UCLA Law Students Tackle Witness Protection Abroad

David Kaye, executive director of the International Justice Clinic, explained, per the article, that the legal clinic teams up law students with non-governmental organizations to work on research projects in the field of human rights.

This year, the clinic was paired with AIDS-Free World, an organization that concentrates on sexual violence against women.


Kaye and AIDS-Free World chose to study witness protection programs for women who are victims of sexual violence because the said programs are often lacking.

Why? Nicolle Kownacki, a law student in the clinic, explained. ''If women are not key witnesses to a crime but have still suffered sexual violence, they are not always eligible for protection. Even if they can access the programs, there are not alternate forms of protection available to women who do not want to be relocated or have their identity changed.''

The students studied a dozen different regions, and decided to focus on witness protection laws in Colombia, Liberia, Sierra Leone and The Hague to learn from, and improve their programs.

According to the article, Colombia already has in place sophisticated witness protection programs, but cultural barrier often stops the laws from being properly implemented.

Liberia and Sierra Leone are in the infancy stages of drafting and communicating laws regarding witness protection, as they are 'post-conflict' zones.

The Hague is a city in the Netherlands that holds multiple international tribunals. Its witness protection laws were seen as a model by the students for the other countries.

According to the article, Kownacki explained that when they went to each region, a group of two to three law students would spend ten days interviewing ''NGOs, prosecutors, civil servants, department officials and women's groups to understand what protections'' were ''available for women who are victims of sexual violence and what challenges to witness protection exist in these societies''.

After speaking to a Colombian prosecutor who was placed in the witness protection program following his work in the human rights field, Kownacki was quoted as saying: ''This guy might not be alive if not for (witness protection). His life was put at risk, but then he was back at it, doing prosecution work for people involved in this conflict. It was really stunning to see the commitment of people solving Colombia's challenges.''

Priyan Chandraratna, a law student in the clinic was quoted as saying: ''I felt a great deal of pressure but also a great deal of honor that these people were taking time out of their busy day to talk to me. I'm just a law student, I don't even have my J.D. It would have been very easy for them to direct me to their websites or publications, but they were very committed to helping us.''

A paper about the clinic's findings will be presented in Kenya later in May. Chandraratna was quoted as saying about the paper: ''What we did was look at worst practices to create a guide for best practices. From the Colombia model, we can see that even when you have all the laws these are all the potential problems you might face. We give suggestions as to how to circumvent these issues.''