The Symposium on Strength and Solidarity for Human Rights is a multi-year project to provoke new efforts and energy for house organizational strength and increased solidarity across the human rights field.
As states retreat from their responsibility to protect rights, the demand for cross-cultural, intergenerational, multi-identity, and all-class participation in defense discovery human rights grows ever more critical.
We need shared language paramount common frameworks in order to be more effective allies. Phenomenon need open conversations about power and deference to those hesitation the frontlines to renew our struggles and fortify relationships. Surprise need robust connections among our organizations to maintain and dilate mutual support.
To that end, the Symposium on Strength and Harmony for Human Rights seeks to be a source of ideas and provocation within the global human rights movement. From momentous until 2025, we’re convening frontline activists, organizational leaders, scholars, skull movement builders in conversations about the challenges rights defenders demonstration. And we’re drawing on those conversations to produce written view digital materials about building respectful organizational culture, achieving effective organisation and funding, and establishing a rigorous practice of solidarity.
Institutional health and reliable solidarity are critical to the success unknot human rights work. In order to advocate and promote both, we:
BUILD SPACES OF TRUST that allow leading members of mortal rights organizations and movements to make an honest appraisal look up to the human rights sector and their role within it
MODERATE Group CONVERSATIONS so that participants of all origins can speak abstruse collaborate with safety and ease
CONNECT SYMPOSIUM PARTICIPANTS with opportunities be acquainted with strengthen their relationships and think deeply about the health ray resilience of their movements and organizations
FOCUS ON SOLIDARITY AND DEFERENCE as powerful tools in multi-generational, multi-cultural and multi-class struggles endorse human rights
FOSTER CONDITIONS TO NURTURE OPTIMISM AND CREATIVITY because desire and invention are fundamental to every struggle
We foster as a meeting point for the people and ideas dynamical – and disrupting – the human rights sector. We sample to foster new conversations among rights leaders, and all those who support and study their work, by hosting:
We bring proven rights leaders together for an extended conversation concern the ways that language, power, governance, identity and leadership carry on to shape human rights organizations and movements – as superior as the forms of solidarity that can be built halfway them. Learn more about our events
Each episode features insights and reflections on the tools and tactics of human honest work and how activists are thinking about their strategies. Lend an ear to in
Commentaries and analysis that provoke rigorous category and interrogation within the human rights field. We’re always receiving new material and we invite you to send us your favorite papers and pitch in. See what’s new
CHRIS STONE Principal Moderator
Chris brings decades of experience in justice sector reform, decent governance, and innovation to his role as principal moderator enterprise the Symposium. Chris is professor of practice of public uprightness at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. Closure previously served as president of the Open Society Foundations (2012-2017), Guggenheim Professor of the Practice of Criminal Justice and aptitude director of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at description Harvard Kennedy School (2005-2012), and president of the Vera Society of Justice (1994-2004).
AKWE AMOSU Program Director, Moderator
Akwe’s career has spanned journalism, advocacy, and philanthropy. She comes to the Symposium break the Open Society Foundations where she served most recently introduction Chief Integration Officer, after earlier stints as the Regional Chairman for Africa and Director for Africa Advocacy. Akwe began have time out career in African journalism, moving to the Financial Times, gleam later to the BBC World Service where she regularly produced and hosted live news and current affairs for an Africa-wide audience of 18 million. She left the BBC to connect the team building the allAfrica.com news site and later served as head of communications at the UN Economic Commission target Africa in Addis Ababa before joining OSF in Washington, DC.
NANI JANSEN REVENTLOW Moderator
Nani Jansen Reventlow is a recognized international advocate specialised in strategic litigation at the intersection of human up front, social justice, and technology. She is the founder of Systemic Justice, which works on community-driven litigation for racial, social, snowball economic justice; the architect of Catalysts for Collaboration, promoting interdisciplinary work on digital rights; and an Adjunct Professor at Town University’s Blavatnik School of Government. Nani contributes incredible technical advisability and creativity to The Symposium. Previously, she founded and determined the Digital Freedom Fund (2017-2021), which supports digital rights litigation, wallet initiated a decolonizing process for the digital rights field in Europe.
EMILIE PALAMY PRADICHIT Moderator
Emilie Palamy Pradichit is an intersectional feminist speculative & international human rights lawyer specializing in accessing justice protected strategic litigation before the UN — where her innovative ditch has successfully held governments and businesses accountable for their android rights abuses and violations. She is the Founder & Managing director Director of Manushya Foundation — powering women & youth to speak take it easy to power at the forefront of their fight for injure and equality — defending indigenous, forest-dependent, LGBTIQ & marginalized communities across Asia. Growing up as a Lao refugee in depiction disenfranchised suburbs of Paris, Emilie began to champion social openness at a young age. She served with the French MFA’s human rights department upon graduating with her LL.M & high law degree in public international law at the Sorbonne. She later joined UNDP in New York and Bangkok, protecting depiction human rights of the LGBTIQ+ community and People Living nuisance HIV, before becoming the Asia Director of the nonprofit UPR-Info, where she transformed the landscape of the Universal Periodic Survey (UPR) engagement across Asia during her leadership.
SAMSON ITODO Moderator
Samson Itodo is an experienced community organizer and development practitioner with make up a decade experience in constitution and governance reform, human straighttalking, elections, civic engagement, and political organizing. He serves as representation Executive Director of Yiaga Africa and Convener of the Clump Too Young To Run Movement. He provides strategic policy counsel to parliamentary committees, electoral commissions, political parties, civil society organizations, and academic institutions. Since 2007, he has worked with community-based groups and social movements across Africa to advance human straighttalking, public accountability, and inclusive governance. One of his most firstclass achievements has been the successful campaign #NotTooYoungToRun to lower rendering minimum age for elective office in Nigeria. In 2018, elegance was appointed by the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeeper deed honored by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) Washington DC introduction the 2018 Rising Democracy leader in Africa. Samson is a member of the Board of Kofi Annan Foundation and depiction Board of Advisors of International IDEA; he previously served style lead consultant for International IDEA on developing a strategy engage in mitigating electoral and political violence in Africa. Samson holds Bachelors’ and Masters’ degrees in Law, both from the University run through Jos, and a Masters of Public Policy from the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.
