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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Speech at Worthington, Minnesota
In such a fantastic and dangerous world—we will not find answers in old dogmas, by repeating outworn slogans, or fighting on ancient battlegrounds against fading enemies long after the real struggle has moved on.
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Address at the University of California, Berkeley Campus
The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects.
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Address Before Young Israel of Pelham Parkway at the Concourse Plaza Hotel, New York City
To say that the future will be different from the present and past may be hopelessly self-evident. I must observe regretfully, however, that in politics it can be heresy. It can be denounced as radicalism or branded as subversion.
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Speech at the Dedication of Kendrick Hall at the University of San Francisco Law School, San Francisco, California
Since the days of Greece and Rome when the word “citizen” was a title of honor, we have often seen more emphasis put on the rights of citizenship than on its responsibilities. And today, as never before in the free world, responsibility is the greatest right of citizenship and service is the greatest of freedom’s…
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Address at the University of California, Berkeley Campus
All of us have the right to dissipate our energies and talent as we desire. But those who are serious about the future have the obligation to direct those energies and talents toward concrete objectives consistent with the ideas they profess. From those of you who take that course will come the fresh ideas and…
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Address at the New York City Columbus Day Dinner
An America piled high with gold, and clothed in impenetrable armor, yet living among desperate and poor nations in a chaotic world, could neither guarantee its own security nor pursue the dream of a civilization devoted to the fulfillment of man.
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Address at the Joint Defense Appeal of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Chicago, Illinois
My faith is that Americans are not an inert people. My conviction is that we are rising as a people to confront the hard challenges of our age—and that we know that the hardest challenges are often those within ourselves
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Speech at the American Friends of the Hebrew University, New York City
There is a passage in Deuteronomy, in which the Lord says, "And now, O Israel, I hearken unto the statutes and unto the ordinances, which I teach you, to do them." Commenting on this, the great Rabbis of the Talmudic Age saw its special meaning: "not learning," they said, “but doing is the principal thing.”
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Speech at the Law Day Exercises of the University of Georgia Law School, Athens, Georgia
Time has long since arrived when loyal Americans must measure the impact of their actions beyond the limits of their own towns or States.
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Anonymous
Note: The account that follows was written on or around the year 2000. At the time, Sudan was in the midst of a perilous and ongoing state of repression. In 2019, then-President Omar al-Bashir was overthrown by the Sudanese army in response to popular protests, and a constitutional declaration was signed. Nonetheless, Sudan’s democratic transition…
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North Korean Human Rights Defenders
Joseph Kim was born and raised in North Korea. His father died of starvation when Joseph was 12 years old, and he was separated from his mother and sister. He spent the next three years living on the streets with other homeless children. In 2006, at age 15, Kim escaped to China, where missionaries and…
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