Race & Human Rights Reimagined Initiative
The Race & Human Rights Reimagined Initiative is a resource for students, practitioners, and scholars interested in thinking critically about race and human rights.
While active, the initiative sought to bring together expertise in human rights, Critical Race Theory and Third World Approaches to International Law, and to uncover how race and empire operate within the international human rights system.
We also explored the potential of law to dismantle national and trans-national structures of racial and colonial subordination.
Race and Human Rights Resources
In her prior capacity as UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, E. Tendayi Achiume generated a number of thematic reports on global racial justice issues and the role of the international human rights framework in addressing them. Please find UN Reports, Executive Summaries and links to webinars below.
Racial Justice, Development and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
Executive Summary UN ReportSetting Institutional Priorities on Climate Reparations & Racial Justice: Learning from Social Movements
The Promise Institute wishes to acknowledge this Convening was made possible by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Conference Grant, and that the opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.
Downloadable PDF Available Here
A Race, Empire and International Legal Approach
While they were still at UCLA Law, we hosted a series of landmark convenings bringing together Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) under the leadership of Profs. Aslı Ü. Bâli and E. Tendayi Achiume, as well as former Racial Justice Counsel S. Priya Morley.
These convenings asked human rights scholars to consider two themes:
- What might a joint TWAIL-CRT approach to international law look like?
- How might a human rights framework promote racial justice and equality?
The ensuing report pulls together the convenings’ major takeaways and is essential reference for anyone interested in thinking critically about race and human rights. Please find our report and our Critical Perspectives on Race & Human Rights Primer below.
Additionally, Morley sat down with Bâli and Achiume to discuss what a joint CRT-TWAIL approach to international law looks like and how the human rights framework can promote racial justice and equality. UCLA Law Magazine later highlighted the personal significance of this work for all involved.
Watch the Conversation on Trans-National Re-ImaginingsEnvironmental Racism & Climate (In)Justice: Launch of UNSR on Racism Achiume’s Final Thematic Report
Co-Sponsored by NYU’s Global Justice Clinic; Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law; Guarini Center on Environmental, Energy & Land Use Law and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.
Watch the Event RecordingTWAIL-CRT Scholarship
A Curated Collection of Articles
Connecting Race and Empire: What Critical Race Theory Offers Outside the U.S. Legal Context
S. Priya Morley
View PDFJournal of International Foreign Affairs, Volume 24, Number 1, Spring 2020
View PDFAmerican Journal of International Law (AJIL Unbound), Volume 117, 2023. Symposium on Race, Racism, and International Law
View PDFUCLA Law Review, Volume 67, Issue 6 April 2021, pp. 1386 – 1895:
Race and Empire: Legal Theory Within, Through and Across National Borders
E. Tendayi Achiume and Aslı Bâli
View PDFA Prolegomenon to the Study of Racial Ideology in the Era of International Human Rights
Justin Desautels-Stein
View PDFCritical Race Theory Meets Third World Approaches to International Law
E. Tendayi Achiume and Devon W. Carbado
View PDFSlavery is Not a Metaphor: U.S. Prison Labor and Racial Subordination Through the Lens of the ILO’s Abolition of Forced Labor Convention
Adelle Blackett and Alice Duquesnoy
View PDFDeploying Race, Employing Force: ‘African Mercenaries’ and the 2011 NATO Intervention in Libya
Katherine Fallah and Ntina Tzouvala
View PDFWriting Race and Identity in a Global Context: What CRT and TWAIL Can Learn from Each Other
James Thuo Gathii
View PDFGenres of Universalism: Reading Race Into International Law, with Help from Sylvia Wynter
Darryl Li
View PDF