Human Rights First
| Formation | 1978 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | New York, NY |
|
President/CEO
|
Elisa Massimino |
|
Former President
|
Michael Posner |
| Website |
Human Rights First (formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan human rights organization based in New York City and Washington, D.C.
Since its founding in 1978, the organization has focused on protecting the rights of refugees, supporting human rights defenders around the world, and pressing for the U.S. government’s full participation in the international human rights system. In recent years, the organization has also turned its attention to the erosion of human rights in the U.S. in the post-9/11 period; to the rise in anti-Semitic, racist and anti-Muslim hate crimes and other forms of discrimination in Europe; and to war crimes and crimes against humanity in places like Darfur.
The work of Human Rights First is based on the principle that core human rights protections apply universally, and thus extend to everyone by virtue of their humanity. While the organization draws on international law and diplomacy to advance its advocacy, it also recognizes and starts from the premise that long-term change is most likely to occur from within a society.
Its slogan is "American ideals, universal values".
In the mid-1970s, the International League for Human Rights and a junior bar association called the Council of New York Law Associates (now named the Lawyers Alliance for New York) joined together to launch the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights (which subsequently became the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and, in 2003, Human Rights First). The League’s chairman Jerome Shestack and the Council’s chairman James Silkenat became the co-chairs of Human Rights First’s board.
In 1978, the International League and the Council recruited Michael Posner, a young lawyer from Chicago, to become the organization’s first executive director. Prior to his work in private law practice, Posner spent a year documenting human rights violations committed by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. His revelations about these violations provoked an international public outcry that led to the imposition of U.S. trade sanctions on the Ugandan government.
Alongside Shestack and Silkenat, board members Marvin E. Frankel and Louis Henkin helped guide the organization through its early days. A noted federal judge, author, law professor and civil rights advocate, Frankel was led to service on the board because of his long-standing interest in the plight of Soviet Jews and other international human rights issues. Maintaining his board membership until he passed, Henkin was a distinguished Columbia University law professor known as “the father of human rights” because of his extensive writings on the subject, most notably The Age of Rights (1989).
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