What to make of this creature—endowed with gifts unseen in any other animal—who could visit unspeakable misery upon its own kind at the slightest provocation and with no remorse? The war added such horror to humanity's historic repertoire of self-inflicted depravity that sober minds on every continent finally cried "enough."

Meeting in 1948, world leaders hammered out an agreement that became known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—a catalogue of the basic human rights to which every person is entitled. In 1993, the Universal Declaration was expanded and amplified in Vienna at the World Conference on Human Rights. The document of record now stands as an 8,500-word statement of a growing list of basic human rights that, in the words of noted human rights activist Robert Drinan, have become "a fact of primordial importance."

Given world events since the close of the last global war, a cynic could mount a convincing argument that all the nice talk has amounted to nothing. Drinan estimates that since the mid-1950s more than 30 million people have died as a direct result of human rights violations—twice the body count from World War I and II combined. Hitler, Tojo, Stalin and Pol Pot must be grinning from the grave.

Obviously, the foremost understatement on the rise of the modern human rights movement is that the ideal is still some distance from the reality. But writing off international efforts toward reform would be a mistake, say advocates. Progress, though painfully measured, is nonetheless real, and much of the credit rests with what some characterize as the genuine keepers of the flame—the many human-rights academic centers that reside on campuses around the globe.

Mission in the Academy

Now that the human rights movement has moved past its infancy, it is hardly surprising that more such programs are becoming established in universities, where critical thinking about the important issues in human rights advocacy can lead to understanding—as well as solutions. Such programs offer a ready-made pool of exceptional talent for training the next generation of advocates.

In the United States, law-based programs at UC Berkeley, at the University of Minnesota and at Harvard are considered the front-runners in human-rights education, but many other campuses list such coursework both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In Florida, there are human rights programs under way at Florida International University, the University of Florida, Florida A&M University and, since 2000, at Florida State. All have similar missions, but FSU's Center for the Advancement of Human Rights may be distinguishable for its university-wide approach to supporting both human rights coursework and advocacy opportunities for its students.

Terry Coonan, the center's founding director, said that the FSU program has a three-fold purpose: to develop human rights-related courses throughout the entire university, to establish human rights field placements for FSU students, and to support non-governmental organizations (Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, for instance) that engage in human rights work. In the past two years, more than 30 courses in law, political science, religion, film, criminology, humanities, modern languages, geography, education, and business have been created on campus, Coonan said. Students gain an understanding of the issue of human rights on a global perspective—including abuses right here at home. They become eligible for internships, too, to such places as London, Albania, Hong Kong, Spain, Lebanon, Thailand, India and several cities in the United States, including Tallahassee. A dozen students worked internships through the center in 2001; more than 20 did last summer.

As the center grows into its third year, Coonan reflected on how he came to be involved with its start-up. As an undergraduate at Notre Dame and later as a Catholic priest, Coonan sensed that somehow he was morally and ethically obligated to put his education and training to work in the human rights field.

"I wanted to meet the concrete needs of the people, especially in times of oppression," he says.

Coonan soon learned first hand about the seemingly inexhaustible contempt that one human being can have for another. He spent several years in the 1980s in Central and South America advocating on behalf of torture victims, refugees, and families of the disappeared. Since then, he's served with the U.N. Sub-Commission on Human Rights (Geneva) and the U.N. High Commission for the Refugee (Washington, D.C.), and has advised judges in the United States on immigration and refugee law.

It was his experiences in Latin America that led him to law school at the University of Cincinnati, where he attended on a human rights fellowship and was involved in editing and publishing the Human Rights Quarterly, a leading journal in the human rights field.

"The hands-on experience in Central and South America was the very thing that drew me to the practice of the law. I hoped I could be an advocate," says Coonan, who teaches courses in law, film and criminology at Florida State. "In meeting human rights lawyers in Latin America, I saw how the law was being put at the service of those who most needed it."

Coonan molded his vision for the FSU center on his experience in Cincinnati, where he saw the same challenges that he sees in Tallahassee.

"If you have a program that's not in New York City or inside the Beltway, how can you pull that off?" he asks rhetorically. "Create a strong corpus of human rights classes and send students out into the world to get that work experience. That model is well fitted to Florida State."

Home-Grown Problems

When most people hear the phrase "human rights violations," they think first of places such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Mogadishu, Beijing or Tibet.

But human rights violations know no geographic bounds. From Wounded Knee to Selma, American soil has been tainted with egregious human rights abuses that still carry deep sociological scars. Today, such mistreatment often is hidden from public scrutiny, Coonan says. As part of its domestic mission, the center has initiated programs to help migrant workers, to protect abused women and to help the victims of a particularly vicious problem that is growing from coast-to-coast.

One of the first projects Coonan's center began was the Victims of Human Trafficking Project, aimed at countering the underground trade in human flesh taking place inside U.S. borders. The federal government estimates that each year more than 50,000 women and children are brought into this country—a great number of them to Florida—to live as forced laborers or prostitutes. The victims, smuggled here with promises of jobs and better lives, wind up as identity ghosts in a society that too readily—or very often unwittingly—hides them and leaves them vulnerable to a life of abuse.

"Human trafficking is a shadow industry," Coonan explains. "Part of the government's need in this situation is to determine who and where these people are. That's one of the services that we provide through this center. It's modern-day slavery, and much of it is taking place right here in Florida."

