The MSc in International Human Rights Law is offered by the Faculty of Law in collaboration with the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights.
Course Structure
This course includes two periods of online distance learning as well as two summer residentials held at New College, Oxford.
You are watching: A Week In The Life Of A Human Rights Lawyer
A central objective of the course is to ensure that you not only know about but can also effectively and expertly apply human rights law. The curriculum places equal emphasis on the substance of human rights law, its implementation and research.
Students come from all over the world and from a variety of advocacy settings; from various international and non-governmental organisations, governments, universities, foundations, the media, the armed forces, medicine and other fields and from private and corporate practice. The faculty is also diverse and includes internationally recognised human rights scholars and advocates. The programme seeks the widest possible diversity among both students and tutors.
The first period of distance learning comprises guided online study over two terms, with each of its units including reading periods followed by tutor-guided asynchronous seminars supplemented by some live encounters.
For the second period of distance learning students work independently on researching and writing their dissertation with one-to-one online support from their supervisor.
For both periods of distance learning, students will require consistent, ready and reliable internet access.
See more : Can You Lawyer Up On Workplace Harassment
Summer residentials in Oxford comprise three weeks of tutor-led small group seminars plus a week for independent revision and two exams. In addition, the first summer session includes dissertation-related exercises to prepare students for the independent dissertation work they will undertake in their second year.
Past students have found it beneficial to immerse themselves within the MSc in International Human Rights Law community during the residential sessions. If your personal circumstances permit therefore, we strongly encourage you to consider booking your accommodation during the residential sessions with New College, which will be facilitated by the course organisers. This may help you to benefit from what the course offers in terms of additional opportunities for discursive engagement and networking. Lunches and dinners are already included in the course fee and will also be provided at New College. If you have any concerns around this, for example regarding dietary restrictions, please get in touch with the Course Administrator to discuss them.
Course content
The course is undertaken part-time over a period of 24 months. It comprises one compulsory course – the Fundamentals of International Human Rights Law course, taken online in the first year – and four electives, two per year, taken in-person at the summer residence. Electives will be selected from a list of options. Not all are offered every year.
Previous options have included:
- Business and Human Rights
- International Rights of Children
- International Criminal Law
- Economic Social and Cultural Rights
- Domesticating International Human Rights Law
- Human Rights and Environmental Law
- International Humanitarian Law
- Racial Discrimination, Minorities and Indigenous Peoples
- Right to Life
- Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Human Rights
- Comparative Regional Human Rights Systems
- Religion and Human Rights
- Transitional Justice
- International Rights of Women and Gender-Related Discrimination.
In addition, students submit a dissertation on a topic of their choice related to international human rights law in their second year. The topic must be approved by the course examiners.
Supervision
An important person in helping your intellectual development during the degree programme will be your academic supervisor. This person will oversee your academic work and submit progress reports.
For the first three terms of your degree, your academic supervisor will be your tutor for the online Fundamentals of International Human Rights Law course. For the next two terms, your academic supervisor will be the person allocated to supervise your dissertation. The allocation is dependent on the subject area of your dissertation. For the final term, your supervisor is expected to be another Oxford University faculty member.
See more : How My Lawyer Got Me My Green Card
For this course, the allocation of graduate supervision is the responsibility of the Law Faculty and it is not always possible to accommodate the preferences of incoming graduate students to work with a particular member of staff.
Efforts will be made to meet the preferences of graduate students to work with a particular member of the course team for the dissertation. Tutors and supervisors join as academic contributors to the programme from around the world, and there is therefore a wide range of experts supporting its offerings.
Assessment
The degree is assessed by coursework (20%), examinations (50%) and a dissertation (30%).
Your first period of distance learning is assessed by way of assignments, and the second by way of a dissertation. You will sit two examinations during each of the two summer residentials.
Graduate destinations
Students have gone on to work as prosecutors and defence lawyers at the International Criminal Court, other UN criminal tribunals, and various regional human rights bodies. They work in private and multi-national corporate practice; in various ministries in their national governments and as UN officials ranging from refugee legal protection officers to country representatives. Others are judges, university professors, lawyers with their national armed forces, heads of NGOs and journalists.
Graduates from the course also include economists, obstetricians, epidemiologists, psychiatrists and forensic anthropologists. They are senior advisors in government around the world, Foreign Ministries, Defence Ministries and each and every one of the regional human rights bodies. They are defence counsel at Guantanamo Bay, do front-line community work in Afghanistan and emergency co-ordination in Sudan, Haiti and many other places. They represent indigenous peoples in northern Canada, Western Australia, the Philippines and Brazil.
Source: https://tholansonnha.com
Category: lawyer
