Speaker: Alexandra Tate, Fellow, Reproductive Rights Initiative, Human Rights Law Network

Human rights issues faced by women in rural India include child marriage, maternal health challenges, and human trafficking. Despite a robust legal framework outlawing child marriage and human trafficking, the Indian Government has failed to implement many of these laws and schemes. Alexandra Tate, Fellow in the Reproductive Rights Initiative at the Human Rights Law Network, will introduce students to these issues and to legal strategies for combatting them, from the documentation of cases in the field to the drafting of petitions for the High Courts and Supreme Court of India. Case studies to be discussed include anti-child marriage litigation in the state of Assam and anti-human trafficking litigation in the state of Jharkhand.

Alexandra Tate is a human rights advocate who specializes in human trafficking and women’s issues in India.  She currently works at the Human Rights Law Network, a non-profit lawyers collective based in New Delhi.  Her work involves public interest litigation in the High Courts and Supreme Court of India, as well as human rights documentation based on field research in several Indian states.  Before moving to India in 2015, Alexandra served as a visiting lecturer in the International Law Department of the China Foreign Affairs University, in Beijing.  She is a recent graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, where she was President of the International Law Society, and she continues to work closely with the University of Chicago Human Rights Clinic.  Prior to completing law school, Alexandra worked at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, in Arusha, and at the U.S. State Department in Washington D.C. and São Paulo, Brazil.

Kosher pizza will be served.

Photo Credit: UrbanWanderer/Creative Commons

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