promoting innovative ideas and practices.
The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice is a leading action-research hub that contributes to the global human rights project through scholarship, education, field building, advocacy, and legal practice. Across a wide range of issue areas and projects, we collaborate closely with partners from diverse geographies and disciplines on the new ideas, practices, and strategies that are needed to address existential challenges to human rights and global justice.
reimagining human rights for the twenty-first century.
We nurture ideas, actions, and connections that promote rights-based solutions to ecological emergencies, technological disruptions, deepening inequalities, threats to democracy and peace, and other urgent challenges to global governance and justice. We pursue initiatives that expand and catalyze the collective capacity of the human rights field. We deepen collaborations among communities of thought and practice from around the world, train future human rights thinkers and doers, and disseminate promising approaches to global justice research and advocacy.
staying current.
Distinguished Speaker Series
Over the last two years, the Center has curated the Future of Rights & Governance (FORGE) program, a unique space for reflection and innovation that brings together researchers and practitioners from around the world. The Distinguished Speaker Series will expand FORGE’s programming through participatory and thought-provoking conversations designed to grapple with essential challenges to global rights and governance, from AI to ecological emergencies to geopolitical transformations, while also exploring promising solutions from across disciplines.
Resources
The Whale Protection and Legal Personhood Declaration
Climate & Environment
To bring the Declaration to life, A collaboration with the MOTH Program that brought together Indigenous leadership, legal expertise and innovation, and cutting-edge whale communication science.
Resources
Climate Change on Trial
Climate & Environment
Can human rights help combat climate change? A global wave of climate litigation says yes, with a new landmark book by César Rodríguez-Garavito and educational toolkit from the Climate Law Accelerator at NYU Law spotlighting the evolution and power of rights-based legal action.
Events
MOTH Festival of Ideas 2026
Climate & Environment
The More-than-Human Life (MOTH) Festival of Ideas is an event that’s dedicated to the exploration of the rich and rapidly evolving field of inquiry and action that seeks to bring the more-than-human world into the sphere of moral, legal, and social concern. The 2026 Festival will run from May 14-16 in London, United Kingdom.
Resources
NYU & UNEP Explore a Decade of the R2HE in Practice
Climate & Environment
A new report by the Earth Rights Research & Action, co-published with the United Nations Environment Programme, identifies and analyzes key trends in how courts around the world have interpreted and applied the right to a healthy environment over the past decade.
Resources
What if We Understood What Animals Are Saying?: The Legal Impact of AI-Assisted Studies of Animal Communication
Climate & Environment
Resources
Introducing the MOTH Ideas Hub
Climate & Environment
Through the Ideas Hub, the MOTH Program publishes interdisciplinary short-form, research-grounded articles and multimedia featuring ideas that explore the legal, philosophical, scientific, and cultural paradigms reshaping how we think about nonhuman life and our interconnected world. We also invite submissions in different formats – for example, pictures, videos, animations, multimedia, and more.
learn, connect, or contribute.
Explore our platform to find resources, stay informed about events, connect with like-minded individuals and organizations, and discover how you can play a role in shaping the future of human rights and global justice.
