Race & Human Rights Reimagined Initiative (Archived)

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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 (All Documents Archived)

Executive Summary UN Report

Setting 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 (Archived) 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.

Trans-National Re-Imaginings: Race, Empire and Human Rights

Downloadable (Archived) PDF Available Here

Primer: Critical Perspectives on Race & Human Rights

Downloadable (Archived) PDF Available Here

TWAIL-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

Race & Human Rights Reimagined Initiative (Archived)

Race and Human Rights Resources

Race, Extractivism & Human Rights (All Documents Archived)

Race, Tech & Borders (All Documents Archived)

Racial Discrimination & Emerging Digital Technologies (All Documents Archived)

Race, Migration & Ethno-Nationalist Ideologies (All Documents Archived)

Populism & Racial Equality (All Documents Archived)

Reparations for Colonialism & Slavery (All Documents Archived)

Ecological Crisis, Climate Justice & Racial Justice (All Documents Archived)

Racial Justice, Development and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (All Documents Archived)

Setting Institutional Priorities on Climate Reparations & Racial Justice: Learning from Social Movements

Downloadable (Archived) PDF Available Here

A Race, Empire and International Legal Approach

Trans-National Re-Imaginings: Race, Empire and Human Rights

Downloadable (Archived) PDF Available Here

Primer: Critical Perspectives on Race & Human Rights

Downloadable (Archived) PDF Available Here

TWAIL-CRT Scholarship

Connecting Race and Empire: What Critical Race Theory Offers Outside the U.S. Legal Context

Journal of International Foreign Affairs, Volume 24, Number 1, Spring 2020

American Journal of International Law (AJIL Unbound), Volume 117, 2023. Symposium on Race, Racism, and International Law

UCLA Law Review, Volume 67, Issue 6 April 2021, pp. 1386 – 1895:

Race and Empire: Legal Theory Within, Through and Across National Borders

A Prolegomenon to the Study of Racial Ideology in the Era of International Human Rights

Critical Race Theory Meets Third World Approaches to International Law

Slavery is Not a Metaphor: U.S. Prison Labor and Racial Subordination Through the Lens of the ILO’s Abolition of Forced Labor Convention

Deploying Race, Employing Force: ‘African Mercenaries’ and the 2011 NATO Intervention in Libya

Writing Race and Identity in a Global Context: What CRT and TWAIL Can Learn from Each Other

“Unwhitening the World”: Rethinking Race and International Law

Genres of Universalism: Reading Race Into International Law, with Help from Sylvia Wynter

Unsettling the Border

An Un-American Story of the American Empire: Small Places, From the Mississippi to the Indian Ocean

Keynote Speech: UCLA Law Review Symposium 2020: Law and Empire in the American Century

Emergency and Migration, Race and the Nation

The Destabilizing Effect of Terrorism in the International Human Rights Regime

Racial Valuation of Diseases

Race as a Technology of Global Economic Governance

Critical Perspectives on Race and Human Rights