Strategy 2025-2028 - Minority Rights Group
Achieving Protection, Equity and Environmental Justice for Minorities and Indigenous Peoples
We believe in the potential of all – not only those deemed worthy, talented, meritorious, intelligent, creative and valuable. We bear witness to how social structures and deep-rooted anthropocentricism has brought our planet to the brink of destruction. We marvel at unwritten human histories, celebrate myriads of cultures, languages, religions and lifestyles, mindful of how these values have often been deemed less worthy, conscious of the extent to which oppression has subjugated and dominated these communities and extracted their resources.
We listen to communities, collect evidence of human rights violations, and testify to the reach of entrenched structural discrimination and its power to fragment societies. We strive to overcome barriers and believe that people can replace the greed driving the theft and transfer of collective wealth to the hands of the few, with empathy borne from beliefs in the equal worth of every individual and community.
We work with minorities and indigenous peoples towards a world where the realization of human potential is not based on an accident of birth but achieved through building egalitarian societies informed by inclusive education and collective empathy, mindful of the need to overcome the deep anthropocentricity of humanity’s relatively short tenure on the planet. We aim to achieve change by deepening our three objectives, namely, to: combat persecution, challenge marginalization and realize climate justice.
This strategy emerged from consultations with partners and other supporters to respond to sharply increasing challenges facing minority and indigenous communities: widening and deepening populist authoritarian trends and closing civil space, set against multiple crises (including a global pandemic, dysfunctional international governance and conflict) that severely affect those already marginalized and persecuted, who have limited margins to absorb economic shocks, and bear the brunt of scapegoat politics constructed to divert attention from the failures of governments.
The immediate impacts of climate change felt most by those who contributed least to its root causes, demands urgent attention when energies are already stretched by the scale of inequality, exclusion and persecution, and in countering strategies by the powerful to limit the dialogue, challenge and protest that are essential for sustainable, peaceful and inclusive societies. MRG strives for positive change against this tide with the central objective of our four-year strategy being: To empower communities affected by discrimination, poverty and/or oppression to claim their rights to equality, non-discrimination and a life of dignity in peace, and support them to achieve progress towards improved fulfilment of human rights for their members and all groups within them.
MRG will work with ethnic, religious, linguistic and racialized minorities and indigenous peoples to support those experiencing persecution, and who face marginalization and exclusion augmented by existential climate-related threats. We especially support those communities confronting societal threats stemming from hate speech and persistent discrimination when accessing economic and social rights, while documenting crimes against humanity and seeking accountability from perpetrators. We work proactively within administrative, legislative and judicial processes that can garner communities their human rights. While our programmes are co-designed with minority and indigenous communities as grassroots interventions, we also work actively with multilateral organizations to strengthen their reach and impact in upholding human rights and promoting sustainable development.
