Human Rights Foundation: Examples from International Practice

We bring you the second in a series of analyzes of the SOLIDARNA Foundation – on the Human Rights Foundation with examples of good practice. We would like to give you an overview of the international context – practices, stakeholders and trends – in which the SOLIDARNA Foundation was established as the first domestic private human rights foundation and present several innovative practices of human rights philanthropy that can serve as guidelines.

The mobilization of private resources – citizens and the business sector – is key to responding flexibly to human rights abuses and raising public awareness, through public protests, investigative journalism and swift advocacy action that necessarily confronts government structures. Likewise, private money provides crisis support to victims of human rights violations, whistleblowers and activists under pressure, as well as support for new and experimental initiatives by individuals, informal groups and new associations that have the right to try but fail, without which human rights activism loses innovation and creativity. It is important to note that private sources of funding must not, nor can they replace, the public ones, necessary for the continuity of the implementation of comprehensive programs of permanent support to marginalized groups, but should be understood as a complementary source of support for innovation and crisis situations.

For the purpose of learning and developing SOLIDARNA, but also other domestic philanthropic programs to support the protection of human rights, this analytical review has been prepared which seeks to show the international context and ways of operation of a dozen private human rights foundations, focusing on foundations operating in Europe. , especially those that support ad hoc actions and new initiatives, which are funded by citizens, and whose founders do not come from the richest countries in the world. Given the current context of increasingly strong attacks on the achieved standards of protection of women’s human rights and gender equality in Croatia, the largest number of presented foundations has women’s human rights in the program focus.