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Small Data for sustainability: AI ethics and the environment

Moving away from the currently prevalent Big Data mindset towards a Small Data approach would help improve the sustainability of AI systems and would additionally ...

Backsliding on children’s participation rights within a protection discourse

Victimhood can easily disempower children and silence their voices as well as their claims to human rights, particularly their participation rights.

Gendered juvenile detention in the Philippines

In Duterte’s war on drugs, women victims have been largely invisible.

The Human Rights Council’s failure to protect Uyghurs in China—for now

It seemed that economic and political concerns drove several countries to vote against a resolution to discuss the human rights for Uyghurs in China.

Deprivation of liberty: when is it acceptable?

A new Advisory Opinion of the IACtHR underscores the penalties that deprive pregnant women, caregivers, elderly and Indigenous persons of their liberty.

Participatory baseline water study improves scientific data and strengthens community power

An interdisciplinary research team conducted the first community-owned baseline study on water in an area included in a mining permit in northern Haiti.

Promoting women’s rights: Introducing the Women’s Rights Recommendation Compliance Explorer

A new tool helps people track recommendations and compliance about women’s rights in Europe.

Hollow rights victories? Dutch struggles against digital injustice

Algorithms calculating the probability of fraud were overwhelmingly and wrongly targeting immigrant groups.

Episode 1: A historic climate win at the UN Human Rights Committee

Guest: Hélène Tigroudja

So much about your sustainability, my people are dying

Recipe for better communication of the rights of women and girls

A hope-based communications approach to women and girls’ rights can move the narrative beyond problems and challenges and focus on solutions and inspiration.

Human rights in the post-truth era

As attacks on truth and facts multiply, can activists be falling into the traps of post-truth? Evolutions in activism, communications and politics, as well as in ...

Natural resources and the prospects for gender-just sustainable peace

To build gender-just sustainable peace, post-war states must make deep changes to address extractivism and inequality.

Land grabs in Haiti are on the rise, while mining poses another threat

Between 2006 and 2013, the Haitian government granted more than 50 mining permits to three U.S. and Canadian companies to explore land occupied by dozens of communities ...

Grassroots justice organizations are deploying research to stem the tide of injustice

Legal empowerment has the potential to improve our ability to counter threats to human rights.

Caring workspaces for human rights

Defending human rights workers’ working conditions based on an ethic of care is one of the best ways to foster resilience and well-being.

Transforming the climate crisis into opportunity: A step towards gender equality

There is a substantial need to bring marginalized voices into our climate change responses and rebuild eco-feminist archives, as that will impact not only our society ...

Biodignity: Rethinking life and respect in the Anthropocene

Human dignity, when it asserts humanity’s moral primacy in the world, or when it over-values human reason, is symptomatic of humanity’s self-destructive and dominating ...

More than human rights: What can we learn from trees, animals, and fungi?

Changing the focus from a human-centric approach to human rights will help the movement advance on environmental agendas with an inter-species recognition.

People’s participation in high-level decision-making spaces on regional migration

Despite long-standing obstacles, Latin American and Caribbean local and national migrant- and diaspora-led associations and organizations have involved themselves ...

Children’s right to climate justice

The landmark case of 2019 where sixteen children and young people from twelve different countries opened the door to think about guaranteeing rights now and in ...

Countering the impact of discrimination against pregnant women exposed to high temperatures with human rights

Poor pregnancy outcomes due to hot temperatures include stillbirth and preterm birth before the completion of 37 weeks of pregnancy.

“I had an abortion thanks to a video on TikTok”: digital activism and social change

Social networks can help social change in unexpected ways.

Fragility, climate change, and the uncertain lives of agro-pastoralist women and girls in East Africa

Alongside political and social pressures that agro-pastoralist women and girls face, they must add an urgent one: climate change.

The gold standard of the Lima Programme

What’s next for the Lima Programme, a two-year work program created during COP20 to advance gender-responsive climate policies.

Women, Climate, Insecurity

This series highlights feminist approaches to understanding climate change's impact on women, as well as women's role in addressing those impacts.

Custody laws in Jordan maintain a sexist status quo

Despite important strides made by social movements advocating for women’s rights and led by Arab women, there is still a long way to go to combat gender discrimination.

Lessons from the pandemic: Building a movement for global public investment

There is a window of opportunity to move toward a model of financing based on Global Public Investment (GPI) to advance health and other social rights.

Revitalizing the UN human rights treaty bodies through regionalization

Five reasons why the proposal to regionalize treaty body meetings would work.

The transformative potential of human rights economics

Human rights advocates could be more active in using human rights tools to transform economic thought and practice.

AI and autonomous weapons arms transfers

A lack of consensus among states regarding the regulation of AI weapons is an opportunity for rights groups to use international human rights law to push for clear ...

Can action coalitions advance the gender equality agenda?

The Kenyan government has illustrated the critical role of Action Coalitions as the co-lead of the Action Coalition on Gender-Based Violence.

The 1968 United Nations debate on human rights and tech

The nexus between human rights and tech is more foundational to the evolution of the international human rights legal project than we normally think.

How can international human rights law protect those who identify as non-binary?

The term “non-binary” has entered some UN reports and media, but there is still a lack of recognition of this identity in human rights law.

Funding and the digital rights nonprofit space. Experiences and recommendations (Part II)

Nonprofits have to balance securing funds and staying true to their mission. How can we foster autonomy among organizations?

National Human Rights Action Plans: setting the record straight

New research unearths comprehensive data on the global diffusion of national human rights action plans since the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights.

At the UN, states and anti-rights actors join forces to push back against gender justice

At the latest Human Rights Council session, anti-rights language started making its way into some resolutions under discussion.

Land grabs in Haiti sow climate vulnerability and violence against women

Land grabs in Haiti cause women to further suffer violations of environmental and women’s rights and exacerbate climate vulnerability.

How do funders shape the digital rights agenda? Notes from the field (Part I)

Nonprofits’ autonomy from their funders is particularly important in the digital rights space.

India’s Supreme Court rules to protect sex workers amid the COVID-19 pandemic

In a historic rule, the Supreme Court of India aimed to protect the constitutional rights of sex workers in the country.

Lessons and consequences of the failure to regulate AI for women’s human rights

The current absence of adequate regulation by states to protect human rights from the deployment of AI systems is, in itself, a violation of human rights.

Rethinking the accountability of funders

Funders must rethink their principles and practices to ensure that they operate on participation, trust, and mutual understanding instead of power and privilege.

A word of advice to the next High Commissioner for Human Rights: engage with UN human rights experts

Michelle Bachelet will not seek a second term as High Commissioner for Human Rights, kicking off a race to find a suitable replacement.

Addressing the climate crisis: how Pacific youth voices can change climate governance

The continual failure of governments to adequately address the climate crisis constitutes a violation of children’s rights and Pacific youth know this better than ...

Egalité? Not in France’s refugee policy

For a country whose founding universalist principles are imbued with humanitarian rhetoric, it’s astounding how egregiously égalité has been violated.

Lessons for the rights movement in constructing a collective reality

Respect for human rights should be founded on recognizing and honoring differences.

Putting people and the planet at the helm of transformative climate action

For many Global South activists and communities, the pledges and actions agreed upon at COP26 were too late, inadequate, and exclusive.

A tech accountability campaigner's guide to genuine change

In constructing new paradigms, our visioning should not be limited to our definition of the problem.