Capacity Building

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2010 Advocate Susan Aryeetey learned about the Commonwealth Scholarship at Oxford from HRAP.

ISHR offers its capacity building expertise to Human Rights Advocates Program (HRAP) alumni and their organizations as well as to the human rights community at large.

Alumni

ISHR has continued to build the capacity of its advocates even after they leave HRAP. ISHR maintains a list of scholarship and fellowship opportunities which it shares with HRAP alumni. Since 2010, this support has led to HRAP alumni receiving scholarships to universities including Oxford University (Sylvester Uhaa and Susan Aryeetey) and Tufts (Bakary Tandia). HRAP alumni have been named to the Top 99 Under 33 Foreign Policy Leaders (Elvis Mbembe Binda) and as members of the Clinton Global Initiative (Peter Mulbah and Musola Cathrine Kaseketi).

Upon request, ISHR provides technical advice to HRAP alumni. Since 2010, ISHR has advised HRAP alumni on their grant proposals resulting in funding totaling $1.5 million for projects ranging from support for pro bono legal services for women in Ghana and Uganda to youth projects in the Balkans and Sudan.

Support Beyond Campus

ISHR has shared its capacity building expertise in both small and large settings. In 2017 and 2018, ISHR organized workshops at the UN Committee on the Status of Women and the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Upon request, ISHR has designed and led workshops for smaller groups of human rights advocates visiting New York City.

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Jaclyn Sawyer of Breaking Ground speaks during the capacity building workshop organized during CSW62.

ISHR works with HRAP alumni to make their considerable expertise available to the public. On the HRAP Channel on YouTube, HRAP alumni have shared their knowledge in videos that are easily accessible to those interested in human rights. The most recent video, which features Advocate Samuel Matsikure, is available at HRAP on YouTube.

ISHR has introduced HRAP participants to publishing opportunities. James Aniyamuzaala and Akinyi Ocholla have published in the Journal of Human Rights Practice (Oxford). Their articles can be access here (Aniyamuzaala) and here (Ocholla).

In honor of HRAP’s 30th cohort, ISHR has been working with the advocates on a series of reflections that will highlight the strategies, tools and ethical considerations that have contributed to their human rights advocacy over the years. More than 25 HRAP alumni including Delphine Djiraibe of Chad, Samuel Kofi Woods of Liberia and Alejandra Ancheita of Mexico have contributed.