Movement Building

By: Aya Fujimura-Fanselow
Español

Tracking human rights advancements during crises can provide a starting point for transformative rights–based change.

By: Janika Spannagel
Español | Français

Focusing only on defenders’ physical integrity risks undermining the very idea of supporting agents of human rights change.

By: Antonio Gutierrez & Felipe Mesel & Emese Ilyes & Melania Chiponda
Español

In both Latin America and in North America mutual aid movements swelled in response to the collective trauma and collective learning of the pandemic.

By: Sophie Mulphin & Tom Clarke
Español

Stories told at the UN about human rights defenders have a major impact on how they are perceived and supported on the ground.

By: Ligia Bolívar
Español

Virtual activism makes some human rights causes visible but reduces engagement on the street.

By: Julia Roig & James Savage
Español

The narratives we engage & deploy shape our world. In the face of rising authoritarianism, what stories & tactics drive collaboration within & between movements?

By: Thalia Viveros Uehara & Juan Auz
Español

The Inter-American Court will likely be the first regional human rights tribunal to develop an advisory opinion on the climate emergency, prompting normative effects ...

By: Adrian Di Giovanni & Poorvi Chitalkar
Español | Français

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

By: Mara Tissera Luna
Español

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

By: Belinda Walzer
Español

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 ...

By: Caroline Dommen
Español | Français

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

By: Juan Ortiz Freuler & Will Orr & Ana Brandusescu
Español

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

By: Melania Chiponda & Emese Ilyes
Español | Français

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

By: Jane Chung
Español

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

By: Lucas Paulson
Español

The invitation at the heart of "Narrative Spices" isn’t about specific strategies or approaches, but about cultivating habits that enable curiosity, exploration, ...

By: Jonathan Sharp
Español

Contractual arrangements, insurance, and tort law, all private law tools, fail to address the awful threat of hazardous substance leaks because they are unable ...

By: Andrés Zaragoza
Español

If we want to constructively engage companies, business associations or investors on human rights issues, we must recognize who our interlocutor is.

By: Garth Meintjes
Español

We would do better to deepen our understanding of human rights as a kind of reference narrative that can help to guide decision-making in the face of radical uncertainty.

By: Steven L. B. Jensen & Charles Walton
Español | Français

A deeper history of social rights can help us identify the factors that have impeded the human rights project.

By: Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky  & Francisco Cantamutto & María Julia Eliosoff Ferrero & Ana Fraile
Español

The video documentary series on "IMF and Human Rights" and the podcast "Promise is Debt" are political and cultural tools to limit the control of finance over our ...

By: Thaynah Gutiérrez Gomes
Español | Português

We must seek technologies from the ancestral past of native peoples and connect them with the knowledge from the urban peripheries.

By: Alicia Ely Yamin
Español

"Paul treated each individual as if they contained the whole world within them."

By: Rodrigo Dornelles
Español | Português

A data-centered approach is fundamental in understanding our institutions and designing more effective strategies.

By: Claudia Ituarte-Lima & Sri Aryani & Delia Paul
Español

If transformation towards global sustainability is to happen, we need to value the work of young climate advocates, and help make it visible.

By: Souleymane Sagna
Español

For Africa to address challenges like climate justice, conflict transformation, and food security, the participation of youth activists will be critical.

By: Chiara Liguori
Español

Reading between the lines of the COP26 decisions, you can find small wins that are the result of the tireless efforts and dedication of the climate justice movement.

By: Jonathan Cohen & Sofia Gruskin
Español

As the COVID-19 pandemic approaches the end of its second year, the importance of reaffirming this principle is clear.

By: Angel Gabriel Cabrera Silva
Español

How a temporal perspective affects the struggles for Indigenous self-determination

By: Viviana Krsticevic
Español

The human rights framework can buttress the responses needed to address the emergency, providing tools to guarantee human dignity and the right to a healthy environment.

By: Marc Schade-Poulsen
Français | Español

One should be cautious when conflating today’s human rights understanding with that of the past when narrating human rights history.

By: Gráinne de Burca
Español

If attention is directed towards the dynamism of social movements and human rights activism around the world, a different set of views of the cathedral emerges.

By: Marisa Viana & Ruby Johnson
Español | Français | Português

How can we truly value the experiences and perspectives of all generations that are so needed to forge our collective liberation?

By: Amyn B. Sajoo
Español

Romanticizing the universal at the expense of local, subjective truths fails to account for how we arrive at global rights in the first place.

