MISSION STATEMENT
By creatively using international human rights law in the US court system and those of other nations, International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) protects and empowers individuals victimized by multinational corporations and other powerful entities that traditionally enjoy impunity. Designed to foster global operations that, at a minimum, conform to human rights principles, IRAdvocates will challenge platitudes about social responsibility and contribute to eliminating the corporate practice of imposing human rights violations on others.
ABOUT IRADVOCATES
International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) is a new organization that is the successor to the litigation department of the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF). IRAdvocates is dedicated to the expansion of ILRF’s successful efforts to use innovative legal mechanisms to hold corporations and governments accountable for human rights violations worldwide.
The separation from ILRF was based on a decision to allow the ILRF legal team to focus on using pioneering tools to introduce the rule of law to companies’ usually empty assertions of “corporate social responsibility.” The ILRF will continue to partner with IRAdvocates with complementary campaigns, as well as policy initiatives.
IRAdvoactes has two interrelated parts:
Challenges to impunity: Seeking out and litigating cutting edge cases that either provide a new theory for holding governments and corporations liable for human rights violations
U.S. Courts: Using international human rights law to require multinational companies to comply with internationally recognized worker rights.
— Chris Saeger, "Strengthening Rule of Law Through Aid for Human Rights Litigation in National Courts: A Case Study of Oil Multinational Corporations Complicit in Human Rights Violations in Sudan and Nigeria (December 2007)
— Terry Collingsworth, "Using the Alien Tort Claims Act to Introduce the Rule of Law to the Global Economy (2005)
International Rights Advocates is a nonprofit dedicated to holding corporations accountable for human rights violations in countries around the world. IRAdvocates already has 14 pending cases but without your support, IRAdvocates will not be able to continue its litigation.