Margaret Huang, "Human Rights at Home: Police Accountability, the Rights of Refugees and Mass Incarceration"

Margaret Huang, Interim Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, joined students for a discussion about Amnesty International USA’s efforts to “bring human rights home,” highlighting current campaigns on police accountability, refugee rights and mass incarceration. Margaret discussed the goals of these campaigns as well as Amnesty’s commitment to promoting human rights and enforcing human rights legal standards globally, including within the U.S. AIUSA’s police accountability campaign has demanded reforms to address human rights violations in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Mexico City, Mexico. Next year, Amnesty International will launch a campaign to protect the rights of refugees fleeing crises, and AIUSA will work particularly to expand the number of visas for those seeking refuge in the U.S. In the criminal justice arena, AIUSA is tackling mass incarceration, solitary confinement, and immigration detention in the U.S. as areas of substantial human rights abuses.

Margaret previously served as the Executive Director of the Rights Working Group, a coalition of more than 350 member organizations committed to promoting civil liberties and human rights protections after September 11th. She has also led programs at Global Rights, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights, and the Asia Foundation, and she served as Committee Staff for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  

Presented on December 2, 2015, by the Black Law Students Association, Human Rights Law Society, Immigration Law Society, and the International Human Rights Clinic.