Human rights advocates are regularly exposed to stress, trauma, burnout, and increasingly complex challenges in their work. The Human Rights Institute's Human Rights Resilience Project (HRRP) seeks to strengthen the resilience of advocates and movements by exploring mental health and well-being practices, supporting organizations, and developing practical resources, tools, training materials, and scholarship. These resources cover topics such as organizational resilience, collective care, trauma-informed practice, peer support, and mental well-being, and are designed to support human rights defenders and organizations.
Visit the Human Rights Resilience Project website for the full range of resources, publications, tools, and updates: www.hrresilience.org
Human rights and social justice advocates seek to challenge urgent and grave injustices throughout the world, including working to end wars and mass atrocities; tackle racism, economic inequality, and LGBTQI discrimination; and ensure access to water and a healthy environment. As a result, these activists are exposed to significant trauma, which can impact their mental health.
Advocates suffer from alarming rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, burnout, and stress. Of those professionals surveyed in a Human Rights Resilience Project global study, 19.4% met criteria for PTSD.
We launched the Resources for Resilience website in 2018 as a platform to support improved responses to the psychological harms that occur in the field. Members develop scholarship and educational resources documenting the effects of human rights activism on mental health, as well as NGO responses.
HRI is working on efforts to promote resilience and sustainable activism by collaborating with organizations and collectives from around the world to develop peer-to-peer programming.
Recent Featured Resource
The Activist Cookbook
The Activist Cookbook brings together stories, reflections, care practices, and recipes from human rights defenders and activists across the world. Created through the Human Rights Resilience Project and its partners, it celebrates collective wisdom on care, well-being, and resilience, offering inspiration that individuals, organizations, and movements can adapt to their own contexts.
Explore the Activist Cookbook at https://www.hrresilience.org/project/the-activist-well-being-cookbook/.
