Resilience in Human Rights Executive Summary

Co-researchers: Lucia Nader, Tania Correa, Catherine Shutt and Ashley F. Thomas1

Research carried out between February 2023 and April 2024

Over the last decade, funders and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the world have been engaging in a much-needed discussion on building resilience in the human rights field. External threats to activism and civil society have proliferated and diversified. The internal challenges that NGOs and funders face in supporting effective, holistic approaches to protection and resilience have also become more evident. The task of building resilience is highly complex due to the unique cultural, political, and socioeconomic conditions of the local contexts in which human rights defenders and organizations work.

This study aimed to better understand what resilience is (and is not) and how to build and assess it. The results presented below are based on a literature review and 35 semi-structured interviews with 48 representatives of NGOs, foundations, and experts from both the Global South and the Global North.