Founded in 1978, Global Rights is an international human rights capacity-building organization that works side by side with local activists in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to promote and protect the rights of marginalized populations. Through broad-based technical assistance and training, we strengthen partners to document and expose human rights abuses, conduct community outreach and mobilization, advocate for legal and policy reform, and provide legal and paralegal services. Over our 30-year history, we have worked in scores of countries to help local leaders and organizations to address human rights abuses and to lift their struggles out of isolation and onto regional and international stages, where institutions such as the United Nations and Organization of American States develop and enforce human rights standards.

At the core of our programming is a deep commitment to increase access to justice for poor and marginalized groups, promote women’s rights and gender equality, and advance racial and ethnic equality. In addition to this, we have two special initiatives—lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex rights and natural resources and human rights—that allow us to explore new program areas while targeting populations that fit within our core programming.

Global Rights is governed by a seventeen-member board of directors comprising senior lawyers, journalists, and academics and operated by a 70-member staff, two-thirds of whom work outside the United States.