Human Rights First | Human Rights Accountability Fellowship

Human Rights First (HRF) is excited to announce the availability of a postgraduate legal fellowship with HRF’s Accountability team. HRF is accepting applications from third-year law students and recent graduates who have secured outside funding and are seeking a host for a one-year postgraduate public interest fellowship. HRF is willing to work with qualifying candidates to secure funding where necessary.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis throughout the year. Fellowships will ideally begin in mid-August or early September and will last for one calendar year. However, HRF is flexible and other arrangements can be made if necessary.

Among other opportunities, the Human Rights Accountability Legal Fellow will assist HRF’s Accountability team in its work to promote human rights and the rule of law through the imposition of targeted sanctions against the world’s worst human rights abusers and perpetrators of corruption – one of the most cutting-edge programs in contemporary human rights.

Human Rights First leads a coalition of more than 250 NGOs from 50-plus countries that use the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and other targeted sanctions programs, to push the US government to sanction human rights abusers and corrupt foreign officials. Working with a diverse array of partners, HRF provides the United States government with well-researched and documented recommendations that identify significant human rights abuses and crimes of corruption and those responsible who may be eligible for targeted sanctions and/or visa restrictions. Over the past four years, approximately one-third of the US government sanctions designations under the Global Magnitsky sanctions program have had a basis in our coalition’s recommendations.

The recipient of this fellowship will have an opportunity to participate in an accountability effort that consistently and concretely impacts human rights outcomes and chips away at systems of impunity. The Human Rights Accountability Legal Fellow will be directly involved in the operation and maintenance of HRF’s large coalition of NGOs, and will be responsible for researching, drafting, and editing case files that identify persons who have committed serious human rights abuses and acts of corruption.

The recipient of the fellowship will be actively involved in helping formulate HRF’s strategy to continue growing our work as we build relationships with additional US government agencies, foreign governments adopting similar laws, and private sector actors. As such, the fellow will have a meaningful opportunity to grapple with domestic and international legal and policy issues, and will operate in the center of work expanding rapidly in exciting, challenging, and impactful ways.