Overview

Why study International Human Rights at York?

I was awarded an Inner Temple scholarship for the Bar course. I believe that the advocacy skills I gained through the LLM’s interactive and engaging weekly simulations gave me an edge in the selection process. Those transferable skills will also be invaluable in my future as a lawyer.

Abdoulie Fatty, LLM Student 2011/12

The in LLM Human Rights Law and Practice provides the knowledge, skills and networks necessary for mid-career professionals and recent graduates to work in the human rights field. The LLM is offered on both a full-time and part-time basis.

Our LLM is distinctive because students:

• Work on real human rights issues, which gives practical skills, hands-on experience and improved job prospects
• Get the opportunity to work alongside human rights defenders during a two-week field visit to Malaysia or placement in York
• Learn from international human rights defenders based at the Centre
• Explore how international human rights law interacts with national public policy in various states

Course content

LLM structure

I was a solicitor in the UK, litigating social welfare and other human rights issues, and wanted to transition into international human rights work. The Centre’s LLM was my first choice because of its ‘applied’ focus and the opportunity to do field-based research with a Malaysian NGO. The LLM equipped me with the skills and confidence needed to gain an internship with Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division and to refocus my career.

John Foley, LLM Student 2011/12

Three core modules cover international human rights law, policy and advocacy. Optional CAHR modules cover several topical issues through a human rights lens: climate change, culture, development, human rights litigation clinic, migration, and post-conflict justice.

The programme requires you to undertake a placement with human rights organisations in Malaysia or the UK. This is an important part of the degree programme and will develop your practical skills and provide hands-on experience, both of which will prepare you for working in this field and improve your career prospects.

The LLM is taught in weekly lectures and seminars covering specific case studies and including skills training on oral presentations, advocacy, report writing, legal memos, and press releases.

Compulsory modules

The compulsory modules reflect the three sides to human rights activism: law, policy and practice.

• Defending human rights (40 credits; terms 1-2)
• Applying International Human Rights Law (20 credits; term 1)
• Law, public policy and human rights (20 credits; term 1)
• Dissertation (60 credits; terms 3-4)

Optional modules

In the second term students will be able to take two options.

An inner ring of six optional modules taught by Centre staff will explore areas where rights are being used in new and innovative ways. Students must take at least one module from the inner ring, and may take both of their options from this selection if they wish to do so. They may take one module from the outer ring of options.

Inner ring

• Asylum, migration and trafficking
• Cultures of human rights practice
• Development and human rights
• Human rights and global environmental crises
• Human rights clinic: Litigating against states and multinational corporations
• Truth, justice and reparations after violence

Outer ring

• Contemporary issues in toleration
• Dilemmas of intervention
• Peace agreements: ending intra-state conflicts
• Teaching and learning citizenship and global education
• Women, citizenship and conflict

Placements

A key part of the LLM is exposing students to the practice of international human rights law at the domestic level. Thus students have the opportunity to pursue a placement and related project with our NGO partners in Malaysia and York. The fieldwork takes place over a two week period in weeks 9 and 10 of the autumn term in either Kuala Lumpur or York.

Students will be expected to work together in small groups in partnership with a human rights organisation. This will include:

• extensive background research on country context, the host organisation, relevant thematic issues etc.;
• devising a project prior to the field visit, in collaboration with the host organisation;
• two weeks of intensive work in Malaysia in November and December; and,
• ongoing discussions about project completion once students return to York.

To get an idea of previous years' placements, have a look at student feedback on the experiences in York and Malaysia.

Dissertation

During the summer term students start work on a dissertation of up to 12,000 words on a topic of their choice. The dissertation is due for submission in early September.

Full-time/part-time study

The course may be taken on a part-time basis. In year one, part-time students will complete two compulsory modules in the Autumn term ('Law, public policy and human rights' and 'Applying international human rights law') and one inner ring optional module in the Spring term. In year two, part time students will complete the 'Defending human rights' compulsory module (including the Malaysia field visit or a placement in the UK), their second optional module, and the dissertation.

Modules

Compulsory modules

Applying International Human Rights Law

The module begins by asking the question whether human rights have become too legalistic. It then looks at key aspects of international human rights law: rights, obligations, derogations, limitations, subjects, and remedies. Next, it examines the existing architecture of international human rights protection (international, regional, and domestic) while also considering whether we need a World Court of Human Rights. Seminars will apply the concepts discussed in lectures to a specific case study: the legal ban on Muslim women and girls wearing headscarves. Seminars focus particularly on how headscarf bans have been adjudicated in international, regional, and domestic human rights bodies.

Key texts: Andrew Clapham, Human Rights Obligations of Non-State Actors (Oxford, 2006); Catarina Krause and Martin Scheinin, eds., International Protection of Human Rights: A Textbook (Abo Akademi University Institute of Human Rights, 2009); Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton, 2007); Dinah Shelton, Remedies in International Human Rights Law 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2006).

