The Clinic for Human Rights

The clinic operates a rights center in the city of Haifa, which is attended mainly by undocumented individuals in the country, such as Palestinians and Africans who petition for assistance in exercising their rights to status, health, employment and more. The students are engaged in promoting the human rights of the applicants and drafting documents on their behalf, but not before listening for themselves to the distress of the applicant and watching the legal consultation session provided to him by the clinic supervisor.
The students, accompanied by the clinic’s supervisor, Adv. Abeer Bahar, engage in a combination of legal, paralegal and academic-research activities. First, the clinic operates on the individual level by exercising the applicants’ rights vis-à-vis the state authorities and appealing to the relevant legal instances. On the community level, the clinic operates by holding meetings with various disadvantaged populations and their representatives, giving lectures, distributing information leaflets and more. On the systemic level, the clinic works to change policy where such a change is required by submitting principled petitions, drafting bills, writing position papers, participating in forums and cooperating with many rights organizations in the country.
In addition, the students, within the framework of the legal seminar, examine law and its ability to serve as a tool for social change through theoretical analysis of human rights theories and fields in Israel and around the world. The seminar discusses various human rights issues and how various agents of social change have worked to promote and protect the human rights of various groups in the country.