Organization
The Human Rights Foundation mission is to "unite people—regardless of their political, cultural, and ideological orientations—in the common cause of defending human rights and promoting liberal democracy globally, with an expertise in the Americas. Our mission is to ensure that freedom is both preserved and promoted".
HRF's website states that it adheres to the definition of human rights as put forth in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976), believing that all individuals are entitled to the right to speak freely, the right to worship in the manner of their choice, the right to freely associate with those of like mind, the right to acquire and dispose of property, the right to leave and enter their country, the right to equal treatment and due process under law, the right to be able to participate in the government of their country, freedom from arbitrary detainment or exile, freedom from slavery and torture, and freedom from interference and coercion in matters of conscience.
HRF states that it operates transparently. It states that it makes public all of its research and that it is open to accepting new information and criticisms that might undermine its positions.
HRF's Board of Directors are Thor Halvorssen Mendoza (President and CEO), Ron Jacobs, Václav Havel, Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr. and Robert A. Sirico.
It is guided and endorsed by an International Council that includes former political prisoners Vaclav Havel, Vladimir Bukovsky, Mutabar Tadjibaeva, Jacqueline Moudeina, Abdel Nasser Ould Ethmane, Park Sang-hak, Palden Gyatso, Ramón José Velásquez, Elie Wiesel, and Harry Wu, as well as chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, former Estonian prime minister Mart Laar, political commentator Álvaro Vargas Llosa, and public policy professor James Q. Wilson. Jurist and law professor Kenneth Anderson is also on their International Council. Anderson was founding director of the Human Rights Watch Arms Division and later general counsel to the Open Society Institute/Soros Foundations.
Read more about this topic: Human Rights Foundation
Famous quotes containing the word organization:
“I will never accept that I got a free ride. It wasn’t free at all. My ancestors were brought here against their will. They were made to work and help build the country. I worked in the cotton fields from the age of seven. I worked in the laundry for twenty- three years. I worked for the national organization for nine years. I just retired from city government after twelve-and-a- half years.”
—Johnnie Tillmon (b. 1926)
“The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
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—Katharine Pearson Woods (1853–1923)