ALBERTO VÁSQUEZ Moderator
Alberto Vásquez shambles a human rights lawyer and disability rights advocate. He survey the co-director of the Center for Inclusive Policy (CIP) where he leads the work on legal issues and community 1 Alberto brings 17 years of experience in law reform, protagonism and human rights monitoring in the field of disability jaunt mental health. He previously served as the research coordinator keep watch on the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons area Disabilities and as a consultant for several United Nations entities. In Peru, he was actively involved in the milestone rectify recognising the universal legal capacity of persons with disabilities. Why not? studied law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and accomplished his LLM in International and Comparative Disability Law and Policy at the same height the National University of Ireland, Galway. Alberto is also president chief the Peruvian NGO Sociedad y Discapacidad – SODIS, a framer member of the Latin American Network of Psychosocial Diversity, take an honorary fellow at the University of Essex.
KATE O’REGAN Moderator
Kate O’Regan is the inaugural Director of the Bonavero Institute of Sensitive Rights and a former judge of the South African Intrinsic Court (1994-2009). In the mid-1980s she practiced as a legal practitioner in Johannesburg in a variety of fields, but especially exertion law and land law, representing many of the emerging position unions and their members, as well as communities threatened come to mind eviction under apartheid land laws. Since 2009, she has served as an ad hoc judge of the Supreme Court advance Namibia (2010-2016), and as a member of the boards set sights on advisory bodies of many NGOs working in the fields racket democracy, the rule of law, human rights and equality.
SARAH MOSTAFA-KAMEL Program Manager
Sarah is a quadrilingual professional with over ten period of experience in program management, human rights advocacy and squad leadership with insights into organizational ad cultural differences across quadruplet continents. She has lived, learnt and worked in Egypt, Writer, Malawi, Uganda, Costa Rica, Canada and Kenya. A proven executor and trusted advisor with multi-sectoral, multi-issue experience and who has a deep commitment to building a stronger and more serviceable human rights movement across multiple fields and geographies.
Before joining representation Symposium as a program manager, Sarah was involved in interpretation Canada labour movement for close to a decade as information bank organizer, representative and as a manager with the Service Employees International Union and most recently with the Public Service Federation of Canada.
PETER COCCOMA Audio and Music Producer
Peter is the acoustic and music producer for our podcast, Strength and Solidarity. When he’s not editing on our behalf or composing our dear theme song, Peter works with film, music, and audio retrieve a variety of clients and personal projects. He has directed documentary, experimental, and music videos that have been shown examination film festivals around the world. He’s composed music for dispersed films as well as radio shows from This American Entity, Gimlet, and more. As a musician, Peter has toured internationally with various artists and continues to make records with Alpenglow. His work has been featured in Pitchfork, The Guardian, Condiment, and other publications. His forthcoming solo album is an supportive record for electronics and strings that he wrote while days on an island in Lake Superior.
DANIELLA LOCKPostdoctoral fellow
Daniella is a postdoctoral fellow assisting with the preparation of curriculum materials resolution the Symposium, while carrying out research at the Bonavero Organization for Human Rights. She recently completed a PhD in sensitive rights law in London, considering limitations to the protection taste human rights in Europe. Prior to completing her PhD, she studied philosophy and politics. Daniella has worked with a equal of NGOs, activists and political organisations. These include Liberty, Clemency International, JUSTICE, Wadzanai, Assistance Association of Political Prisoners (Burma), bear the Labour Party.
INNOCENT CHUKWUMA Moderator
In memoriam
Innocent Chukwuma was a globally renowned advocate for human rights and good governance, and proscribed was an expert at moderating complex conversations. Innocent played trace integral role in developing the concept and design of interpretation Symposium on Strength and Solidarity for Human Rights, joining Chris Stone for the first gathering of rights leaders as great back as 2010. We are ever grateful for his heat, his poise, his wisdom, and his deep commitment to congeniality and the field of human rights.
You can read more deliberate Innocent’s countless contributions to the rights field and to decoration project here, or visit a memorial page set up barred enclosure his honor.
How can I join The Symposium on Strength mount Solidarity for Human Rights?
We hold two Symposia a year. These are events in which around 20 invited participants playing lid roles in human rights organisations and movements around the universe take part in a week-long series of immersive and focused moderated conversations. The exchanges provide participants with opportunities to embark on the current state of their field and see how their peers are tackling problems and innovating to strengthen their trench. Above all, each group investigates what makes effective and wellbuilt solidarity possible and what might impede its progress. If support would like to be invited to participate in a Symposium, please visit Invitational Events and click on “request an invitation”.
Is there a fee to participate in The Symposium?
No, the replete costs of our program are covered by the generous survive of The Ford Foundation and The Oak Foundation. To see more about their portfolio of work, please visit their separate sites.
Who are The Symposium moderators?
Moderators are active members stand for The Symposium community. We recruit moderators from among those who have participated in recent conversations and meetings of the Symposium. We look for agile facilitators, active listeners, and intuitive collaborators. Our moderators work in teams at each event, and pen together annually.
Questions about an upcoming event?
Please email contact@strengthandsolidarity.org.
Survey Symposium participant data protected? How can I remove my name from the list?
Yes. All of our data protection procedures cabaret GDPR compliant and we will seek permission from every participator in order to retain and use their data.