Human Rights Internet

Description

Human Rights Internet (HRI) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Ottawa, Canada, that promotes human rights and social justice.

Founded in 1976 under the name InterNet: the International Human Rights Documentation Network, it has worked through documentation, publications, events, leadership opportunities and, more recently, small grants. It once served as a non-governmental repository for English-language human rights documentation produced by organizations worldwide, cataloguing material across a broad range of human rights issues; those collections, now covering tens of thousands of documents, are made available online through a commercial publisher for a fee.

From 1998 to 2013 HRI ran internship programs that placed Canadian youth in foreign countries, and from 1992 to 2006 it published the Human Rights Tribune. Today its work continues through two programs: a Small Grants Competition, which funds Canadian-based non-governmental organizations, community groups, schools and individuals pursuing initiatives that support rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the sale of its historic documentation collections, which funds those grants.

It operates as a volunteer-run virtual office, governed by a board of directors, and reviews grant applications as a group.