The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights includes human rights as a key framework for its overall mission and programs to promote the human rights of migrants in the U.S. and internationally, to strengthen the capacity of immigrant communities to advocate for their rights, and to build critical alliances.

A cornerstone of NNIRR’s human rights education work is its BRIDGE popular education curricula. BRIDGE workshops are conducted in NNIRR’s Immigrant and Refugee Rights Training Institute, held annually for about 100 community-based activists and advocates, as well as in new regional institutes, recently held in the Northwest and Southeast, which give greater community access. Workshops on “Migrant Rights are Human Rights” are among the most frequently requested trainings for immigrant communities and allies.

NNIRR works to bring a human rights perspective to immigration policy issues, including awareness of the human rights crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. NNIRR partnered in April 2007 with member groups, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos in Tucson, to organize "Braving Borders, Building Bridges: A Journey for Human Rights," a national tour of 15 African American leaders who traveled to the Arizona-Sonora border region for a precedent-setting human rights investigation and visit with impacted border communities.  In May 2007, NNIRR partnered with the Human Rights Program of the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Program to co-organize the civil society portion of 9-city mission of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, Dr. Jorge Bustamante. More than 15 NNIRR member organizations worked on various parts of the tour, producing reports, organizing hearings, and providing documentation.

On International Migrants Day (December 18) NNIRR will release the first annual “100 Stories” report of its Human Rights Immigrant Communities Action Network (HURRICANE). This education, documentation and advocacy project, utilizes the innovative “Martus” human rights documentation software program that has been adapted for immigrant communities. The project is expanding nationwide, to include community-based outreach and training in key locations around the country. The program will utilize NNIRR’s new popular education workshop on human rights documentation as an organizing tool for immigrant communities.  In early 2008, NNIRR will also release a new report on “Trade, Migration and Human Rights”, to underscore the inter-woven linkages between trade and migration policy, and building upon the initial human rights framework and analysis we have developed over the last couple of years and which has been brought to domestic and international fora.