Why “Rights Action”

In the mid-1990s, we changed our name from Guatemala Partners to Rights Action. Our work is based on long-term funding and support relations with community-based partner groups resisting exploitation, impoverishment and violence, corruption and impunity, and fighting for their lands, Mother Earth and rights. This can only be achieved through concerted action, from the local to national to global north levels.

What Do We Do?

Rights Action directly funds and supports community organizations working and struggling in defense of their individual and collective rights, their lands and territories, their waters, forests and livelihoods, and for truth and justice.

Our partner groups plan and carry out their own development projects, their own land, environmental and human rights defense struggles, their ‘truth/ memory/ justice’ struggles, and their own emergency relief projects.

We support education, legal work and activism to hold accountable the U.S. and Canadian governments, and our companies and investors that oftentimes cause and profit from exploitation and poverty, environmental destruction, repression and violence, corruption and impunity in Honduras and Guatemala.

“One does not fear jail and death when one fights in defense of territory. Tired of so much dispossession by other countries, we defend our rights.” (Maria Cuc Choc)

“One does not fear jail and death when one fights in defense of territory. Tired of so much dispossession by other countries, we defend our rights.”
(Maria Cuc Choc)

Our Mission:

Directly funding: community human rights, land and environmental defense struggles; emergency response work; truth, moemory, justice struggles.

Working to expose and hold accountable the U.S. and Canadian governments, companies and investors, and other international actors (World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, etc.) that help cause and profit from repression and human rights violations, violent evictions and environmental harms.

Why Guatemala and Honduras?

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Rights Action has long worked mainly in Guatemala and Honduras where we have developed long-term relationships of trust and commitment. The nature of the injustices our partner groups are struggling to overcome are similar to many countries and regions of the global south and require long-term commitments and coordinated actions not only in Guatemala and Honduras, but also - and arguably more importantly - in the global north, particularly the U.S. and Canada.

The injustices, violence and harms they suffer are not “national” issues, but rather are “local-to-national-to-global” issues, at the same time. Remedying the underlying causes of the hardships faced by the communities we support requires a proper understanding of local-to-national-to-global nature of poverty and exploitation, racism and repression, environmental destruction, corruption and impunity.

Policies and actions of the U.S. and Canadian governments, of the U.S. military, of North American companies and investors, and of the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, etc., oftentimes cause and benefit from repression and human rights violations, violent evictions and environmental harms, impunity and corruption in Honduras and Guatemala.

Community organizations are at the forefront of efforts to construct communities, societies and a global community based on equality, human rights and justice, and respect for the environment.