Must Read: Recent ABA Abroad Column Describes TrialWatch Volunteers Helping to Secure Human Rights Around the Globe

The recent ABA Abroad Column describes the efforts of TrialWatch volunteers in helping secure human rights around the globe. As a global initiative established by the Clooney Foundation for Justice, TrialWatch monitors trials in which there appear to be risks of fair trial violations. The American Bar Association Center for Human Rights (ABA CHR) is the primary implementing partner in TrialWatch, meaning that it selects trials for monitoring, conducts observations, produces reports on any violations observed, and undertakes follow-up advocacy.

Kyle Delbyck, director of the TrialWatch program at ABA CHR and author of this ABA Abroad Column, recounts her transition from working in Bosnia to advocate for wartime victums seeking justice to working for the ABA Center for Human Rights to focus on defendants vulnerable to abuse of their rights. What she found was that the experience and ethos of TrialWatch were uncannily similar to those of her work in Bosnia. 

"In other cases, documentation is critical. If we do not record the abuses that occur in the courtroom, they will be lost in a labyrinthine system with no recourse for defendants. In Equatorial Guinea, CHR monitored the trial of over a hundred individuals prosecuted in connection with an alleged coup attempt. In court, our monitors observed egregious fair trial violations, such as the repeated use of confessions induced by torture, the intervention of military officials in the judicial process, and the imposition of time limits on defense questioning. The defendants were ultimately convicted—some to what were functionally life sentences.

As Equatorial Guinea is a relatively closed country—its doors wide open to oil behemoths but shut to most others—CHR was the only outside entity to send observers to the trial. The information we acquired proved helpful for embassies and other organizations tracking the proceedings. Human Rights Watch, for example, employed CHR’s report to produce a video on the trial that was widely disseminated in Equatorial Guinea via WhatsApp. Meanwhile, CHR’s report was raised before the United Nations Human Rights Committee, after which the committee condemned military interference in civilian trials. Correspondingly, defense lawyers have used the report’s conclusions in advocating for their imprisoned clients. Without the valuable data gained from simply sitting in the courtroom, these various opportunities for impact would have been lost and—again—the defendants forgotten."

More than 100 defendants were convicted as part of a mass trial with respect to an alleged coup plot in Equatorial Guinea. Photo provided by the ABA Center for Human Rights.

Read the full article, "TrialWatch volunteers are helping secure human rights around the globe," written by Kyle Delbyck, director of the TrialWatch program at the ABA Center for Human Rights.

Prior to CHR, Delbyck worked for TRIAL International in Bosnia-Herzegovina, assisting victims of the Bosnian war in their efforts to achieve justice and obtain reparations. She has also worked for various international criminal tribunals, including the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Delbyck obtained her JD from Yale Law School. Prior to law school she worked in post-conflict countries, including Cambodia, Northern Ireland and Cyprus, on transitional justice and collective memory projects.

ABA Abroad is a column highlighting the work of the ABA’s Center for Global Programs, which comprises the Rule of Law Initiative, Center for Human Rights and the ABA’s presence at the United Nations.