Human Rights Forum

Description

Human Rights Forum is an Indian civil liberties and human rights organization active in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

It was formed in 1998 by a group of activists, including K. Balagopal, after a split from the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee. It grew out of a decades-old civil liberties movement that had mainly focused on the state and state violence, and it set out to build a broader rights movement that also takes in caste, gender, regional and other forms of domination. It works alongside other rights groups that share a similar agenda.

The Forum holds that the rights movement has a distinct role to play in protecting economic, social and political democracy, and that this role should extend beyond resisting state repression to helping people claim their rights in everyday life. It campaigns on issues such as displacement, gender, environment, caste and state repression. It has opposed nuclear power and uranium mining projects and large infrastructure projects, citing concerns about displacement and environmental harm.

The organization treats state violence and undemocratic actions by armed groups such as Naxalite parties as separate matters, refusing to conflate the two. It condemns undemocratic conduct by any movement that claims to fight for democracy, including such armed groups, while continuing to prioritize scrutiny of the state as the main source of rights violations.