Our Work
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Help us better understand how our work between 2020 and 2023 has supported, built on, and complemented others.
Introducing our new Executive Director
After a thorough search process, our Board has appointed respected human rights lawyer Meghna Abraham as our new ED.
2021 Annual Report
Read our 2021 annual report to find out how we harnessed the power of human rights on a year marked by lack of solidarity and calls to return to business-as-usual.
Embodying equity & justice in our work and workplace
CESR's strategy to embed anti-oppression and social justice practices in all aspects of our work.
2020 Annual Report
In our 2020 annual report, you can learn how we reaffirmed our determination to harness the transformative power of human rights to advance economic and environmental justice.
2019 Annual Report
CESR's annual report for 2019 surveys the impact of our work in a year when millions around the world took to the streets. It shares some of the progress we made—in countries around the world, in international human rights and development spaces, and in the broader field of social justice activism which we serve.
Envisioning a Rights-Based Economy: CESR’s New Strategy 2020-2023
CESR releases its 2020-2023 strategy in a moment ripe for mobilization towards systemic change. At its heart is an ambitious goal to envision a human rights-based economy and catalyze action towards it.
CESR at 25: Achievements and Challenges in a Milestone Year
CESR releases its annual report for 2018, a milestone year that marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of our founding as the first international NGO to bring human rights to the struggle for economic and social justice.
Tackling Economic Inequality Through Human Rights
Extreme economic inequality is increasingly recognized as one of the most pervasive threats to human rights of our time. Combating extreme economic inequality has been at the core of CESR’s mission for many years. Our research and advocacy demonstrate how the rise in extreme inequality is both a cause and consequence of human rights violations. Income and wealth disparities have also been shown to translate directly into starkly unequal economic and social rights outcomes, such as in education, health and life expectancy, and they also entrench gender inequality more deeply.
Celebrating CESR's 25th Anniversary: Event Photos
CESR 25th Anniversary Reception
CESR’s work before the United Nations human rights system
CESR seeks to strengthen accountability mechanisms within the UN system to address economic and social rights.
Supporting Rights Claiming
CESR works in partnership with activists, lawyers and other advocates around the world to expose deficits in national laws and policies, to promote reforms that align national with international standards and principles.
Rights Claiming and Accountability
CESR works to increase accountability for violations of economic and social rights, in particular violations that stem from chronic, systemic failures to fulfill these rights. Issue areas: Advancing Rights Monitoring Supporting Rights Claiming Strengthening Accountability Mechanisms
Rights monitoring: community of practice
CESR facilitates collective thinking around how to monitor economic and social rights, so as to connecting patterns of preventable deprivations of rights to policy failures.
Legal enforcement
Litigation is a critical tactic for claiming economic and social rights and key means of ensuring accountability for rights violations. Over the last two decades, advocates and activists have been able to use the courts to mount successful challenges to a broad range of unjust and discriminatory laws and policies related to economic and social rights. Cases have been brought to address, amongst other things, the lack access to HIV/AIDS medicines, discriminatory housing policies, and the availability of furniture in schools.
Human Rights in Sustainable Development
Persistent pressure will be necessary to shift the trajectory of global development onto a just, sustainable and human rights-realizing path. CESR is advocating for human rights-informed implementation and monitoring of the SDG commitments to tackle inequalities, including economic inequality. Issue Areas: Human Rights in Sustainable Development Economic and Social Rights in Countries in Transition Environmental and Climate Justice
Human Rights in Economic Policy
When a tiny handful of elite individuals control more wealth than the rest of humanity, and countless millions are denied their most basic human rights, unchecked inequality has become a major threat to basic human dignity, not to mention social and economic stability. CESR is on the vanguard of a burgeoning movement that is seeking to bridge the longstanding divide between human rights and economic policy. Issue Areas: Principles for Human Rights in Fiscal Policy Austerity and its Alternatives Challenging Fiscal Injustice through Human Rights Resourcing a Just Recovery from COVID-19