By: David Mattingly
Español

Here’s what the Fund for Global Human Rights learned from its second COVID-19 impact survey—and how the funding community can better support the crucial work that ...

By: Viviana Krsticevic
Español

Increasing the breadth of actors involved in the common platform of fundamental rights ideals would strengthen the human rights movement’s ability to hold its ground ...

By: Meredith Veit
Español | Português | हिन्दी | Français | Русский

We should continue to advocate for imprisoned HRDs whose rights have been most restricted, as well as focus on preventative protection to ensure that their conditions ...

By: Claudio Schuftan
Español

Agostini neither offers a solution to what human rights defenders are supposed to do differently nor does he offer examples of how identity-based movements undermine ...

By: Meredith Veit
Español | Français | हिन्दी | Português | Русский

Limitations on fundamental freedoms have been purposely and disproportionately used against activists who have refused to put their work on pause.

By: Steven L. B. Jensen
Español | Français | العربية

A new series explores different approaches to the temporalities of human rights history and how this relates to their past, present, and future

By: Nicolas Agostini
Español | Français

How an overemphasis on subjectivity and lived experience in activism leads to expanding the scope of restrictions and ultimately threatening universal rights

By: Meg Satterthwaite
Español

Human rights advocates should become reliable partners to movements led by the communities experiencing grave rights deprivations.

By: Samuel Moyn
Español

"If human rights are in crisis, it is not because of some problem in their normative content."

By: Laurel E. Fletcher
Español

International groups should challenge themselves to invent new practice forms that disrupt old patterns that re-instantiate North-South power binaries.

By: Steven L. B. Jensen
Español

The story of the 1920 Declaration can help us rebalance how we approach human rights history and make it more representative in terms of substance and agency.

By: Momin Rahman
العربية

There is a major pitfall in assuming that other countries simply need to “catch up” through an expansion of SOGIE rights frameworks.

By: Kristi Heather Kenyon
Setswana | Zulu

In practice, no one enjoys “international human rights.” In each of our lives, all rights are local and personal.

By: Gunnar Ekeløve-Slydal & Liv H. Kvanvig
Русский | Bahasa

Governments must partner with faith leaders to battle COVID-19, creating an opportunity to build necessary trust and cooperation with wider parts of the population.

By: Marie Juul Petersen  & Claire Thomas & Sajjad Hassan
Español | العربية

COVID-19 and its impacts may hit some religious minorities disproportionately hard, exacerbating economic inequalities, social hostilities and discrimination.

By: Sonya Sceats
Español | Français

As Amnesty frames its goals in terms of confronting power and structural injustice, it risks weakening its defense of the rule of law—at precisely the moment when ...

By: Sherif Elsayed-Ali
Español

To win support, human rights NGOs must challenge systems, not symptoms, step up their work on ESR, and provide practical solutions to the problems they expose.

By: Marie Juul Petersen  & Katherine Marshall
Español | العربية

Freedom of religion or belief is rightly gaining more attention, but steps to promote this right need to be anchored in international standards, locally relevant ...

By: Howard Lavine & James Ron
Español

Religious leaders can help convince the most ethnocentric and authoritarian American voters to oppose Washington’s backing of abusive dictators.

By: Robert C. Blitt
العربية

Malaysia’s recent caning of a homosexual couple reflects a larger problem with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) continued support for discriminatory ...

By: Liam Mahony

Although UN human rights bodies have criticized the persecution of the Rohingya, UN agencies inside Myanmar have been far too deferential to the authorities.

By: Mona Younis
العربية | Español

International human rights NGOs are increasingly locating staff and offices in the global South. A recent evaluation suggests that this can hinder—rather than help—the ...

By: Salvador Santino F. Regilme, Jr.

During transnational security crises, aid recipient governments use foreign aid to increase domestic state repression that targets unarmed political dissidents.

By: Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
မြန်မာဘာသာ

To insist on the Rohingya status as a victimized religious minority while ignoring other factors cements their position as outsiders, fueling exclusionary forms ...

By: Barbara Klugman & Ravindran Daniel & Denise Dora & Maimouna Jallow
Español

Human rights funding is systemically inequitable, and this will only change when funders provide core support that allows grantee organizations to make their own ...

By: Barbara Klugman & Ravindran Daniel & Denise Dora & Maimouna Jallow
Español

The marker of progress towards an equitable human rights ecology is when local and national groups no longer have to wait to be invited in.

