Ability

Preparing people is all about giving your people the capability to undertake their work. To generate long-lasting changes on the ground, human dignity defenders need to be given the opportunity to learn, evolve and thrive in what they do to generate long-lasting changes on the ground. 

Technical capacity building how to best defend and promote human dignity is outside the scope of our initiative. However, we have decided than whenever we come upon useful tools, we will share them here for you:

The Clooney Foundation for Justice’s Waging Justice for Women (WJW) initiative is a fellowship program for early-career women lawyers in sub-Saharan Africa that are engaged in challenging injustice for women and girls. The initiative offers a one-year, fully funded fellowship to equip African gender justice champions with the tools they need to challenge inequality through the courts.

The Grassroots Justice Network  is a global community of justice defenders who are engaged in fighting injustice through access to justice and legal empowerment, to connect, learn and act. Through the network, members come together to learn from one another. The networks shares best practices and finds solutions through peer exchanges, online courses, research projects, and more.

The African Legal Fellows initiative of the Vance Center seeks to promote an ethically active legal profession. Lawyers from historically-disadvantaged backgrounds can apply to spend a year working in leading New York law firms or corporate legal departments, where they receive mentoring, professional development, and institutional engagement in pro bono practice.

Communicating and promoting human rights is a key aspect of the work of human rights defenders. However, communicating about human rights is a challenging task particularly since most target audiences are not used to a human rights narrative. Today, there are even more opportunities (and challenges) as new forms of digital communication allow anyone who has a message to reach very wide audiences by means of social media, targeted ads and online news portals, blogs, vlogs, etc. The platform is run by the Freedom Lab.

Stories and the media have been a very powerful tool for inspiring action. Yet many environmental and climate activists aren't equipped or skilled enough to use storytelling and media in ways that could inspire action. This fellowship is meant to bring together storytellers, creatives, artists and climate activists to collaborate in creating narratives to drive awareness and action for climate justice in Africa.

How to use creative storytelling and communication to combat stigma.

Recharging Advocacy for Rights in Europe (RARE) is a a two-year capacity- and alliance-building programme for human rights defenders and civic  space advocates from across Europe to meet, learn on an executive level and strategise together and join a community of practice. As a solidarity alliance, RARE is co-organised by partners from academia and civil society: The Hertie School, the Hungarian Helsinki Comittee, the Netherlands Helsinki Committee, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Poland and Oxfam Novib.

The CrossCulture Programme (CCP) by ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) funds around 55 to 60  professionals and dedicated volunteers from over 40 countries with its CCP Fellowships. Fellows spend two to three months working with host organizations in Germany or CCP partner countries to broaden their expertise, build valuable networks and further develop their intercultural skills. For 2025, applications are accepted from Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bhutan, Bolivia,  Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Georgia, Germany, Guatemala, India,  Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya,  Malaysia, Mauritania, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan,  Palestinian Territories, Philippines, Republic of Moldova, Russia, Sri  Lanka, Sudan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan,  Vietnam.

The Danish National Human Rights Institution offers free online material for human rights defenders, activists, and other human rights professionals working with National Human Rights Institutions.

More to come soon

• Hurridcos (Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems), a Geneva-based NGO that  helps human rights groups gather, organise and use information to create positive change in the world, has put together a resource library with methodologies, guides, frameworks and more to support this  work.

• The guide EMPOWERING ACTIVISTS, developed by Internews and Purpose+Motion,  offers insights into apps and tools to support those documenting and addressing human rights violations, aiming to foster action toward a  more just and peaceful world.
  

• UPR Info's Database of UPR recommendations and voluntary pledges allows  you to access and search all UPR recommendations and voluntary pledges during the UN Universal Periodic Review.

• Stakeholders at both national and international  levels have introduced a growing number of digital human rights tracking tools and databases designed to facilitate a more holistic  approach to human rights monitoring and implementation. Such tools  represent an innovative solution for all human rights actors to better organize and coordinate information management and data collection on  the steps taken to implement international human rights standards and  recommendations. The directory is published, managed and regularly updated with new entries by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and provides a  comprehensive list and description of such key tools and databases.

• FreedomLab is a virtual gathering place for human rights defenders involved in human rights monitoring and reporting.

• The International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) Academy is an open-access e-learning platform which provides online learning modules, tools, insider tips, stories of good practice and more to help demystify the UN human rights system and build the capacity of human rights defenders to push for change.

• The UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) Minorities Fellowship Program is a comprehensive training program for human rights and minority rights defenders belonging to national or ethnic, religious and  linguistic minorities. At the end, the fellows should have a general knowledge of  the United Nations system, international human rights instruments and mechanisms in general and those relevant to minorities in particular. Fellows should also be capable of further training their communities/organizations.

• Recommendations, commitments and precedents made at the international  level can be powerful tools for local changemakers who seek to hold  their government to account or advance protections for people’s dignity  and freedom. But finding the actual documents that contain international human rights standards can be a challenge. Currently, there isn’t any centralised database that compiles them all in one place. Hurridocs has put together a 30-minute online course that offers a framework for such research.

• The ISHR Human Rights Defender Advocacy Programme is an intensive programme created by and for human rights defenders. Each year, the program brings together committed activists who are looking to build their international advocacy skills and networks and leverage them to achieve change in their respective communities.

• The Global Campus of Human Rights is an inter-disciplinary center of excellence supported by the EU. It promotes human rights and democratization through higher education, specialized training programs, research and outreach, and offers several (paid) online courses.

• Young people often have a strong interest in supporting your work, but are not necessarily knowledgeable about human dignity. You can help them develop a better understanding by giving them the possibility to learn. Training will not only allow young people to dive deeper into defending human dignity, but also allow them to become a valuable and permanent member of your own tribe. Amnesty International offers a wide range of basic courses open to everybody, and available in over 30 languages.