Saveguarding democracy and human rights: These 7 non-profits do ground-breaking work
The elections in the US have shown how fragile democracy can be when conflicts arise. We present 7 organizations, each of which developed its own powerful approach to strengthen democracy and human rights – in the US and across the globe.
Whether it is the improvement of the electoral system in the U.S., the access to legal support, the documentation of human right violations or better ways to engage people with conflicting interests or views in a dialogue. Civil society organizations developed a colorful spectrum of approaches to fight for democracy, human rights and strong institutions. We present seven of them who take a bold stand.
CTCL – Strengthening the electoral system in the United States
No other electoral system has been under as much observation and scrutiny as the US-American system in recent months. The fact that the presidential election ran essentially smoothly – even if the incumbent president tweets otherwise – is partially due to one non-profit organization: the Center for Tech and Civic Life, abbreviated as CTCL. This organization has been working for years in close cooperation with the authorities and election officials on technologies and processes that make the US electoral system more inclusive and secure. The work of CTCL is supported, among others, by Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, who just donated an additional 100 million (!) US dollars in October 2020 to better fund the work of the electoral offices.
Making sure that the elections run smoothly is only one aspect of their work that has been given a lot of attention this year. The overall mission of CTCL is to provide citizens with neutral, politically independent information about the candidates and election programs through open source technologies. People should be in a position to make the right choice during elections – a noble goal in an election year flooded by vast amounts of “fake news”.
Search for Common Ground – Talk to end violence!
The mission of Search for Common Ground is nothing less than to end violent conflicts. Its motto is: While conflicts and disputes are inevitable, violence is not. The organization, which has been founded back in 1982 brings together people across dividing lines to discover and achieve shared goals. The organization works with all sides of a conflict, including those traditionally in power and those without a platform, often women and youth.
Over decades, Search for Common Ground successfully developed tools and methods which help to turn down the walls which impede that people from conflicting parties engage in dialogue, and possibly collaboration. Many of the initiatives take place on the grassroots level, creating a safe space to bring together people on a personal level. Talking with each other is always better than talking about one another.
Search for Common Ground is active in many countries worldwide, including crisis-struck regions such as the Middle East. It also works in its home country USA. The need is there.
Thomson Reuters Foundation – Media for human rights
The Thomson Reuters Foundation bundles the civic engagement of the British-Canadian media group Thomson Reuter. The London-based foundation uses media power to raise awareness of human rights issues around the world. The foundation’s news service sheds a light on the biggest global challenges affecting human rights with the specific remit of women’s rights, LGBT+ issues, the human impact of climate change, modern slavery, and access to land and property rights.
In addition, through its TrustLaw service the foundation provides legal support to international and grassroots human rights organisations and facilitates legal research to equip civil society with the tools they need to build coalitions with governments and the private sector to change laws and policies that further protect human rights.
Even though media work remains at its core, the Thomson Reuters Foundation is more than civically engaged publisher. It developed into a powerful player to boost human rights and social sector organizations around the globe.
WITNESS – See it, film it, change it
Without video evidence, the current debate about structural racism would not take place. Today, the majority of the world’s population now has a camera in their pocket. People everywhere are turning to video to document and tell stories of abuse. But all too often, they are not filming safely or effectively, and their videos don’t make a difference. WITNESS identifies critical situations and teaches those affected by them the basics of video production, safe and ethical filming techniques, and advocacy strategies.The organizations has teams based in Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico, The Netherlands, Senegal, Turkey, and the United States. The organization works with grassroots activists, journalists, lawyers, NGOs, and media makers.
WITNESS benefits from the work of the Silicon Valley based non-profit Benetech, which uses digital technologies to empower human right activists around the globe. It uses big data and artificial intelligence to screen large amounts of evidence which documents human right violations to produce material which can be used at court.
Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) – Making criminal justice just
The facts are shocking. The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population but nearly 25% of its incarcerated population. The number of imprisoned people rose from 200,000 In 1972 to 2.2 million today. Mass incarceration disproportionately impacts the poor and people of color and does not make the country safer.
«The great evil of American slavery wasn’t the involuntary servitude; it was the fiction that black people aren’t as good as white people, and aren’t the equals of white people, and are less evolved, less human, less capable, less worthy, less deserving than white people.» Bryan Stevenson, Founder EJI
EJI has been founded by public interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson in Alabama, USA. The organization challenges excessive punishment in court, the incarceration of children in adult prisons, advocates for parole and provide re-entry support through specialized programs. Its overall goal is to advance systemic reform, which is enhanced through research, education, and narrative work.
Namati – Legal empowerment at the grassroots level
Nearly every nation in the world has declared its commitment to the basic human rights of its citizens. In reality, many governments do not deliver on that promise. Billions of people live in impoverished communities, outside the protection of the law. They can be driven from their land, extorted by officials, denied essential services, and intimidated by violence. Governments, rather than upholding and executing the law, often are stymied by inefficiency, chronic underfunding, and insufficient data.
«These are dark days if you care about justice. Power and wealth are extremely concentrated. Authoritarianism and nativism have gained ground.» Vivek Maru, Namati
Namati seeks to place the power of the law in the hands of the people. The organization trains and deploys grassroots legal advocates who work with communities to advance fundamental rights such as citizenship recognition, land tenure, and access to quality health care. Namati is building a global movement of community paralegals, people are empowered to know, use, and shape the laws that affect their lives. Drawing on data from thousands of cases, Namati advocates for improvements to policies and systems that affect millions of people. The organization currently works in India, Kenia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, and the USA.
Namati is part of the GOOD Impact Portfolio and has been featured in early Summer 2020 on the GOOD platform.
Ford Foundation – End discrimination
Last not least we feature an organization which drastically differs from the other six organizations sketched above. The Ford Foundation is much older (founded in 1936) and much bigger than any of the other featured non-profits. It is remarkable how strongly the foundation engages for civil movements and civil rights, in the United States and abroad. Its mission: to fight inequality at all levels.
One core area is gender, racial, and ethnic justice. Internationally, the foundation funds feminist and women’s rights organizations in the Global South, including those addressing the needs of specific vulnerable communities, such as women of color, indigenous women and girls, transwomen, and disabled women and girls. In the US, the Ford Foundation in particularly focuses on issues like reducing mass incarceration, challenging the attack on women’s fundamental rights, and confronting the demonization of immigrants. The foundation works on countering abuses of power and reimagining the government’s role in protecting the safety and dignity of all people—and engaging government as a partner in that process.
«We believe that social movements are built upon individual leadership, strong institutions, and innovative, often high-risk ideas. While the specifics of what we work on have evolved over the years, investments in these three areas have remained the touchstones of everything we do and are central to our theory of how change happens in the world.» Statement of the Ford Foundation
As a large organization, the Ford Foundation also engages to challenge inequalities in several other areas, such as biased media coverage that undermine fairness, tolerance, and inclusion, or unfair rules of the economy.
The overview of the these 7 outstanding organizations shows that there exist numerous civil society organizations and social innovators who tackle human rights issues and strong democratic institutions, often working under challenging conditions. But there is growing support: 5 out of the 7 initiatives featured above gained support from the Skoll Foundation.
About this article
This article is based on the research which we conducted on the work of leading social entrepreneurship organizations which develop constructive solutions thematically linked to the Black Lives Matter movement. A part of the content is taken from the blog which we published in the GOOD Magazin in June, 2020, now presented from a different angle.