"It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes a tribe to defend a human right."

The Phoenix Initiative for Human Dignity is a collaborative platform to support civil society organizations, informal groups, and movements working on the rule of law, human rights, democracy, and justice in building resilient and healthy organizational structures. 

Local grassroots organizations and individual human rights defenders are the backbone of each society that values human dignity. These organizations and individuals are the ones who will continuously promote and protect human rights and dignity, regardless any societal changes, conflicts or other challenges that restrict our fundamental freedoms.  

While human rights defenders have today understood the value of cooperation and partnership to move the state of human rights forward, the organizational management of most is an act in silo, leaving the senior management to itself to find the best ways and strategies to build robust organizational structures. Acknowledging that there are already numerous resources available in the field of organizational development, many do not take into account the specific needs and characteristics of grassroots human rights work. Others are simply not easy to access, or hard to find. Resources have often been developed in the Western world, and more often than not, are simply too complex and/or not cost-effective enough to be of use to grassroots organizations, or are only available in English. Those from the Global South (Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Asia Pacific, and South Korea are far too unknown. 

In addition, in a world today globally affected by the continuing shrinking space for civic engagement and human rights, local actors in restrictive countries have gained extensive experience and found elaborated ways to promote and uphold human rights. While there is today an encouraging tendency to acknowledge such knowledge, learning from the Global South is still the exception in the Global West.

The Phoenix Initiative will close this gap by building a safe space for human rights defenders, civil society organizations, informal groups, and movements working on the rule of law, human rights, democracy, and justice to learn from each others challenges and opportunities.