Human Rights Compass Endorsments

Human Rights Compass has already proven to be a valuable meeting place for longer-term and more profound reflections on the challenges of multinational human rights work than other forums permit. We need such initiatives to reconsider our strategies and visions for future human rights promotion in a time when authoritarian governments and values are challenging international organisations and international law in many ways.

Human Rights Compass has facilitated a broad range of conversations that come at a critical moment for multilateralism. We are witnessing selective responses to some of the most acute crisis situations, record levels of displacement, rising violence, widespread violations of international law, and entrenched impunity for perpetrators across the globe, while human rights defenders continue to face criminalisation, harassment, and threats worldwide. Alongside dangerous backsliding on human rights and the rule of law, the broader human rights ecosystem risks being severely affected as the United Nations navigates an unprecedented political and liquidity crisis, accompanied by the wider UN80 reform process, which seeks to adapt a twentieth-century institution to the realities of the twenty-first. In this context, we need as many constructive, diverse, and accessible forums as possible. The virtual format of the Human Rights Compass offers an important space for policymakers, civil society organisations, and other experts to convene, exchange insights, and reflect not only on the challenges facing the international system but also on the opportunities to navigate them.