We collaborate with local, regional, and international partners to hold governments accountable, create lasting legal change, and foster an environment allowing individual and collective actors to speak out, participate in public affairs, organize, protest, and otherwise freely exercise and enjoy their human rights. Through strategic litigation and targeted advocacy, we foster collaboration and dialogue between civil society and key actors and promote cross-pollination of the most protective legal standards and innovative approaches to legal issues. Our partnership model builds on the work of local organizations on the ground by jointly strategizing and litigating cases, supporting their litigation through filing Amicus briefs, and working together to assess, advise, and build their technical capacity. From litigating landmark cases, such as the first case on lethal violence against journalists before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights or a case on the protection for peaceful assembly before the African Commission of Human and Peoples’ Rights, to developing an innovative tool that maps key ongoing judicial cases worldwide, we are committed to protecting and defending civic space and democracy around the world.
114
Countries with serious civic space restrictions
88%
Rate of impunity for crimes of violence against journalists
44 of 180
U.S. ranking in World Press Freedom Index
Tags Share U.S. Assigned a Specialized Immigration Team to Target Campus Protesters When Rumeysa Ozturk was grabbed by masked federal agents outside her Massachusetts home in March, the video of the Turkish graduate student being handcuffed and hustled into an unmarked vehicle spread around the world. A federal trial that ended Tuesday revealed for the first time the…
Umu Thoronka, a Sierra Leonean female journalist, was unlawfully dismissed from her position at the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) on July 26, 2024, in retaliation for exercising her right to freedom of expression and opinion.
The Trump administration’s agreement with El Salvador to detain alleged criminal gang members has been made public for the first time, as part of a lawsuit challenging the use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).
The Trump administration’s agreement with El Salvador to detain alleged criminal gang members has been made public for the first time, as part of a lawsuit challenging the use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).
The Trump administration’s agreement with El Salvador to detain alleged criminal gang members has been made public for the first time, as part of a lawsuit challenging the use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).
The Trump administration’s agreement with El Salvador to detain alleged criminal gang members has been made public for the first time, as part of a lawsuit challenging the use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).
Tags Share Trump Administration Increasingly Places Immigrants in Solitary Confinement, Report Finds Use of solitary confinement in immigration detention is soaring under the Trump administration, according to a report published by Physicians for Human Rights using federal data and records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed at least 10,588 people…
The Trump administration’s agreement with El Salvador to detain alleged criminal gang members has been made public for the first time, as part of a lawsuit challenging the use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).
Tags Share Washington, D.C., September 18, 2025 – Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and Foro Penal today published a new report outlining patterns of political repression in Venezuela following the July 2024 presidential elections, and the 2025 parliamentary and regional elections. The report, titled Electoral Repression, Enforced Disappearances and Political Control in Venezuela, analyzes how…
Tags Share Women in the Media Sierra Leone (WIMSAL) and RFK Human Rights have submitted a petition to the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on behalf of Umu Thoronka, a Sierra Leonean journalist who was unlawfully dismissed from her position at the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC)…
Tags Share Mogadishu, Somalia / Washington, DC, U.S. – 22 August 2025 – The Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (RFKHR) strongly denounce the attempts of Premier Bank to silence Abdalle Mumin, a human rights defender and journalist. At the behest of Premier Bank, a major Somali financial institution with strong…
Tags Share Trump’s ‘Law and Order’ Push in D.C. Looks a Lot Like an Immigration Raid When Trump announced on Aug. 11 that he would deploy hundreds of National Guard members and federalize the local police to “take back” the capital, he framed the mission as a crackdown on violent crime. He cited cases of…
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