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ImmigrationProf Blog
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International Human Rights Clinic of the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program Prevails!

By immigrationprof

Please find below a link to an article posted on the Harvard Law School (HLS) website, regarding a recent historic decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of Damião Ximenes Lopes vs. Brazil ­ the first time the Court has issued a ruling on human rights violations of people with mental disabilities. The sentence was also the first in a contentious case against Brazil. Damião Ximenes Lopes, a former patient at a publicly-subsidized psychiatric hospital in Sobral, in the northeastern state of Ceará, Brazil, was beaten, tortured and eventually died while under the hospital¹s care in late 1999. After more than six years, the investigation had produced few concrete results when the Inter-American Court began proceedings, following review by the Inter-American Commission. The International Human Rights Clinic of the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program worked closely with the family of Damião Ximenes Lopes and the Brazilian NGO Justiça Global, to litigate the case before the Inter-American Court. In November 2005, Clinical Director James Cavallaro, and HLS students Fernando Delgado, Jonathan Kaufman and Deborah Popowski traveled to Costa Rica to litigate the case, interviewing Damião¹s sister and other witnesses and family members, reviewing nearly 4,000 pages of documents pertaining to the case, and preparing written and oral submissions. Cavallaro served as the lead attorney before the Court. In its sentence, the Inter-American Court found that the State of Brazil, which was responsible for the oversight of the psychiatric hospital, had violated Articles 1.1, 4, 5, 8 and 25 of the American Convention on Human Rights (rights to physical integrity, to life and to access to justice and due process). To view the article on the HLS website, go to: http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2006/08/30_hrp.php To view the sentence issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (currently available only in Portuguese and Spanish), go to: http://www.corteidh.or.cr/ For more information on the case of Damião Ximenes Lopes, including background information, visit the website of Justiça Global at http://www.global.org/br

KJ