The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) is a nonprofit advocacy organization headquartered in Washington, DC that describes itself as "an advocate for and with the working poor around the world". ILRF, formerly the International Labor Rights Education & Research Fund, was founded in 1986. The organization's mission statement reads, "ILRF believes that all workers have the right to a safe working environment where they are treated with dignity and respect, and where they can organize freely to defend and promote their rights and interests. ILRF works to develop practical and effective tools to assist workers in winning enforcement of protections for their basic rights, and hold labor rights violators accountable."
After Kailash Satyarthi and Bread for the World founded Rugmark in 1994, ILRF helped the young foundation open a US-based office in DC in 1995; the two groups continue to share offices today. In 2007, the litigation department of ILRF, noted for its use of the Alien Tort Claims Act in litigation against those who violate labor rights, was spun off into a separate organization, International Rights Advocates ("IRAdvocates"). ILRF now focuses primarily on research, lobbying, boycott campaigns and various other advocacy roles though it retains legal staff.
Read more about International Labor Rights Forum: Activities
Famous quotes containing the words labor, rights and/or forum:
“Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“I wish to reiterate all the reasons which [my predecessor] has presented in favor of the policy of maintaining a strong navy as the best conservator of our peace with other nations and the best means of securing respect for the assertion of our rights of the defense of our interests, and the exercise of our influence in international matters.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)