Founded in 1968, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial aims to realize Robert F. Kennedy’s vision of social justice. In 1984, in order to better reflect the global nature of RFK’s work, the Memorial expanded to include the annual Human Rights Award and the Center for Human Rights (CHR) was established to support our award winning partners’ work.

With an eclectic and specialized staff of human rights attorneys, sociologists, economists, anthropologists and international affairs specialists, the CHR engages in long-term partnerships with RFK’s social justice activists to initiate and support social justice movements. The CHR also leverages professional human rights staff, the Kennedy family, and their networks to advocate for the change our partner activists seek. These include changing policies and actions of governments, intergovernmental organizations, international financial institutions (IFIs), and corporations. The CHR focuses on using innovative tools to achieve sustainable social justice, including litigation involving several of these entities (e.g. US government, the European Union, the Inter-American Development Bank); advocating with UN entities (e.g. UN Peacekeeping Missions, UN Special Rapporteurs); and launching consumer awareness campaigns aimed at fostering corporate social responsibility.

Our partners (or “laureates”) are individuals who, through years of dedication to righting social injustices in over 20 different countries, have already made significant contributions to their various fields by the time we begin our work with them. These activists are not widely known and are often under-appreciated internationally, though most have founded, and now lead, grassroots organizations that expand the reach and impact of their voice and work.

Each year, we also look for geographical and thematic diversification in each new laureate, thereby broadening the scope of understanding and awareness of contemporary human rights issues.

The CHR, in part, defines success in terms of our ability to expand the understanding of human rights and the methods available to improve them. Specifically, the CHR works to overcome US exceptionalism to social, economic and cultural rights and the fact that too many in the US still believe human rights violations don't happen within the land of the free.