Three faculty members at IU’s Maurer School of Law will take a closer look at the Libyan conflict overseas.
Maurer’s Law Center for Constitutional Democracy and the IU Center for the Study of the Middle East received a $100,000 grant from the United States Department of State for the study of human rights violations in Libya.
The work will be conducted under the supervision of Ambassador Feisal Amin Rasoul Istrabadi, university scholar in international law and diplomacy and director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East; David C. Williams, law professor and executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy; and Timothy William Waters, associate law professor.
The team will collaborate with the Istituto Superiore Internazionale di Scienze Criminali in Italy.
The two groups will investigate reports of human rights violations in Libya from Feb. 15, 2011 to April 2012, when the grant ends.
They will collect data from open sources, primarily newspapers and other media entities, and catalog reports of the abuses.
Their data will then be turned over to the United Nations’ Libya Inquiry Commission to aid in its investigation.
“The grant recognizes the very high level of Middle East studies we have on our campus, the very high level and caliber of the faculty in international and human rights and the rule of law as reflected at the Law Center for Constitutional Democracy,” Istrabadi said.