Kurdish Human Rights Project

Description

The Kurdish Human Rights Project, or KHRP, is a registered charity based in London that works on human rights in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, the Caucasus and elsewhere.

It was established in 1992 in response to genocide, war crimes and human rights violations in those regions. Kerim Yildiz and Michael Feeney built a network of lawyers who took cases pro bono to the European Court of Human Rights, the European Commission on Human Rights, the OSCE and UN mechanisms. KHRP protects the rights of all people in the Kurdish regions regardless of ethnicity, religion or belief, and its beneficiaries include people of Kurdish, Turkish, Arab and Persian origin.

Its activities cover litigation and advocacy, trial observation and fact-finding missions, research and publications, and public awareness and education work. Cases it has brought have set precedents at the European Court of Human Rights on the death penalty, detention without trial, rape by state actors and the use of blindfolds in detention. It has also raised awareness of the Ilisu and Yusufeli dam projects and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in Turkey.

In 2005 KHRP received the Sigrid Rausing Trust Award for Outstanding Leadership in International Human Rights, and it was shortlisted for the 2004 Human Rights Award of the Law Society of England and Wales, Liberty and Justice.