Human Rights and Security Initiative

The Human Rights and Security Initiative addresses the security implications of human rights abuse.

Recently Released: June 15, 2009
"Beyond Guantánamo," Democracy: A Journal of Ideas

Human rights norms have come under significant strain in the years following September 2001. The much-touted human rights regime that emerged in the post-World War II era is currently in jeopardy, and the resulting security implications have been largely ignored — both by individual states and by the international community at large. In order to improve our understanding of human rights abuse as a challenge to international security, CSIS established the Human Rights and Security Initiative under the lead of Dr. Sarah E. Mendelson. At present, our main geographic focus is on the United States, Europe, and Russia.

CSIS is grateful to several donors that have made this work on human rights possible:

The Ford Foundation
The Robert Bosch Stiftung
The Gruber Family Foundation

The initiative's research and activities are organized around five major themes.

Absent Memory and Transitional Justice
The Absent Memory and Transitional Justice project explores the way in which countries reconcile with their pasts and absent memory’s significant yet underspecified effects on political and social development.
Human Rights and Counterterrorism
The Human Rights and Counterterrorism Project addresses policy recommendations in the United States and Europe that both uphold human rights standards and international law while keeping citizens safe.
Human Rights in Russia
The Human Rights in Russia Project tracks, through survey data, the state of political and social development in Russia.
Human Trafficking and Peacekeeping Operations
The Human Trafficking and Peacekeeping Operations Project strives to secure the implementation of existing antitrafficking policies adopted by the Department of Defense, NATO, and the United Nations.
The North Caucasus
The North Caucasus project seeks to broaden international attention to and understanding of the continued violence, increasing human rights abuses, and growing instability in the republics of the North Caucasus.
U.S.-Russia Civil Society Summit
Together with colleagues from the Eurasia Foundation and the New Eurasia Foundation, the CSIS Human Rights and Security Initiative is convening a meeting of civil society leaders from the United States and Russia in Moscow to explore new approaches to a more robust U.S.-Russian civil society relationship.