USC Gould International Human Rights Clinic

Since the clinic’s launch in 2011, students have achieved a near 100 percent success rate in representing human trafficking victims of forced labor and commercial sex as well as women human rights defenders seeking asylum and refugees seeking resettlement. The work is international, with clients from Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, Syria, and Uganda. Students have assisted international judges and legal officers by reviewing briefings, conducting research, and drafting extensive bench memoranda and opinions in international trials. Efforts involve 15 former heads-of-state and high-level military leaders allegedly responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and terrorism perpetrated against hundreds of thousands of victims in Cambodia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lebanon and Rwanda. The trials have resulted in a number of convictions.