Defend, Educate, Inform
The Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) is an award-winning pan-African non-profit organisation that promotes the effective use of the African Human Rights System to advance and protect human rights and development across the continent. Through legal advocacy, capacity building and information sharing, the organisation works to strengthen the efficacy of African regional and sub-regional human rights mechanisms and to end impunity for human rights violations in Africa.
IHRDA’s mandate rests on three interconnected pillars: Defend, Educate and Inform. Through cutting-edge and innovative strategic impact litigation, IHRDA provides pro bono legal representation to victims of human rights violations, ensuring access to justice while advancing broader systemic reform and greater protection of rights. Its legal advocacy has established important jurisprudence, stimulated legal and policy reform, and provided direct support to individuals and communities seeking redress.
Beyond litigation, IHRDA invests in building relevant, timely and up-to-date knowledge, skills and networks of actors within the African Human Rights System, including lawyers, prosecutors, magistrates, judges, law enforcement and security authorities, diplomats, journalists, human rights defenders and civil society organisations. The organisation also supports law and institutional development, including strengthening legal aid systems.
Through its information and knowledge management work, IHRDA collates and disseminates authoritative and specialised analyses to advance understanding and usage of the African Human Rights System. It manages Africa’s most comprehensive free-to-access human rights case law databases, including the African Human Rights Case Law Analyser (CLA) and the Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Database.
IHRDA is the foremost premier provider of pro bono legal counsel for victims of human rights abuses in Africa before African regional human rights bodies, including the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Court on Human and People’s Rights, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice, and the East African Community Court of Justice. The organisation’s aim is to increase the application and enforcement of African human rights instruments towards greater protection of human rights.
IHRDA invests in building the knowledge, skills, and networks of actors in the value chain of the African Human Rights System, including lawyers, prosecutors, magistrates, judges, law enforcement and security authorities, diplomats, journalists, human rights defenders and civil society organisations. IHRDA believes that the African Human Rights System is better utilised when critical actors and the people of Africa know and understand the system.
IHRDA publishes and distributes information on the African Human Rights System. In addition, IHRDA operates the African Human Rights Case Law Analyser (CLA), Africa’s most comprehensive and up-to-date multilingual, free-to-access database of decisions of African human rights mechanisms, as well as the Sexual and Gender Based Violence Database, an English and French collection of national judgments on sexual and gender-based violence cases in Africa.
If you know of a situation of a widespread, systemic or structural human rights violation that you believe requires legal intervention, we may be of help. IHRDA offers its services free of charge.
Though we are a small organization with substantial amount of work, we try as much as possible to respond to and/or support victims especially in cases that have the potential to benefit wider communities and achieve broader systemic change in laws, policies, practices and attitudes. It is important to note that IHRDA only provides legal expertise and does not offer financial and material assistance to victims.
If you need our assistance, please fill this case intake form. We will respond as soon as possible.
Alternatively, you can call us on:
Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA)
949 Brusubi Layout, AU Summit Highway,
P.O. Box 1896 Banjul, The Gambia.
Tel: +220 44 10 413/4
Cell: +220 77 51 200
Email: ihrda@ihrda.org