By: Barbara Klugman & Ravindran Daniel & Denise Dora & Maimouna Jallow
Español

The human rights system must value and mobilize the expertise of all players, from local to international levels. This is a work in progress that has only just ...

By: Peter Jacob

The debate about whether a state should be religious or secular doesn’t always affect how a society treats religious minorities.

By: Hakan Altinay
العربية

Associating progressive social policies with Islam may unsettle some, yet the parallels are there and offer many possibilities.

By: Julian Brown 

South Africans’ right to protest exists on paper, but authorities have effectively suppressed dissent by making it too dangerous.

By: Ariadna Estévez
Español

The Pope’s first official visit to Mexico was all talk and no action, but it was exactly what many Mexicans expected.

By: Ruki Fernando

Local and international activists have been crucial in getting a UN response in Sri Lanka.

By: Janice Gallagher & Paula Martinez Gutierrez
Español

Eighteen months after Ayotzinapa, Mexican civil society has pulled together in new and promising ways to challenge the state.

By: Rochelle Jones & Sarah Rosenhek & Anna Turley
Español | Français

With fewer resources and greater risks, sustainable change in women’s rights internationally means supporting local women’s collective action and power.

By: Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua

What happens when human rights and democracy do not only advance Western foreign policy, but also contribute to producing, not reducing, poverty?

By: Muthoni Muriithi
Français

The internationalisation debate can learn a lot from women’s movements in terms of opening spaces and opportunities for the voiceless.

By: Rachid Touhtou  & James Ron & Shannon Golden
Français | العربية

Without building a strong popular base, the Moroccan human rights community cannot capitalize on its good reputation.

By: Meriem El Haitami & Shannon Golden & James Ron
Français | العربية

Pundits say that religion and human rights are opposing forces in Morocco, especially around women’s rights. Our Human Rights Perception Polls suggest a more nuanced ...

By: Mubin S. Khan
বাংলা

Bangladeshi activists work around religious elements, sometimes even collaborating with them. The rise of religious groups, however, is becoming both a challenge ...

By: Charles Kojo Vandyck 

Internationalising human rights work in Africa will always be a distant dream unless rights groups operate beyond survivability.

By: Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah & Mandeep Tiwana
Español | Português

With the world more multipolar than ever, why is civil society power still disproportionately located in the global North?

By: Ram Mashru
Español | Français | العربية

Focusing on the practicalities of internationalization neglects a vital and thorny question: is going global really in the interests of all rights groups?

By: Maja Daruwala

North-South internationalization must be an alliance of equals, not simply a Northern expansion.

By: Carrie Oelberger
Español | Français

The more transnational human rights groups become, the more likely they are to professionalize. This, in turn, can influence the sector’s values.

By: Adriano Campolina
Español | Français

NGO internationalization is now trendy, but ActionAid realized long ago that giving up power doesn’t mean having less power.

By: Louise Arbour
Español | Português

International human rights institutions are weak, but true North-South solidarity in civil society could challenge a broken system.

By: Johanna Siméant
Français

As NGOs create global brands rather than a “global civil society”, internationalization reaches beyond human rights advocacy.

By: Stephen Hopgood
Español | Français | العربية

The idea of a “global middle” assumes that human rights transcend borders. But do they really?

By: Abadir M. Ibrahim
العربية

Using extreme examples to justify a purely secular human rights approach does a disservice to the many religious leaders doing progressive work.

By: Kenneth Roth
Español | Português

Internationalizing human rights NGOs can benefit everyone; it’s not a zero sum game.

By: Susan Waltz
Español

For Amnesty International, the growing trend of “internationalization” has very old roots.

By: Farah Souames
العربية

Intolerance towards Algerian Jews has been driven by geopolitics and history, not religion.

By: Jack Snyder
العربية

Religious progressives are vital for Egypt’s human rights; secular groups can’t do it alone.

By: Emma Tomalin

Rights activists tend to identify secularism with women’s rights, but if we don’t engage with religion, we can’t effectively confront many wrong-headed policies ...

By: Jessica Montell
עברית | Español | Français | العربية

Human rights violations are increasingly transnational, yet there are no organizations addressing human rights in Israel’s foreign policy.

By: Emily Martinez
Español | Français | العربية

Diversifying the global human rights movement involves more than North-South restructuring.

