Human Rights First (formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan human rights organization based in New York City and Washington, D.C.
Since its founding in 1978, the organization has focused on protecting the rights of refugees, supporting human rights defenders around the world, and pressing for the U.S. government’s full participation in the international human rights system. In recent years, the organization also has turned its attention to the erosion of human rights in the U.S. in the post-9/11 period; to the rise in anti-Semitic, racist and anti-Muslim hate crimes and other forms of discrimination in Europe; and to war crimes and crimes against humanity in places like Darfur.
The work of Human Rights First is based on the principle that core human rights protections apply universally, and thus extend to everyone by virtue of their humanity. While the organization draws on international law and diplomacy to advance its advocacy, it also recognizes and starts from the premise that long-term change is most likely to occur from within a society.
Its slogan is "American ideals, universal value".
Read more about Human Rights First: Mission Statement
Famous quotes containing the words human rights, human and/or rights:
“The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights that America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.”
—Malcolm X (1925–1965)
“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
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—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)