Human-Rights Activist Arthur C. Helton Killed In Baghdad Bombing

Arthur C. Helton, one of the country's most distinguished immigration lawyers, died at the age of fifty-four on August 19 in the bombing of the United Nations Headquarters in Baghdad. Mr. Helton, a lawyer and human rights activist, served as the Program Director of Peace and Conflict Studies and Senior Fellow for Refugee Studies and Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Helton was in Baghdad to determine humanitarian conditions in Iraq.

Mr. Helton graduated from Columbia College in New York City in 1971 and received his Juris Doctorate from New York University Law School in 1976. From 1982 to 1994, Mr. Helton directed the Refugee Project at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. In 1994, Mr. Helton founded and directed the Forced Migration Projects at the Open Society Institute. He joined the Council on Foreign Relations in 1999. Mr. Hilton also taught courses on migration and forced displacement at New York University’s School of Law (1986-1999) and Central European University in Budapest (1997-2000) and was an adjunct professor at Columbia University Law School (2001 to 2003).

During his career, Mr. Helton wrote over eighty scholarly articles and contributed to books on refugees. He co-authored Forced Displacement and Human Security in the Former Soviet Union: Law and Policy in 2000. In 2002 he authored The Price of Indifference: Refugees and Humanitarian Action in the New Century, which analyzed refugees policy responses in the 1990s. In addition, Mr. Helton testified as an expert before Congress and in the U.S. courts on many occasions on the rights of illegal aliens and refugee protection.

In 1987, the New York University Law Alumni Association awarded him with the Public Interest Award. The president of the Republic of the Philippines awarded Mr. Helton with the 1991 Ninoy Aquino Refugee Recognition Award. In 2001, he received the Immigration and Refugee Policy Award from the Center for Migration Studies. And in 2002, Mr. Helton was awarded the Award for Distinction in International Law and Affairs of the New York State Bar Association.

Mr. Helton advocated for the rights of refugees and the displaced. President of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard N. Haass said that Mr. Helton “had devoted his life to improving the lives of others” and was in Iraq “to help find ways to relieve human suffering.” At the time of the bombing attack, Mr. Helton was in a meeting with U.N. Special Representative for Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was also killed.