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 H.E. Prof. Muhammad YunusChief Adviser, Interim Government of BangladeshDhaka, Bangladesh Re: Follow-up on Human Rights CSO Meeting during UNGA 2025 Dear Chief Adviser Yunus: We write to express our deep appreciation to you for meeting with our group of international human rights organizations during the U.N. General Assembly to discuss the human rights…
Tags Share We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days When the Supreme Court recently allowed immigration agents in the Los Angeles area to take race into consideration during sweeps, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that citizens shouldn’t be concerned. “If the officers…
Tags Share Deaths of Migrants in ICE Custody Reach Highest Level in 20 Years Huabing Xie, an undocumented migrant from China, became the latest person to die in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in fiscal year 2025, after passing away on September 29. His death also brought the total to at least 22 between…
Tags Share Washington, D.C. / New York / Montreal – October 9, 2025 — Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, PEN America, and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights have filed a petition and urgent action request with the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) over the unlawful imprisonment of Iranian human rights…
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.
RFKHR president Kerry Kennedy recently hosted a meeting with Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus in New York to discuss the urgent need for sustained international engagement in Bangladesh ahead of the country’s critical national election in February 2026.
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).
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