National Economic Social Rights Initiative
The National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) was founded in October 2004 to support communities and social movements advance the principal that fundamental human needs, such as housing, healthcare and education, are basic human rights. Towards this end, NESRI works with community partners and ally organizations to fuel progressive movements by integrating human rights approaches into domestic campaigns and building human rights advocacy models tailored for the United States. NESRI's programs are designed to effectively equip community partners with the tools necessary to use human rights strategies to better advocate for public policy changes.
Specifically, NESRI provides:
- Human rights research, analysis, and documentation;
- Training on human rights standards and strategies;
- Networking to build new alliances through human rights concepts;
- Support in developing transnational or international strategies and, where appropriate, access to formal U.N. mechanisms; and
- Advocacy support using human rights approaches.
Project
NESRI’s work will focus on three substantive areas: the Human Right to Education, Health, and Housing. In each area, NESRI will partner with community activists and develop work and policies that advance and are shaped by human rights standards and criteria:
- Education: NESRI will assist CADRE to monitor the implementation of the new discipline policy based on human rights principles. It will also work with the NYC School Safety Coalition, as they advocate for stronger complaint mechanisms against school police officers, and FFLIC in Louisiana to document human rights abuses related to zero tolerance policies in public schools.
- The health program seeks to integrate a human rights approach into current healthcare reform efforts. With support from USHRF, NESRI and NHeLP have formed the Human Right to Health Collaborative, and over the grant term they will continue developing human rights tools to be used in state based health care reform efforts.
- NESRI also launched a new housing program in June 2008, with an initial focus on the availability of public housing in the Gulf Coast and national policies impacting public housing residents. NESRI will identify the most strategic HR approaches for community activism in this arena, and will form two to three partnerships in which to develop and implement pilot projects. Currently, NESRI partners with Mayday in New Orleans.
Contact Representative
New York, NY 10038