Human Rights Agenda Association (HRAA) - Insan Halklari Gundemi Dernegi (IHGD)

Description

The Human Rights Agenda Association (HRAA) was established in 2003 in İzmir with the participation of human rights defenders from different regions of Turkey in order to have activities in human rights field at national and international level.

The HRAA accepts that human rights as a value is above all political ideologies and worldviews, and believes that rights can only be improved by developing an approach to get into the very sources of issues and by using appropriate tactics and strategies to translate concrete proposal into real life. The HRAA categorically denounces all forms of violence, and while acknowledging that the state is the main agent of human rights violations, it equally objects the human rights violations committed by the armed dissident groups. The HRAA with its independent and impartial stance, will sensitise the public conscience towards human rights violations and will aim at developing a model for the society with it’s approach to human rights violations which pays no attention to the identity of the author or the victims of human rights violations.

Areas and Methods of Work

Although IHG considers all categories of human rights as part of its area of activity, it will periodically focus on certain rights and violations.
In addition to Turkey's long-standing human rights problems such as torture and freedom of expression, IHG also operates in the areas of relatively new issues such as minority rights, economic, social and cultural rights as well as the International Criminal Court.
The Human Rights Agenda, which takes up the problems and makes assessments with respect to universal human rights and drafts thematic reports specifying ways to solve those problems, not only will be submitting these reports to the attention of international bodies to which Turkey is a party to, but also will submit them to Turkish governments in order to convince them to make necessary changes and amendments.
Being in close cooperation with the human rights organizations in Turkey, Human Rights Agenda is going to be exchanging opinions and experiences with other organizations by way of participating in the coalitions which have already been established or are going to be founded by itself in the future in order to strengthen human rights activism.
The HRAA will share the tactics and strategies it produces with organisations active in Turkey and in other countries and in this way provide a common ground of experiences
The HRAA will present new developments in the area of human rights to the knowledge and assessment of the human rights defenders in Turkey and in other countries through training programmes it will prepare.