Hello everyone,
I just graduated from Law school in Italy and I was thinking about applying for an LLM in Human Rights in London at LSE, UCL or Queen Mary.
The programmes seem really interesting and I know that I would not regret taking this kind of path for my education.
However I admit that I don't really know what the career prospects are after you've taken an LLM in this subject. Some people told me that it's actually pretty hard to work in the Human Right field and that I would find only unpaid internships without a real hope of getting hired, especially in an NGO.

Can you tell me more about it? What line of work could I pursue with this kind of LLM? Is it true that there are few job opportunities in the Human Rights field?

I would have serious discussions with the schools you're looking at to see what realistic career options are open to you if you did an LLM.

I would imagine that the larger NGOs - Amnesty, HRW, etc. would be looking for legal talent as researchers, attorneys, etc. but I am not sure how often they hire, and if they hire, where they get their LLMs from.

What chicken said; an LLM in Human Rights could most certainly help you get a job with an NGO - the question being how often they hire. I don't have any data on that but I would not be too worried however - unless you aim for the very famous ones like HRW or Amnesty, maybe their hiring policy is strictly defined.

Then you always have the option to work for your government (Foreign Affairs or maybe Defense, also I would assume Interior, depending on the country), but I don't know how it works in Italy in this regard.

You could also obviously become a lawyer (as in attorney) in Human Rights!

In addition to that mentioned above, we've had graduates of our IHRL LLM work in government ministries (in their home country) in various capacities dealing with policy/regulation regarding refugees and asylum seekers. Global migration events over the past few years have brought the topic to the forefront in various arenas and, of course depending on an individuals other skill sets, there tend to be a variety of career paths in this field for graduates.

[Edited by Groningen_Law on Nov 16, 2017]