25 years of advocating for human rights

Halfway across the globe in a small village of Nepal, a group of students recently celebrated their eighth grade graduation, something they achieved thanks to the Minnesota-based Advocates for Human Rights.

“We wanted to help combat child labor,” said Sarah Herder of the Advocates for Human Rights. The free community school started by the Advocates now provides education, food and human rights teaching to 180 students in Nepal—where, for many families, the only alternative would be to put their children to work. The Sankhu-Palubari Community School is just part of the vast impact the Advocates have had globally.

The Advocates celebrated their 25th anniversary this May with an awards dinner honoring founders Samuel D. Heins and Barbara A. Frey.

“I had a growing interest in human rights in law school,” said Frey, “so I was delighted to find a small group of lawyers that had similar interest.” That group of lawyers, which included Heins, came together in 1983 to form the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights.

Their work began with a project to create an international standard for investigating deaths when a government is considered a suspect. This standard, dubbed the Minnesota Protocol, was eventually adopted by the United Nations and has been used around the world including in Bosnia, Rwanda, and the West Bank. The Advocates slowly grew over the years: helping hundreds of asylum seekers, investigating human rights violations, and building a constituency for human rights both locally and internationally.

Barbara Frey has been instrumental to the work of the Advocates, serving as its first paid executive director from 1985 through 1996 and serving on the board ever since. According to the Web site of the University of Minnesota Human Rights Program, where Frey now serves as director, Frey brought the Advocates from “a small volunteer group to become one of the largest U.S.-based international human rights organizations.”

Today, the Advocates have twenty-seven paid staff members and more than six hundred active volunteers who provide more than $3 million of in-kind services each year. Their work spans nearly every human rights issue from immigration to women’s rights, providing everything from legal help to advocacy.

“As a founder, I am extremely pleased at the stature and effectiveness of the organization,” said Frey, who believes the Advocates organization today is “one of the most important and innovative centers for human rights advocacy. [It’s] a crown jewel of the human rights community.”

“There are principles that the world came together and agreed upon, and they are the basic principles of humanity, how we are to treat each other in order to live well,” said Herder of the International Declaration of Human Rights which is the platform from which the Advocates work. “That was a really good foundation to start working from.”

After 25 years, the Advocates have accomplished a lot, but the road ahead is still long. When asked what keeps her going, Frey replied, “The progress we’ve made and the long way we have to go in ensuring fairness and human dignity.”

Ariah Fine lives and writes in North Minneapolis.