2011 Grants that Make a Difference

Political Rights

• After years of working underground, the Fund’s Tunisian grantees are leading post-revolution reform efforts, by securing the dissolution of the country’s secret police force, a gender parity requirement on electoral candidate lists, and organizing the country’s first free and transparent elections.

• In Morocco, under pressure from Fund grantees, the new constitution adopted in July 2011 criminalized torture and arbitrary detention, guaranteed fair trial rights and freedom of expression, strengthened judicial independence, and gave the Amazigh population's language official status.

• In the DRC, Arche d’Alliance convinced the national electoral commission to issue voter cards to repatriated refugees in South Kivu, enabling them to vote in the November 2011 national elections.

Ending Impunity

• In Guatemala, CALDH won an historic victory in the struggle against impunity: the arrest of General Héctor Mario López Fuenteson on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and forced disappearances. 

• The Mexican Supreme Court ruled that military jurisdiction cannot be applied in cases of human rights violations, which could ultimately bring justice to thousands of victims of abuses by armed forces.  This ruling was the direct result of a strategy in which four Fund grantees brought four cases to the Inter-American Human Rights Court challenging military jurisdiction.

• After more than fifty local women came forward to testify at trial, a military court handed down the first conviction of a commanding officer for mass rape in eastern DRC. Fund grantees were involved in nearly every aspect of this case—documenting the rapes, facilitating witness testimony at the trial, and providing legal aid and psychological counseling to the women.

• The National Union of People’s Lawyers in the Philippines is pioneering the use of a new legal tool, the writ of amparo, to prevent the military from stalling cases of extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances.  NUPL has surfaced five disappeared persons thus far. 

Reproductive and Sexuality Rights

• In Mexico, Centro Mujeres stopped a state constitutional amendment that aimed to ban abortion under any circumstance and imprison women if they had abortions.

• Thai grantees won a string of long-fought victories on LGBT rights: Thailand for the first time broke its silence on LGBT rights at the UN, signing the 85-country joint demand to end violence and discrimination against LGBT people and voting in support of the UN Human Rights Council's first-ever resolution on sexual orientation and gender identity. 

Children’s Rights

• DCI-Liberia—started just two years ago with seed money from the Fund—was instrumental in pressing the Liberian government to pass a Child Rights Act, establishing a framework to prevent child labor and guarantee the right to education.

Environmental Rights

• In Uganda, the National Association of Professional Environmentalists led coalition efforts that successfully protected communities’ environmental rights by stopping oil companies from building a refinery in the Kabowa wildlife reserve.

• Green Advocates convinced the Liberian Environmental Protection Agency to investigate multi-national corporation Sime Darby, which operates a rubber plantation.  Allegations include forced displacement, unfair labor conditions and pollution of water sources. 

Labor Rights

• In Liberia, the Movement for Labor Justice worked closely with workers on the Firestone rubber plantation to eradicate child labor on all its plantations, and to negotiate for better wages and enhanced safety protections for rubber tappers.

• Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum successfully pressed the Sindh government to reform regulations that forced fisherfolk into bonded labor and deprived them of their livelihood.  The former corruption-ridden contract system was replaced with a more equitable licensing system that will benefit 500,000 fishermen.