Canadian institution with an international mandate. It works with citizens’ groups and governments in Canada and abroad to promote human and democratic rights, as defined in the International Bill of Human Rights.
It focuses on four themes:
- democratic development and justice
- women’s rights
- indigenous peoples’ rights
- globalization and human rights
in the following countries: Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda (the Great Lakes Region), Togo, Burma, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala.
The organisation’s work emphasises advocacy and capacity building. It provides political, financial and technical support to many frontline human rights groups, indigenous peoples’ groups and democratic movements around the world. It advocates policy changes in national and international institutions, and strengthens the capacity of its partners to do the same. It assists the efforts of NGOs to gain access to multilateral institutions. It works to mainstream women’s rights in human rights mechanisms, bringing together members of civil society and the State from different countries to discuss fundamental human rights and democratic development issues and contributing to building public awareness, in Canada and abroad, of human rights violations and sponsors research, publications, conferences, missions of enquiry and other public events.
WWW site includes: details of themed rogrammes; publication details – some full-text and summaries of publications, occasional papers, etc; full-text of Libertas newsletter