Strategic Thinking and Advocacy

The Fund increased its support for strategic advocacy campaigns beginning in 2008. We support campaigns that meaningfully reference universal human rights norms and involve the participation of communities suffering human rights abuse.

The Fund's support for strategic thinking advocacy grows directly out of its grantmaking in its three other priority areas. For instance, the Fund's initial support for human rights training and education has helped to increase expertise available to advocates seeking to design participatory and effective domestic human rights campaigns.

In 2008, the Fund established two "issue subfunds" through which it supported strategic campaigns in partnership with issue-specific donors. The first subfund focused on abolishing life without parole sentences for youth under 18, a practice that persists only in the United States and has been universally condemned by every other member of the United Nations. The second subfund focused on support to strategic campaigns on migrant worker rights, and efforts to improve due process and conditions for immigrants in detention and deportation proceedings.

Within this docket, the Fund also supports programs to educate policymakers about human rights. Grantees in this area are helping develop a federal body to enforce human rights, and carrying out local campaigns to implement the race and gender conventions at city/state levels.