Whether it’s unjust imprisonment or outright kidnappings and assassinations, social movement activists are targets of human rights violations around the world. We support movements to strengthen collective security; monitor and document violations; campaign against impunity; take legal actions; and push for the recognition of new forms of human rights.

Frontline communities bearing the brunt of climate chaos and other forms of ecological disruption are the ones holding the most powerful solutions to these and related crises. Ecological justice uplifts collective efforts to build just and sustainable food and energy systems, expose false solutions, and repair relations among people, the Earth, and all living systems.

From field to plate, our food system is steeped in injustice. But social movements are working to change this in inspiring ways. Collectively, they are advancing food sovereignty, which they define as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”

In the face of violence, trauma and health disparities, movements and communities are using healing as a form of resistance.

An array of feminist movements are insisting women, trans, and gender non-conforming people’s rights cannot be isolated from other inequalities like race, class, and colonialism. And they are building vibrant alternatives to sustain life and win liberation, proving that those most targeted by patriarchal policies must be the ones who outline their replacements.

Struggles for territory get to fundamental issues of self-determination and survival in the face of older and newer forms of extractivism, from settler colonialism to global land and water grabbing. Social movements are increasingly broadening discussions on land to more holistic conceptions of territory that include diverse aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and the lives and cultures connected to them.