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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RFK Human Rights Joins Coalition Fighting Impunity in Mexico
The group, called the International Observatory on Mexico, will set out to monitor and document the country’s deteriorating human rights situation.
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RFK Human Rights Launches New North Korea Report
The report calls for North Korean officials to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity committed in the country’s political prisons.
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Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity in North Korean Political Prisons
Tags Share Since 1948, a succession of family leaders—Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un—have designed and perpetuated a brutal, totalitarian regime in North Korea, a signature feature of which is a network of political prisons that has no parallel in the world today. To date, hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to have
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Mexican Congress Should Reject Law Normalizing Armed Forces in Public Security Tasks
Tags Share WASHINGTON, November 21, 2017 –– In recent days, the Mexican Congress has rushed discussions about the Law on Internal Security (Ley de Seguridad Interior, LSI) that would normalize the participation of Mexico’s armed forces in public security tasks. In the media and in public spaces, legislators from various political parties have insisted on
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RFK Human Rights Wins Stella Nyanzi Case
The decision by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention determined that Stella Nyanzi—a prominent human rights defender, social activist, and academic in Uganda—was arbitrarily detained for her Facebook posts criticizing Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.
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RFK Human Rights Joins Call for Tanzania to Release Lawyers and Human Rights Defenders
Tags Share Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights joins with more than one hundred organizations and individuals in urgently calling for the Government of Tanzania to release and drop all charges against 13 lawyers and human rights defenders who were detained on October 20, 2017, after law enforcement agents previously raided a meeting they were attending
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Building Civil Society Skills with a Bahamas Human Rights Workshop
The workshop worked with participants to identify the main human rights issues in The Bahamas and develop strategies to address them.
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Protecting Freedom of the Press in the Americas
Tags Share “My brother was a good man, a good father, son and brother. He was a thorough journalist who wanted to fight corruption and protect the community’s interests.” That’s how Judith Carvajal, a teacher from Pitalito, Colombia, started her account before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights on August 22, 2016, in a hearing
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RFK Human Rights Condemns Guatemalan President Decision’s on CICIG
Tags Share (August 28, 2017 | Washington, D.C.) The civil society organizations which join this statement condemn in the strongest possible terms the decision by the President of Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, to declare Ivan Velasquez “persona non grata” and order his immediate expulsion from the country. Velasquez is the Commissioner of CICIG, the International Commission
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Against a ‘Military Option’ in Venezuela
Attempts to resolve the grave situation currently experienced by Venezuela cannot resort to violence.
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RFK Human Rights Calls for International Access in Venezuela Crisis
It is essential that any negotiations between the government and the opposition include openness to international human rights monitoring and verification.
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RFK Young Leaders Launch Dollar Bail Brigade
RFK Young Leaders generated almost 200 sign-ups for the Dollar Bail Brigade, a coalition of volunteers who free people from jails who couldn’t otherwise pay their bail.
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