Civic Space and Activists
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
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Address at the Americans for Democratic Action Dinner, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
More and more of our children are estranged, alienated in the literal sense, almost unreachable by the familiar premises and arguments of our adult world. And the task of leadership, the first task of concerned people is not to condemn or castigate or deplore
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Speech in Chicago
We face a severe challenge. Daily before our eyes there is a growing army of unemployed and out-of-school youth.
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Address at the Day of Affirmation at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
Each nation has different obstacles and different goals, shaped by the vagaries of history and experience.
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Speech Delivered at the Commemoration of the 125th year of the Founding of Central High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
I feel we can approach the young people of the world with strength and with confidence.
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Address at the Day of Affirmation at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
Our answer is the world's hope; it is to rely on youth. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans.
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Speech at Worthington, Minnesota
Answers founded on clear and dispassionate thought must be matched to action rooted in conviction and a passionate desire to reshape the world.
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Speech at the New Hampshire Democratic State Convention, Manchester, New Hampshire
Thousands of young men and women serve in the Peace Corps, in isolated villages and city slums all over the globe . . .
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Speech Delivered at the Commemoration of the 125th year of the Founding of Central High School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The young throughout the world will not wait for our concern.
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Speech Delivered at the Commemoration of the 125th year of the Founding of Central High School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Under conditions of turbulence, social and political change, the young are often directly involved not in learning history in the classroom, but in making history themselves.
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Address Before the Jewish Theological Seminary of America at the Hotel Diplomat, Hollywood, Florida
If we are to succeed in having rational discussion, we must do it without epithets and name-calling by either side, without sloganeering and conscious misrepresentation of facts by either side. The quest for truth requires adherence to its principles by all who compete for its mantle.
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Speech delivered at the 10th Anniversary Convocation for the Center for Study of Democratic Institutions of the Fund for the Republic, New York City
All great questions must be raised by great voices, and the greatest voice is the voice of the people—speaking out—in prose, or painting or poetry or music; speaking out— in homes and halls, streets and farms, courts and cafes— let that voice speak and the stillness you hear will be the gratitude of mankind.
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Address at the Day of Affirmation at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues,
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