By: Marc Limon & Nazila Ghanea & Hilary Power
Español | العربية

As religious intolerance and discrimination increase, is the UN’s current strategic response – as set out in a Human Rights Council resolution and related plans ...

By: Stanley Ibe
Español | Français | العربية

We cannot afford to globalize human rights at the expense of local context. To be sustainable and effective, local activists must lead and adapt human rights initiatives ...

By: Wendy Wong
Español | Français | العربية

Representativeness and access in the human rights arena is crucial, but is decentralization really the best move?

By: Muriel Asseraf
Español | Português

Emerging countries like Brazil are at a turning point, struggling to balance their domestic issues with their international aspirations.

By: Tanya Lokshina
Русский

Despite a hostile climate and many different challenges, the collaborations of Human Rights Watch with local Russian organizations continue to be the key for making ...

By: César Rodríguez-Garavito
Español

The global human rights field is being transformed, and activists are inventing new, less hierarchical models of collaboration, including global virtual networks ...

By: Charli Carpenter
Español

It’s time to relocate power centres in the top-heavy human rights network. The savvy use of network tactics is the best approach: cultivating southern “hubs”, empowering ...

By: Salil Shetty
Español | Français | العربية

The rapidly changing global structure and the rise of emerging powers require Amnesty to work in a more bottom-up manner. Now, for the first time ever, there is ...

By: Sarah Stroup
Español | Français | العربية

International human rights groups are a big help when developing transnational norms; decentralizing these NGOs risks robbing them of their key strength.

By: Wanja Muguongo
Español | Français | العربية

Do western donors want to “internationalize” the human rights movement, or do they want to retain control while including a few token Africans? It’s time for long-term ...

By: Louis Bickford
Español | Français | العربية

As international rights groups move “closer to the ground” and domestic groups reach out internationally, the human rights community is converging. Can we harness ...

By: James Ron & Archana Pandya

The openGlobalRights editors introduce this week's debate.

By: Elsy Melkonian
Français | العربية

Women in Tunisia have long enjoyed rights that are very clear on paper. In practice, however, the government’s willingness to enforce these rights seems to depend ...

By: Siddharth Peter De Souza
हिन्दी

Religion is not only about belief but also about its capacity for human well-being. Therefore, human rights should be at the core of an individual’s right to evaluate ...

By: Leo Igwe

‘Traditional African ways’ is not a monolith. It has evolved over time and must evolve again to adapt to human rights. Human rights should not defer to tradition ...

By: Renee De La Torre
Español

It’s time for leaders in the Mexican Catholic Church to speak up where they are most needed.

By: Adem Kassie Abebe
Français

Religion and human rights need not be completely divorced, or work hand-in-hand all the time. A case-by-case approach, taking into account the realities on the ...

By: Ahmad Sueady
Bahasa

Indonesia’s rising religious intolerance stems from a political pact struck between former president Bambang Yudhoyono and the country’s least tolerant Muslim groups. ...

By: Seema Guha
हिन्दी

In India, Hindu religious leaders are reluctant to campaign loudly against the collection of raw sewage by oppressed communities, and this is slowing progress in ...

By: Phelim Kine
Bahasa

Although Indonesia has long been seen as a religiously moderate country, Sunni Muslim militants are attacking minority religious communities across the country. ...

By: Abamfo Ofori Atiemo
Français

Human Rights Watch’s scathing critique of Ghana’s prayer camps misses the point. For many people struggling with mental illness and social stigmatization, the camps ...

By: José Zalaquett
Español

Does freedom of religion include the right to convert others, or pressure them into giving money?

By: Shantha Rau Barriga
Français

Ambamfo Ofori Atiemo says that prayer camps in Ghana deserve a closer look, as they are a supposedly compassionate, faith-based response to mental disability. Human ...

By: Kechi Nomu
Français

On the streets of Nigeria, what seems like the “voice of the people” is often just unquestioning followers, echoing the opinions of religious leaders. The human ...

By: Beatrice Lamwaka
Français

Human rights advocates must take their message to street corners, like preachers, and teach the people love for everyone, irrespective of race, tribe and sexual ...

By: Xaviera Medina
Español

The Koran proclaims equality between the sexes but also clearly indicates male superiority. In the fight for women’s rights in Islamic societies, how do human rights ...

By: Ariadna Estévez
Español

While the progressive Catholic Church is on the frontline of defending human rights in Latin American, its conservative branch still attacks reproductive rights ...

