Convening Voices for Real-Time Policy and Action to Strengthen Rights

Human Rights at Risk in a Shifting Global Order

The beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidency in the United States creates and coincides with shifts in the global human rights landscape. Political instability, policy reversals, and weakening international accountability have disrupted the work of human rights defenders, organisations and institutions, and emboldened autocratic regimes around the world. As human rights frameworks face demise due to policy shifts and funding cuts, the need for coordinated action is urgent.Human Rights Compass is about real-time policy analysis and action. It aims to strengthen human rights as a framework.

An Initiative to Defend Rights in Turbulent Times

Human Rights Compass brings together human rights actors to analyse policy changes in real time, coordinate responses, and build the long-term resilience of the wider European and international human rights community.

We serve as a platform for real-time human rights policy analysis and strategic coordination through:
» Convening key human rights stakeholders for coordinated policy advice and action.
» Publishing policy briefs to inform and guide advocacy.
» Promoting principled responses to systemic challenges that undermine international human rights frameworks.

Our convenings in 2025 will bring together human rights defenders, policy analysts and multilateral actors to examine how the ongoing changes affect international justice, foreign aid and human rights protection, and to discuss appropriate solutions.

Our Inaugural Convening:
Foreign Policy Realignment of 2025: How to Avoid Adverse Impact on Human Rights?

The first Human Rights Compass Convening will focus on the human rights implications of foreign policy shift in Europe and the US.

Our guiding questions:
» What are the longer-term implications of the new US administration's policies for human rights worldwide?
» The reorientation of European countries and the increase in defence spending: are human rights still seen as an element of global security?
» A new leader of the free world: who are they and what should they do to strengthen the protection of human rights?

The convening will bring together human rights defenders, policy analysts and multilateral actors. A week later, we will publish our first policy brief based on the discussion.

HUMAN RIGHTS COMPASS

Initiative is powered by Geneva-based Progress & Change Action Lab and
Berlin-based Palimpsest GmbH.

All rights reserved, © Progress & Change Action Lab, 2025

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