THE SLAUGHTER of innocents runs an evil gamut around the globe. Here, the bodies of American Catholic nuns— raped and murdered by members of the Salvadoran National Guard— are exhumed before the eyes of children in December 1980.

Coonan and Robin Perry, an FSU professor of social work, are helping Florida officials to identify and help human trafficking victims. The work is supported by a two-year, $250,000 grant from Florida Department of Children and Families Office of Refugee Services.

Coonan said that the federal Trafficking Victim Protection Act, passed into law in 2000, gives victims an opportunity to get a "T visa," which allows them to live and work in the United States legally for three years while their cases are being investigated and prosecuted. In the past, Immigration and Naturalization Services regularly detained and deported victims, while the traffickers themselves often went unpunished.

The law also gives victims access to social services and makes them eligible for the same benefits offered to refugees. But Coonan says the problem is that many social workers and social service agencies are not aware of the rights the law affords these victims, nor do they have procedures in place to help them. Thanks to the state grant, the FSU center is developing a training program to address that. The program will teach social workers and law enforcement personnel how to better recognize victims of human trafficking and how to help them get federal help to escape their predicaments.

As part of the FSU project, graduate social work student Graciela Marquina has been interviewing a group of Mexican women who were smuggled into Florida from Texas and forced to work as prostitutes. They were among a group of 25 to 40 women who were freed only after an FBI raid on some South Florida brothels in 1998.

"The victims are put in a terrible situation," Coonan says. "They only know this country literally as slaves, and yet many are too ashamed to go back to their home countries. Others fear retribution from the smuggling ring. This has really become a multi-billion-dollar industry."

Since the notorious Mariel boat-lift from Cuba during the Carter administration, of course, Florida has been in a national spotlight by human rights advocates over the issue of immigration. This phenomenon makes it easy for the FSU center to show students close-at-hand, real-world connections to what they learn in class.

Only last October, for example, a 50-foot wooden freighter loaded with more than 200 Haitian immigrants ran aground on a Miami beach and its occupants waded ashore and squarely into the middle of a political quagmire that drew international attention. Unlike immigrants from all other countries, the Haitians were held in Miami jails without bond until their cases could be heard, the result of a federal policy change in December 2001 that anticipated an influx of refugees from that country.

Many human rights advocates spoke out against the government's action in the case, claiming that the immigrants were being unnecessarily detained. Certainly, they argued, the Haitians were being treated more harshly than were other refugees—most notably those from Cuba—who often make their way to the United States under similar circumstances.

Success by Increments

Despite the tools available and the networks that technology has created, the rate of progress for human rights—in a world where news flashes in real—time to anyone interested in following it—is relatively like measuring continental drift with a stopwatch.

Even the most well-intentioned of advocates armed with what seems to be a no-brainer of a human-rights issue doesn't always guarantee the same success that Coonan saw with his field work. Those governments who ruled through heedless and often capricious despotism eventually withered and died, he points out, leaving room for the growth of democratic governments that ostensibly value human rights.

Of course, coming to Argentina in 1986, in the wake of that country's "Dirty War," Coonan witnessed the aftermath of some of the most egregious human rights violations since the Holocaust. As many as 30,000 people "disappeared" during the military dictatorship that assumed power in Argentina in 1976. One account from an Argentinean officer describes victims made to engage in a sadistic dance for joy at the possibility of freedom before being drowned or drugged and later murdered.

Recalling that work and the increase in the numbers of new cases of human rights violations—a disturbing trend, even if the acts for the most part don't reach the level of atrocity seen in the "Dirty War"—Coonan comes to a conclusion that has seemed, perhaps, inevitable all along.

"Human rights advocacy is a growth industry," he says with no little irony. The statement applies both to the increase in the number of atrocities worldwide, and to the use of "human rights-friendly" advertising by businesses in an attempt to curry favor with advocacy-minded consumers.

"The sheer number of human rights violations around the world is hideous," he continues. "Think about it—despite the United Nations condemnation of torture and widespread advocacy by Amnesty International and numerous countries over the last 40 years, torture is on the increase."

Still, as bad as it is, one can easily imagine a far worse picture if human rights didn't have the geopolitical profile it does. The issue now resonates within all cultures, all creeds, all professions. For example, Coonan gives high marks to rock star Peter Gabriel's efforts with Witness, a decade-old advocacy group that educates activists in the use of video cameras to record human rights violations. The information that members gather is posted on the Web, making dissemination and response practically simultaneous to the commission of the act—truly grassroots advocacy on a high-tech, global scale.

Despite the Sisyphean struggle that he and other advocates face, Coonan conveys the kind of contagious enthusiasm that has always drawn people to causes.

"You have to think of human rights as an incremental process. It can be very frustrating, but that's why I love being on the advocate's side. We need legislators who are versed in human rights or who have those priorities. We need lobbyists, folks throughout the political machinery who can advocate for human rights."

FSU's fledgling center can eventually be a force for that, he believes.

"The center is going to make a difference, especially in preparing students who have a human rights sensibility. We don't necessarily stake our success on putting out students who are going to spend their entire careers working in the human rights field, but rather what we most want is students who have that background. It's not just some pie-in-the-sky notion, but one for which there is great international consensus."

And by all accounts, inexhaustible need.