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advocates
This
page highlights international human rights advocacy groups
and observers.
It covers -
Broader
questions regarding the nature of advocacy are explored here.
HRW
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW)
is a nongovernment organisation that originated in 1978 as
Helsinki Watch, monitoring Soviet bloc compliance with human
rights provisions of the Helsinki
Accords. During the 1980's extended its coverage of human
rights abuses to the rest of the world. It has offices in
Brussels, London, Moscow, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Tashkent, Toronto and Washington. Spending in 2005 was around
US$25 million.
AI
London-based Amnesty International (AI)
undertakes
research and action focused on preventing and ending grave
abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom
of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination,
within the context of its work to promote all human rights.
It
claims some 1.8 million members, supporters and subscribers
in over 150 countries and territories.
AI objectives are -
- Reform
and strengthen the justice sector
- Abolish
the death penalty
- Protect
the rights of defenders
- Resist
human rights abuses in the ‘war on terror’
- Uphold
the rights of refugees and migrants
- Promote
economic, social and cultural rights for marginalized communities
- Stop
violence against women
- Protect
civilians and close the taps that fuel abuses in conflict
ASF
Avocats Sans Frontières (ASF)
is an Brussels-based nongovernment organisation with a budget
in 2002 of around € 4 million. Funding is predominantly
from the EU.
It is concerned with support for specific judicial processes
related to major tragedies (eg in Rwanda) and the democratisation
of justice (eg Burundi and Timor-Leste), along with involvement
of voluntary lawyers
in
sensitive or emblematic trials or when the rights of the
defense are in danger in countries where the official speech
on human rights does not reflect reality (for instance,
ASF has led projects in Togo, Tunisia, Lebanon, Morocco,
Bolivia, Colombia and Guinea).
Lawyers
Without Borders (LWB)
is an independent organisation based in the US.
Privacy International
London-based Privacy International (PI)
is an international human rights group formed in 1990 as a
watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments
and corporations. PI campaigns and research cover issues ranging
from wiretapping and national security, to ID cards, video
surveillance, data matching, medical privacy, and freedom
of information and expression.
Freedom House
US-based Freedom House was founded in 1941 by George Field
(1904-2006), Wendell Willkie, Dorothy Thompson and Herbert
Bayard Swope. After initial opposition to Nazism it criticised
human rights abuses in the USSR and PRC, was an early proponent
of US civil rights legislation and condemned the Ku Klux Klan
and McCarthyism. It is currently best known for issuing annual
assessments of freedom, rating every nation and citing some
nations and regimes for praise or condemnation.
others
Other bodies include -
- Article
19 - the global campaign for free expression
- International
Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH)
-
Paris-based umbrella organisation with priorities of protecting
human rights, assisting victims , mobilising the community
of States, supporting local NGO's capacity for action and
raising awareness
- Center
for Economic & Social Rights (CESR)
- Human
Rights First (HRF),
formerly Lawyer's Committee for Human Rights - a New York-based
international organisation that promotes laws and policies
that advance universal rights and freedoms.
- Globalwitness
- which emphasises relationships between human rights abuses,
corruption and natural resource exploitation
- Interights
- the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human
Rights, a London-based body that aims to enforce human rights
through law, strengthen human rights jurisprudence and mechanisms
through use of international and comparative law, and empower
legal partners to protect human rights
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