Rights in Minds + Rights for the Future

A Global Academic Platform for Human Rights

Research for Rights

What becomes possible when researchers across every discipline, region and generation ask the same question: how do we harness our knowledge to protect people’s rights?

View Challenges Join us
Scroll

Human rights are not abstractions. They are lived, violated, defended and fought for every day, by real people, in real places.

Yet the knowledge needed to protect them remains scattered across disciplines, siloed in institutions, and often out of reach for defenders.

Research for Rights will be a living network — a space where economists talk to lawyers, where climate scientists work alongside indigenous rights scholars, where researchers can converge on urgent questions from diverse disciplines and vantage points. Because we believe that the most urgent human rights challenges of our time require cross-disciplinary collaboration, at scale, with purpose.

This platform is being built to make that possible. To harness cutting-edge expertise in support of vital human rights work. The challenges will evolve, with more on the way. If you are a scholar or an academic institution that believes knowledge should serve justice, this is your opportunity.

Imagine the question. Dialogue across disciplines. Act through research.

Research Network

Bridging Disciplines

The world's most pressing human rights challenges cannot be solved in silos. Each connection below represents a researcher bridging disciplines to unlock new knowledge, solutions, and impact.

Open Questions

Research Challenges

Some urgent questions that demand expert answers.

How It Works

How It Works

The Research for Rights platform facilitates collaboration with and beyond OHCHR on actionable, cross-disciplinary human rights research.

Identify a Question

Indicate your interest in a research collaboration proposed by OHCHR, or propose your own.

Dialogue Across Disciplines

Collaborate on concrete projects with OHCHR human rights practitioners and fellow researchers, including those from fields you have never worked with. The best answers often come from unexpected combinations.

Act Through Research

Produce evidence, tools, and insights that policy-makers, practitioners, and advocates can use.

Note — selecting a specific pillar at registration is not yet available and will be introduced in a future phase of the platform.

Your Journey

What happens after you register

From expertise to impact — the path researchers take inside the Alliance.

1

Register your expertise

Share your discipline, background, and research interests. Takes under three minutes.

2

Get matched to challenges

Identify a research challenge that matches your interests and expertise. In the future, our AI will help identify open challenges where your expertise is most needed.

3

Join a working group

When you express interest, a challenge lead will follow up to share additional information and explore collaboration modalities. If a match is made, the collaboration begins.

4

Co-create outputs with OHCHR

Collaborate with OHCHR on evidence-informed outputs that shape policy and practice.

We are currently building the collaborative infrastructure to bring these four steps to life. Register now and we will be in touch as soon as the platform is ready.

Participate in the Alliance

Join as a Researcher/Institution

Register your expertise and get matched to challenges that need you.

Don't see your discipline? Add it below.

Which of the open Research Challenges align with your work? Select all that apply.

Flexible — indicates the level of engagement you can offer. You can update this later.

Please provide your ORCID iD or the DOI of one of your publications or institutional website so we can learn more about your academic profile. ORCID is preferred where you have one. If you don't yet have an ORCID iD, you can register for free at orcid.org.

A DOI from any published paper, book chapter, or report works as an alternative to ORCID.

Welcome to Research for Rights

You are now connected to the global research community. We will notify you when a challenge matches your expertise.

Frequently Asked

Questions researchers ask us

Who owns the research and outputs produced through the platform?
This will be specific to each collaboration. In some cases research may be provided to OHCHR without public attribution, to inform OHCHR’s own work and outputs. In other cases, contributing researchers will retain authorship and academic credit for their work. Outputs commissioned by OHCHR may also be co-branded and published under an open-access licence where possible. Specific attribution and licensing are agreed at the start of each working group, in line with OHCHR's publication policy.
How are contributions used, and will my work reach policy-makers?
Research is translated into evidence-based reports, briefs, policy inputs, and tools used by OHCHR teams and field offices, as well as UN member states and human rights advocates. Research challenges are identified by OHCHR experts with first hand knowledge of human rights concerns and the research needed to address these concerns more effectively.
What is the expected time commitment?
The expected length of a research project and average monthly time commitment will vary and be specific to each individual challenge. Researchers will be able to discuss time commitments in detail with the project lead once they match to a specific challenge.
Is OHCHR able to fund my research?
No. Research for Rights is a pro bono platform.
What happens if more than one researcher or academic institution expresses in a challenge?
The OHCHR project lead will respond to all expressions of interest, engage the interested parties, and select the partner(s) for the research collaboration. Where feasible and beneficial to the project, OHCHR will explore the possibility of a multi-party research collaboration, especially when doing so will facilitate cross-disciplinary and/or cross-regional research partnerships.