Human rights litigation and advocacy in India – a lawyer’s perspective

Event details

This talk will address the lack of legal capacity within communities most affected by hate crimes and targeted violence, both of which are on rise in present day India. Specifically, it will highlight the non-availability of legal aid to minority communities in rural and non-metro areas. The lack of legal capacity arises due to various factors, such as a lack of representation by lawyers from the community, a biased police force, judicial inaction, and limited civil society penetration. These communities struggle to access the judicial system, with local lawyers from other communities often refusing to take on highly political cases.

This talk will further dwell upon the tools adopted by the civil rights groups to combat current state repression and examine the proposed tools and methods which can be employed by human rights lawyers going forward. It will question whether the role of lawyers in these challenging situations needs to be redefined.

About the speaker

Mohammad Aman Khan is a lawyer from India, based in Delhi. He has worked on multiple spectrums of Human Rights issues including prison rights, child rights, labour rights, bonded labour, forest rights, violence against women, queer rights, housing rights, refugee rights, victims of police and state atrocities, hate crimes, minorities rights and securing rights of Human Rights Defenders. Aman is currently a Fellow at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York.