Global Rights

Mission:

Global Rights was a human rights advocacy group that partnered with local activists to challenge injustice and amplify new voices within the global discourse. With offices in countries around the world, they helped local activists create just societies through proven strategies for effecting change.

Channel Grant:

2007: Channel made a grant to Global Rights in order to support the Minority Women’s Rights Project in Nepal, a project which brought women leaders from minority and other marginalized communities into the political process to contribute to the creation of new laws and a new constitution for the country.   The project provided marginalized Dalit, indigenous and Madhesi women with opportunities to identify priority issues and develop constitutional language to advance their own objectives for creating political space and more meaningful social inclusion. Through participatory processes, women were trained to document rights violations occurring in their communities and to utilize this documentation to draft constitution language, as well as develop and implement advocacy campaigns for additional rights protections in law and in the new Nepalese constitution.

Outcome:

In November 2008, Global Rights conducted a workshop in Kathmandu, Nepal focused on disseminating the results of its groundbreaking Participatory Action Research and sharing advocacy strategies around the inclusion of Dalit, Madheshi, and indigenous women’s perspectives and needs in the writing of Nepal’s new constitution. Women’s rights activists talked about their work and shared information about a host of successful advocacy strategies, including street theater, radio broadcasts, and networking. Most importantly, “the processes for identifying needs and establishing the goals for legal and constitutional protections were led by the very women who will benefit from them.”