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 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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Harry Wu
Born in 1937 in Shanghai, Harry Wu was one of eight children of an affluent Roman Catholic family. He was educated at a Jesuit school before attending Beijing College of Geology in the late 1950s. In the throes of a Communist purge, his university was expected to turn over a quota of dissidents. Wu was…
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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was born in 1965 in the Ethiopian city of Asmara (now in Eritrea). He graduated from the University of Asmara with a degree in biology and went on to earn a master’s in immunology of infectious diseases from the University of London, a Ph.D. in community health from the University of Nottingham,…
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Anthony Fauci
Anthony Stephen Fauci was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1940 to parents of Italian ancestry. Young Tony worked in the family drugstore, attended Catholic schools, and was influenced by the Jesuit value of service to others. He graduated from Cornell University Medical College in 1966. In 1968, Dr. Fauci joined the National Institutes of…
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Mikhail Gorbachev
Born to Russian peasants in 1931, Mikhail Gorbachev grew up under Stalin’s regime. At the age of 15, he joined the Komsomol, or “Youth Communist League,” and drove a combine harvester at a state-run farm in his hometown. Local party officials recognized his promise and sent him to law school at Moscow State University, where…
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Vaclav Havel
Václav Havel was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1936 to a wealthy, intellectual family that was active in culture and politics. He completed his required education in 1951, but the Communist government did not allow him to continue to study formally because of his bourgeois background. Instead, he apprenticed as a chemical laboratory assistant, took…
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John Lewis
One of the most courageous people the civil rights movement ever produced, U.S. Congressman John Lewis has dedicated his life to protecting human rights, securing civil liberties, and building what he described as “The Beloved Community” in America. The “conscience of the U.S. Congress” grew up as the son of sharecroppers. He was inspired by…
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Freedom Neruda
Biography: Journalism has become one of the world’s most dangerous professions, with dozens of deaths and hundreds imprisoned because they exercised their freedom of speech. Freedom Neruda exemplifies the extraordinary courage of these engaged journalists who report the news despite severe restrictions by the state. Born Teiti Roch D’Assomption in the Ivory Coast in 1956,…
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Raji Sourani
Biography: Raji Sourani is Gaza’s foremost human rights lawyer, and the founder and director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and former director of the Gaza Center for Rights and Law. In the 1980s, Sourani was widely recognized for his effective defense of Palestinians before the Israeli military courts. In connection with his defense…
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Doan Viet Hoat
Biography: Doan Viet Hoat is known as the Sakharov of Vietnam for his intellectual range and outspoken role as leader of the democratic movement, even from the prison cell. Hoat protested the South Vietnamese government’s suppression of Buddhists in the 1960s while still a student. He went to study in the US and got a…
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