Human Rights Foundation

Description

Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, focusing on closed and authoritarian societies.

It was founded in 2005 by Thor Halvorssen Mendoza, initially responding to authoritarianism in Latin America before expanding worldwide to countries such as North Korea, Russia and Saudi Arabia. It works through legal advocacy, international litigation and public campaigns on behalf of political prisoners, and it submits cases to United Nations mechanisms such as the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

Since 2009 HRF has organized the Oslo Freedom Forum, an annual conference bringing together human rights activists, former political prisoners, journalists and technologists, with satellite editions held in other cities and at universities worldwide. It awards the Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent and the Thulani Maseko Prize to people who challenge authoritarianism. Other programs include Flash Drives for Freedom, which smuggles foreign media into North Korea, and Combating Kleptocracy, which investigates illicit finance used by authoritarian leaders.

HRF also runs a Financial Freedom program that promotes digital security and financial resilience for human rights defenders, produces documentaries, reports and a podcast, and supports dissident artists through its Art in Protest initiative. It is headquartered in New York City, with staff working from locations including Austin, The Hague, Oslo, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington DC.