With our partners, we challenge serious human rights violations in three key ways: through strategic litigation and advocacy; by strengthening knowledge and skills; and by facilitating networks and the exchange of expertise.
What we do
Joint litigation and advocacy
We collaborate with lawyers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine. Together, we select cases relevant to the human rights landscape in our target region and engage in strategic litigatation before international courts and mechanisms.
Our collaborations don’t stop with a positive judgment or decision. With our partners, we pursue implementation, drafting robust submissions to the relevant bodies.
Knowledge and skills strengthening
We develop and deliver, with partners and other experts, a range of training, responding to the needs of our partners and changes in the region.
We also provide free legal resources, in the form of downloadable practice-based guides and briefings.
Facilitating networks and expertise exchange
Civil society in many of our countries is highly fragmented. We provide a space to bring together communities of practice to address strategic human rights issues from across the region, to reflect and share knowledge, identify common challenges and successful strategies.
Building connections between regional organisations and the wider international peer community, as well as to international mechanisms, strengthens practice, will help build skills and contribute towards developing a robust regional civil society.
Where we work
Our region spans five countries. You can find out more about our work in each country by clicking on the images below.
Who we work with
We work entirely in partnership with civil society organisations and individual human rights lawyers operating in our target region.
Our partners possess a wealth of expertise across a broad range of issues and often operate in very challenging contexts.
Our approach
Our work is underpinned by core cross cutting goals that reflect our values and strengthen our impact.
- Responding to the needs of our partners: we work in equal and respectful partnership with human rights lawyers and activists from our region, responding to their needs, in a flexible and risk-conscious manner, in order to address urgent and ongoing challenges in the region
- Prioritising intersectional equality mainstreaming (IEM): we are developing and implementing an intersectional equality mainstreaming approach across the organisation to ensure that our operations and programming are in line with Equality, Diversity and Inclusion standards/principles, our organisational culture is inclusive and our approach to litigation is sensitive to and reflects intersectional discrimination.
- Embedding a victim centred approach: we endeavour to take a victim centred approach throughout our work, ensuring that we do no harm. We will actively and systematically prioritise working in survivor-centred ways including by promoting and embedding trauma-informed legal practice (TILP) within the organisation and among partners and lawyers in the region.
- Building resilience and well-being: we support the resilience of our HRDs, in responding to emerging and increasing threats and reprisals, including through providing holistic organisational support and well-being opportunities. We will ensure our staff are supported and their well-being is promoted.
- Ensuring environmental sustainability: we consider and are guided by environmental sustainability in our decision making. We limit travel where possible and work in a hybrid way. We primarily implement project deliverables online.