Defending Human Rights

The main aim of this module is to have students develop the practical, problem solving, and reflective skills needed for human rights work. At the start of the year, students will be placed in Project Groups linked to placements with Project Partners in South Africa (for the MA), Malaysia (for the LLM), or UK (for MA /LLM students who do not travel abroad). Each group is required to produce a Project Output together, which is submitted to their Project Partner in the Spring Term. Throughout the two terms, students engage in tasks designed to develop specific skill sets, accumulating portfolios of work for assessment. Centre staff, experienced practitioners, and international human rights defenders based at the Centre will lead and participate in the lectures, seminars and workshops for this module.

Key texts: Aengus Carroll, Make it Work: Six Steps to Effective LGBT Human Rights Advocacy (ILGA Europe, 2010); Ron Dudai, “Advocacy with Footnotes: The Human Rights Report as a Literary Genre,” in Human Rights Quarterly 28:3 (2006); Frontline, Workbook on Security: Practical Steps for Human Rights Defenders at Risk (Frontline, 2011); Peter Rosenblum, “Teaching Human Rights: Ambivalent Activism, Multiple Discourses, and Lingering Dilemmas,” in Harvard Human Rights Journal, vol. 15 (2002).

Law, Public Policy and Human Rights

The aim of this module is to understand how states implement their human rights obligations (or fail to do so) through domestic public policy. The module seeks to address how and why public policy changes – with a view to facilitating the creation of effective human rights advocacy campaigns. Each week the module will focus on one of a series of questions that lead us through a public policy analysis and advocacy grounded in human rights: What is the problem? What are the human rights at stake? What is the policy environment? How should the issue be framed? What is the underlying policy in question? What is the proposed change to the policy in question?

Key texts: Michael Howlett et al., Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems (3rd edition) (Oxford, 2009); Julie Mertus, “The Rejection of Human Rights Framings: The Case of LGBT Advocacy in the US,” in Human Rights Quarterly 29:4 (November 2007); Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, UN Doc. No. A/HRC/13/39 (9 February 2010).

OPTIONAL MODULES (MORE LAW-BASED)

Asylum, Migration and Human Trafficking

This module will examine the phenomenon of human movement, including both forced and voluntary migration, and the legal frameworks that govern the rights of various categories of migrants. The module will focus on the specific policies which states put in place to advance (and to hinder) the enjoyment by migrants of their rights. The module will explore the general category of “migrant” and its various sub-categories (as defined by location of movement and by degree of volition), including the internally displaced, labour migrants, refugees and victims of human trafficking. The module will examine the legal tools available to human rights defenders seeking to assist these groups. It will also examine the extent to which human rights law and policy have managed to challenge two of the remaining bastions of state sovereignty: the related powers of a state to control entrance and egress and its power to control its membership.

Key texts: Carol Batchelor, "Transforming International Legal Principles into International Law: The Right to a Nationality and the Avoidance of Statelessness", 25(3) in Refugee Survey Quarterly 8 (2006); Report of the Representative of the Secretary-General on the human rights of internally displaced persons, UN Doc. No. A/HRC/13/21 (5 January 2010); UK Border Agency, "Chapter 26: Unaccompanied Minors" (Enforcement Instructions); US Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report 2012 (June 2012).

Human Rights Clinic: Litigating Against States and Multinational Corporations

Lawyers are using domestic courts in the US, UK, and elsewhere to enforce international human rights through tort litigation against states and multinational corporations. This module provides an opportunity for students to learn about business and human rights and to develop skills in human rights lawyering. Throughout the module, we will use the Trafigura toxic waste litigation and Mau Mau torture litigation to illustrate various issues and dilemmas. Sarah Moore, one of the Leigh Day & Co. solicitors on the Trafigura case, will share her experiences (consistent with the confidentiality terms of the settlement agreement). The class will be divided into two “law firms.” Each “firm” will develop a human rights tort case for possible litigation as its clinical project. 

Key texts: Amnesty International, The Toxic Truth (September 2012); Susan Blake, A Practical Approach to Effective Litigation, 7th ed. (Oxford, 2009); Anne Bloom, "Taking on Goliath: Why Personal Injury Litigation May Represent the Future of Transnational Cause Lawyering" in Stuart Scheingold and Austin Sarat (eds.), Cause Lawyering and the State in a Global Era (Oxford, 2001); George P. Fletcher, Tort Liability for Human Rights Abuses (Hart, 2008).

Truth, Justice and Reparations after Violence

This module begins by locating victims’ rights to truth, justice, and reparations in treaty law and “soft law.” It then critically examines the workings and impact of various transitional justice mechanisms – amnesties, criminal tribunals, truth commissions, and reparations – in specific international, national and local contexts. In doing so, the module explores key tensions within transitional justice: truth versus justice; peace versus justice; and civil/political wrongs versus socio-economic wrongs. Throughout the module, we will pay close attention to the question of what victims and survivors actually want.

