International Human Rights Law Group

Global Rights is an international human rights capacity-building non-governmental organization (NGO). Global Rights was founded in Washington DC, USA in 1978 with the name International Human Rights Law Group and changed its name to Global Rights: Partners for Justice in 2003 at its 25th anniversary. Global Rights closed in December 2014. It worked with local activists in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to promote and protect the rights of marginalized populations. It provided technical assistance and training to enable local 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. Global Rights was reopened in Nigeria on February 2015.

Global Rights aimes to help local leaders and organizations address human rights abuses and bring their struggles to the attention of regional and international institutions such as the United Nations and Organization of American States, which develop and enforce human rights standards.

Their goals is to increase access to justice for poor and marginalized groups, promote women’s rights and gender equality, and advance ethnic and racial equality. They had special initiatives for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex rights and natural resources and human rights.

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

Global Rights was headquartered in Washington, D.C. They had field offices located in Afghanistan, Burundi, Morocco, Uganda, and Nigeria. They also ran programs in Algeria, Brazil, Colombia, Tunisia, and in Latin America. The field offices provided training and technical assistance to local NGOs to boost their ability to provide legal and paralegal services and advocate for the basic human rights of the poor and marginalized within their communities.