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For more than 15 years, I have worked as a lawyer and advocate for human rights in Uganda. As the executive director of an organisation that mostly relies on grant funding, I was thrilled to learn that grantmakers in the field of human rights had embarked on an introspective process to align their grantmaking practices
The unprecedented riots, which took place at the US Capital on January 6, sent shock waves throughout the world. And as we try to understand the magnitude of such an attack on our democracy, Mariano Aguirre warns that “white collar authoritarians will continue to work in the United States, and other countries, to impose extremist
I watched in shock. I watched in fury. I watched in sorrow. Yesterday’s riots at the United States Capitol brought home a reality that will be familiar to many in HRFN’s global family. It is not sanctimony or an abstract respect for governance that brings tears to my eyes. As a network of
Human rights must be at the heart of policy work on ageing. But how do we apply this approach in practice? AGE Platform Europe, the voice of older people in Europe, published a one-pager to those willing to start exploring…
It is no mystery to those of us in international human rights philanthropy that the mobilization of resources to support social movement and grassroots organizing involves uncomfortable contradictions we have to deal with. We often need to access resources where they are most available in order to provide support. This tends to be in sources
When I think back to the first time I had the chance to meet with a program officer about a funding application from a well-known New York-headquartered human rights foundation in 1998, I can easily recall the pit in my stomach—I dressed in my best shoulder-padded suit (no judgment) for the meeting. To obtain a grant would be the holy grail; the small global network of frontline youth human rights activists I coordinated would either reach the next level of development or teeter on the brink of closure.
The current crises brought to light and amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the unveiling of entrenched anti-black racism, have exposed a core fragility of the philanthropic sector: the lack of alignment between our internal organizational cultures, and our external missions of supporting social movements and grassroots groups to tackle the causes of
Last year, HRFN, in collaboration with Ariadne and PAWHR set up a funders advisory committee and embarked on a journey to identify guiding principles for human rights grantmaking. For us, this journey meant that we had to be introspective and honest with ourselves about what it means to be
(Version in English) (Versión en español) L’année dernière, HRFN, en collaboration avec Ariadne et PAWHR, a constitué un comité consultatif de bailleurs de fonds pour mettre sur pied un projet visant à identifier les principes directeurs du financement basé sur les droits humains. Ce projet a nécessité pour nous d’être introspectifs et honnêtes avec
El año pasado, HFRN colaboró con Ariadne y PAWHR para nombrar un Comité Asesor de Financiadorxs y se embarcó en la identificación de principios que guiaran la concesión de apoyos para los derechos humanos. Esta tarea significó que teníamos que ser introspectivxs y honestxs con nosotrxs mismxs sobre qué