Our mission is to enhance the reality of individuals’ human rights through legal means, specifically litigation or legal action. The aim of our litigations is to not only have an immediate effect on the case in question, but has the overarching goal to be of wider societal impact. The benefit of this approach is that action taken on behalf of an individual or a smaller group of victims will – if successful – result in an improvement of the overall situation. This, in turn, brings about sustainable change for victims of human rights abuses in similar situations, or society in general.

We focus on three main areas: severe human rights violations, the right not to live in poverty and the right to a sustainable environment . All three topics are being approached from a wide angle, in line with our belief in the interconnectedness and indivisibility of human rights. For further details please refer to our projects section.

CEHRI was founded in autumn 2014 as a project run by colleagues and friends, to enable us to work on topics that we personally believe in. We have since increased our membership substantially, enabling us to carry out more pro-bono work.

CEHRI are devoted to also working with future lawyers and human rights defenders as well as contribute to holistic educational undertakings fostering inter-generational exchange.

Since its establishment, CEHRI has been actively involving the University of Vienna on a number projects, with the aim to offer future generations of lawyers the opportunity to partake in hands-on human rights work such as the provision of pro bono legal advice and related research. In spring 2015, CEHRI participated at an international conference of law faculties on the development of human rights clinics, in cooperation with the University of Vienna and hosted by the University of Stanford. The aim of the conference was to establish partnerships which would help the law faculty of Vienna University set up its own human rights law clinic. The establishment of the human rights law clinic itself has unfortunately not manifested itself due to a lack of funding.

In autumn 2016, CEHRI was invited to take part at a conference on historic child abuse in Austria, a publication of the conference contribution currently being pending.




 

CEHRI is a pro-bono organisation. We rely on donations to fund our quest
for the enforcement of human rights, so please don’t be afraid to contribute.