By: Richard L. Wood
Español | Français

Pentecostal Christianity is one of the fastest growing religious forces in the world. Although many secular human rights activists view Pentecostalism as retrogressive, ...

By: Doutje Lettinga
Español | Français | العربية

A global poll into perceptions of human rights confirms there is hope for international human rights organizations to build alliances within Southern civil societies ...

By: Iyad Barghouthi
العربية

Religious interpretation is what counts. This explains why Pakistanis vote for female leaders, while Saudi Arabia bans women drivers.

By: Geraldyn Ezeakile
Français

Religion may help to control behavior and justify human worth and dignity, but in Nigeria, the co-existence of Sharia law with English Common Law has had serious ...

By: Rabbi Arik Ascherman
العربية | עברית | Türkçe

Most Israeli Jews support the Gaza war, but the justice of self-defense has created a spiritual myopia among my people. As community and religious leaders, we rabbis ...

By: Dahlia Scheindlin
עברית | العربية | Español | Français

How should Israeli rights groups respond to this new war, and to the hatred many Jewish Israelis feel towards them and their work?

By: Louis Frankenthaler

For some, a boycott of products made in Israeli settlements - Occu-Kashrut - is an ethically motivated act of Jewish religious practice. As a result, Israel’s ...

By: Meghan L. Morris
Español

Many human rights advocates work with people and/or communities who believe in a God or gods, but few are actually talking about the specifics of those beliefs. ...

By: Michael Bochenek
Español

It’s not useful to debate whether human rights derive from religion or to include religious leaders only as token voices. What we need are authentic alliances with ...

By: Abamfo Ofori Atiemo
Français

In Africa and other regions in the global South, religion and human rights support similar values. For years, religion has helped disenfranchised groups the way ...

By: Daniel Philpott

Human rights need God because three ingredients are critical to their validity: universal moral norms, human dignity, and their “trump card” status. These ingredients ...

By: Amyn B. Sajoo

Human rights cannot thrive globally without the support of pluralist religious theologies that are in tune with public culture. In Muslim settings, this means that ...

By: Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr 

For human rights to find resonance in the global South, we must connect them to the existing beliefs of the people by engaging religious leaders. Without this cultural ...

By: Fr. Cedric Prakash Sj
Español | Français | العربية

Hinduism preaches tolerance, the Indian Constitution enshrines plurality. So why has divisive political communalism become acceptable, even electable, when disguised ...

By: Jeremy Carrette

While religion is foundational to human rights, it is also problematic. Broad concepts of religion often obscure identity and hide an imperialistic organization ...

By: Rabbi Arik Ascherman
Español | Français | العربية | עברית

In a world where so much blood is shed for religion, Rabbis for Human Rights believes that the Jewish faith must be a force for human rights.

By: Marie Juul Petersen 
Español | Français | العربية

Drawing on studies of Muslim aid organisations in Britain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Bangladesh, the author explores how these organisations do and don’t ...

By: Nida Kirmani 
Español | اردو | العربية

lthough many human rights movements have religious underpinnings, explicitly linking religion to human rights can lead to the exclusion and persecution of minority ...

By: Wai Yan Phone 
ภาษาไทย | မြန်မာဘာသာ

Myanmar is taking significant strides towards political and economic liberalization after decades of military dictatorship, yet a series of violent attacks against ...

By: Arvind Sharma 
Español | العربية

Contrary to popular perception, Hindu philosophies of moral agency, duty and universal truth cohabit with human rights values.

By: Muhtari Aminu-Kano & Ayaz Ali & Atallah Fitzgibbon
Français | Español | العربية

Despite tension between western notions of individual freedom and Muslim tenets of communal responsibility, there is much common ground to be found in the fight ...

By: Larry Cox
Français | Español | العربية

Many human rights activists are secular and view religion as a problem, rather than as an ally. Although religion does often pose serious challenges, it also offers ...

By: Jack Snyder
Español | Français | العربية

Normative frameworks in the Global South are largely religious, making it difficult for the secular human rights movement to penetrate these societies. Religious ...

By: Jill Olivier
Français | العربية

It’s time to move past overly simplistic arguments surrounding Catholics and condoms, and make an effort to understand the real and very complex contributions of ...

By: James Ron & David Crow & Shannon Golden
Español | Français | العربية | Português | Türkçe

Using cutting-edge human rights perception polls, the authors explore links between social class and domestic human rights movements in Mexico, Colombia, Morocco, ...