Some highlights
In 2004, Rights & Democracy launched its Human Rights Impact Assessment initiative to ensure that foreign investment projects in fragile countries take human rights into account. The initiative's unique and innovative methodology enables civil society organizations to measure the real impact of investments on the human rights of affected communities.
Rights & Democracy was the first organization in the world to offer political and financial support to Burma's government-in-exile. This commitment continues to this day. Rights & Democracy played an important role in the adoption of a motion by Canada's Parliament in May 2005 that called for the imposition of sanctions against the junta in an effort to encourage its participation in a tripartite dialogue with the National League for Democracy and ethnic leaders of Burma, as stipulated in 28 UN resolutions.
Rights & Democracy played a leading role in negotiating the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted in 2007 by the UN General Assembly. Rights & Democracy worked with international Indigenous representatives in the development of certain provisions.
Rights & Democracy is one of the first organizations to support the establishment of the Office of the Ombudsman (OPC), under the Haitian Constitution of 1987, in order to provide protection to individuals against all form of abuse or excessive use of violence by members of the public administration.
In May 2007, the Coalition for Women's Human Rights in Conflict Situations, coordinated by Rights & Democracy, launched its Nairobi Declaration campaign. The international initiative calls for all legal procedures and programs committed to reconstruction in post conflict societies to ensure the rights of women and girl survivors of sexual violence to a remedy and reparation.
