Ensuring the Human Rights of Older Women in Humanitarian Emergencies
This Task Force/Legal Clinic will encourage students to focus on an issue of contemporary concern, namely protecting the human rights of older women in humanitarian emergencies. Students will examine how effectively human rights systems are meeting the needs of older women who have been displaced by armed conflict, disasters, famine, drought, and humanitarian emergencies caused by climate change. This may include analysis of steps to ensure freedom from violence, access to humanitarian assistance including safe shelter and social protection measures, and access to health care, including sexual and reproductive health care, among others. Working in assigned groups, students will develop: A research summary of the issue that identifies how and when gender, age, and disability or functional difficulties play a role in humanitarian responses; an analysis of legal and policy responses taken by States as well as by the international community, particularly international human rights mechanisms, to address the issue; an analysis of how social movements and civil society actors have addressed the issue; and a set of policy, program or practice recommendations that are addressed both to State and civil society actors and identify ways in which responses to the given issue can be more inclusive and representative of women of all ages and abilities.
