The International Human Rights Funders Group and Foundation Center recently published Advancing Human Rights: Update on Global Foundation Grantmaking, a report analyzing the who, what, where, and how of human rights philanthropy, notes Merrill Sovner, a research fellow at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. The latest update gives us an increasingly robust data set on human rights grantmaking around the world, she writes for Open Democracy.
Where do political parties, labor unions and religious institutions, as vital members of a plural and civil society, stand in the disbursement of international resources on human rights? Sovner asks:
Many European political parties maintain operational foundations that work on human rights issues around the world, as well as the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute. As for labor unions, the Solidarity Center is affiliated with the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations) to promote workers’ rights worldwide, and it also works alongside the National Endowment for Democracy, whose grantmaking is included in the Advancing Human Rights research.