Eight OU College of Law students participated in the first of the OU College of Law International Human Rights Clinic focusing on indigenous peoples in Guyana and Panama. Lindsay Robertson, faculty director of the American Indian Law and Policy Center and associate director of the Inter-American Center for Law and Culture, developed and presented the idea for the clinic to the OU Law faculty last spring, according to a press release.

The students went to Guyana in South America during the fall semester and Panama in Central America during the spring semester.

The students are researching the conditions of the country’s indigenous people to create and submit a report to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations on that country’s compliance with certain commitments, obligations and rights.

As a non-governmental organization, the OU College of Law International Human Rights Clinic submits shadow reports focused on specific areas which have an impact on the indigenous population, according to the release.

For the shadow report on Guyana, students focused on environmental degradation by mining and deforestation, sex work and human trafficking, and health and education.

Students Conor Cleary, Michael Davis, Julia Mills and Amanda Mullins collected information through extensive use of telephone interviews and e-mail. Their shadow report was submitted in November and the review of Guyana will occur May 3 through 14 during a session of the Universal Periodic Review Working Group at the U.N. in Geneva, Switzerland.

The group went to public and private institutions that work with Kuna — an indigenous group of Panama. They also met with leaders of the Kuna Congress, indigenous attorneys and the chief of Kuna Yala, an autonomous territory.

“A high point of the trip was traveling across the country to the Caribbean coast and venturing by sea to the islands that constitute the archipelago of Kuna Yula, where they heard directly the grievances of indigenous Kuna people,” said Alvaro Baca, a Nicaraguan attorney living in Norman who also serves as adjunct lecturer to the International Human Rights Clinic.