Key texts: Mark Freeman, Necessary Evils: Amnesties and the Search for Justice (Cambridge, 2010); Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions (Routledge, 2010); Rosalind Shaw and Lars Waldorf, eds., Localizing Transitional Justice: Interventions and Priorities after Mass Violence (Stanford, 2010); UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Report of the Mapping Exercise documenting the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between March 1993 and June 2003 (August 2010).

Fieldwork

Fieldwork

A key part of the LLM is exposing students to the practice of international human rights law at the domestic level. Thus students have the opportunity to pursue a placement and related project with our NGO partners in Malaysia and York. The fieldwork takes place over a two week period in weeks 9 and 10 of the autumn term in either Kuala Lumpur or York.

Students will be expected to work together in small groups in partnership with a human rights organisation. This will include:

• extensive background research on country context, the host organisation, relevant thematic issues etc.;
• devising a project prior to the field visit, in collaboration with the host organisation;
• two weeks of intensive work in Malaysia in November and December; and,
• ongoing discussions about project completion once students return to York.

To get an idea of previous years' placements, have a look at student feedback on the experiences in York and Malaysia.

Applying

Admission Requirements

Applicants will normally be expected to have obtained an undergraduate degree with honors (2:1 or higher, or its equivalent). Some academic study or practical experience of law is desirable though not required.

English language requirements

If your first language is not English, and you have not completed an undergraduate degree in English, you will need these minimum English test scores: a minimum overall IELTS of 6.5, TOEFL iBT 87, Cambridge Proficiency A, B or C or GCSE/IGCSE A, B, C.

Also note from 21 April 2011, the UK Border Agency (UKBA) introduced changes to the Tier 4 student visa route. Full details about these changes are available on the UKBA website. 

LLM fees and expenses

Fees for the LLM in 2012/13 are:

Home and EU students: £5,900 (full-time); £2,950 (part-time)
Overseas students: £13,580 (full-time); £6,790 (part-time)                                                                                                       Channel Islands students: £9,000 (full-time)

Please note postgraduate degrees will not be increasing in line with undergraduate degrees.

Students will need to budget approximately £1,200 for the Malaysia field visit.

For details about potential sources of funding, students should consult the University of York Graduate Study website.

Scholarships 2013/14

The Centre for Applied Human Rights offers one scholarship for a student on either the LLM in International Human Rights Law and Practice or the MA in Applied Human Rights in 2013-14. The value of the scholarship is £5,000. The scholarship is open to UK/EU and overseas applicants. Applications will be assessed on the basis of academic excellence and practical experience - international experience of some kind is desirable. The 2013-14 scholarship application form (MS Word , 15kb) should be sent to Sanna Eriksson (sanna.eriksson@york.ac.uk) to arrive by 5pm UK time on Friday 31 May 2013.

Additionally, the International Office offers Scholarships for Overseas Students (SOS), and the University of York 50th Anniversary Scholarships for the academic year 2013/14 are available through the York Law School.

Application form

The on-line application process is available on the Postgraduate how to apply website (see courses listed under the Law School).

For more information about studies at the University of York, open days, funding and scholarships, please visit the Postgraduate study website.

Those interested in applying or already admitted are welcome to visit us here in York or alternatively arrange for discussions by phone – please contact cahr@york.ac.uk to arrange.

Careers

Where after the LLM?

Our LLM provides career advice, networking opportunities, hands-on experience, and personalised reference letters to help our graduates find good jobs with human rights NGOs, humanitarian organisations, charities, policy think-tanks, national governments, and UN agencies. For example, one of our 2011/12 students gained a UN internship in the Division for Sustainable Development (New York) working on the Barbados Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and another two volunteered for International Services in Ghana and Burkina Faso respectively under the auspices of the DFID-funded International Citizen Service.

Recent graduates are working with:

• Foreign and Commonwealth Office
• UK-based bar association
• Egyptian human rights NGO
• Development NGO in West Africa
• East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Network
• Pakistan's judicial sector
• UK-based NGO working with sub-Saharan children affected by HIV/AIDS

Some of our students specifically credit the LLM with helping them advance their careers.

"After a year of working on refugee issues, I wanted to develop my education in order to increase my career opportunities both within and outside the government. I chose the LLM at the Centre for Applied Human Rights for a number of reasons: the practical dimension to the learning, the truly international flavour of the course and the human rights defenders programme. The LLM has not disappointed – it has provided me a thorough academic understanding of international human rights through interactive and applied learning. Doing the LLM part-time has allowed me to simultaneously pursue my career, and the faculty has been extremely accommodating and supportive of my sometimes competing priorities. The knowledge and practical skills I developed during the LLM have already resulted in new career opportunities for me and have helped me to progress to more senior levels within government."

Michaela Throup, LLM Student 2010/12 (part-time)