP participants for an afternoon of conversation, alliance building and solidarity.
Katherine Beall, Human Rights Studies MA, ‘15, shares an update with ISHR including the publication of her new book "New Regional Authorities: Self-Determination and the Global South."
Two participants in Columbia University's Human Rights Advocates Program (HRAP) played central roles in a recent forum examining transnational solidarity, economic justice, and the well-being of Black women and girls from the Global South and the African diaspora.
On March 4, the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, with support from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, hosted a reunion for graduate and undergraduate human rights alumni.
Congratulations to 2013 Advocate Geoffrey Mayamba, the Executive Director of the Prisoners Future Foundation in Zambia. He was chosen to participate in the 2026 Marianne Initiative for Human Rights Defenders.