Dedicated to the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights Helpline Number : +880 197 718 2023

About Rights Jessore

Background of Rights Jessore

Rights Jessore is a leading human rights organization in Bangladesh dedicated to protection and promotion of human rights. A group of philanthropic persons from different professional groups formed Rights Jessore in 1991 to uphold human rights of the people of Bangladesh with special focus on disadvantaged women and children.

Since its inception Rights Jessore has been emphasizing on networking, capacity building of the stakeholders and documentations of human rights violations incidents to create an enabling environment for the prevention and protection of human rights. Till date wide range of advocacy and capacity building initiatives have been implemented on women and child rights, promoting good governance, safe migration promotion, health rights, civic and voter education, HIV/AIDS prevention and generic human rights issues.

Rights Jessore believes in ensuring community participation in the development process. The organization has always been a catalyst to bring the community voice to the policy makers to support the development process. Its innovative program approach and ability to make impact has made Rights Jessore a specialized organization in the field of prevention of human trafficking.Our community mobilization initiatives have been internationally recognized and awarded by Arab Gulf Fund for United Nations.

Legal Status of the Organization:

  • Rights Jessore is registered with the NGO Affairs Bureau
  • Registration No. 1303 dated on 26 October 1998 and Social Service Department Registration no. 303 dated on 21 March 1993.

Vision

Rights Jessore envisages a society in Bangladesh where every human being irrespective of cast, creed, religion, color, culture, gender, and profession are living with human dignity and free from human rights violation.

Mission

The Mission of Rights Jessore is to protect the human rights of all people especially women and children through building awareness, creating sensitivity among the duty bearers and establishing good governance.

 Core Values:

Rights Jessore’s actions are driven by the principles of equity, sustainability and environmental protection. As a development change maker, it preaches and practices certain organizational

values which include:..

  • Activity encourage its people to reach to their highest potential
  • Practice high degree of self –discipline
  • Mutual respect and trust
  • Cost consciousness
  • Honesty and integrity

 Rights Jessore’s Thematic Areas:    

  Human Rights

On the outset of inception,Rights Jessore holds the spirit of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It is working towards the elimination of distinction of any kind race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. We work for the right to life, liberty and security of person. We demand equal protection of the law. We are against torture, cruelty, inhuman or degrading treatment, or punishment. We are for freedom of thought, equal property rights, freedom of expression and opinion and all the issues covered by universal declaration.

Anti-trafficking

Human Trafficking is a brutal business and heinous crime. Rights Jessore is active against this crime from its inception. Rescue, recovery, repatriation, reintegration, legal aid, advocacy, and community mobilization are covered under this thematic area. This is the biggest area of operation for Rights Jessore specially wih donor support.

Safe Migration Promotion:

During the Course of Action, Rights Jessore has identified “Unsafe Labor Migration” as a major area that needs to dealt with separately.Though, there is a close link between human trafficking and unsafe migration, differences in definition and legal implication made it essential to deal the problem separately.

Women Rights & Women Empowerment

Women are half of the population but due to their social status and position they are subject to frequent abuse, torture and violations. Rights Jessore strongly believes in the equal opportunity of women; they should enjoy the freedom of life without the fear of being abused, tortured, trafficked or killed. Rights Jessore dedicated to make sure women’s participations in social programming so that they are empowered in the community and can defend their rights

Child Rights

 

Children are the future leader of the nation. Rights Jessore is against any form of violation against children. We believe in the safe, secured and violence free environment for every child with adequate opportunity for their education and development.

Good Governance

In principle Rights Jessore promotes good governance and the issue has been a part of organizational focus area. Till date Rights Jessore has been engaged with different activities and campaigns that promote good governance in public services.Rights Jessore is one of the proponents to fight corruption at the district level. It’s good governance promotional activities include advocacy for establishing citizen charter to enhance public access to information and to ensure social accountability of public service delivery, open budget at union Parishad, activating village court, civic and voter education, anti-corruption campaign and introducing social audit in Rights Jessore’s development project evaluation.

HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS is one of the major growing concerns. Rights Jessore worked to reduce the HIV vulnerability among the cross border mobile and promoting the rights of the people living with HIV /AIDS (PLWHA). Rights Jessore already established a Voluntary Counseling and Testing Centre (VCT) within general government hospital in Satkhira. Rights Jessore wishes to work further to reduce HIV vulnerabilities among the at risk populations. A few numbers of HIV positive repatriated survivors has been reintegrated in their family too. Linkage and liaison has been made by Rights Jessore to other service provider Offices for their essential services.

Environment & Climate Change

As environmental degradation and climate change emerge as one of the major development challenges in our endangering human life and livelihood is contributing enormously towards the number of incidents of human rights violations. It is happening as floods, cyclones and draughts, water salinity, rise of sea level or crisis of underground water or so on coming up as matter of growing concern. Rights Jessore supports and advocates for environmental justice for safe habitat in Bangladesh and beyond.

Experience with International Organizations and Donor Agencies:

Rights Jessore carries out a number of projects with the financial assistance of the International organizations/donor agencies. These are the followings:

  1. 1.The Royal Danish Embassy, Dhaka
  2. 2.International Organization for Migration IOM
  3. 3.The British Council, Dhaka
  4. 4.South Asia Regional Initiative/Equity Support Program, USAID
  5. 5.Academy for Educational Development, AED, USAID
  6. 6.Asian Development Bank (ADB)
  7. 7.The British Council, Dhaka
  8. 8.The Australian High Commission, Dhaka
  9. 9.NORAD
  10. 10.Groupe Development/EC/ECPAT Luxembourg
  11. 11.Care Bangladesh/ Big Lottery Fund UK,
  12. 12.Winrock International
  13. 13.KIOS (THE FINNISH NGO FOUNDATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS)
  14. 14.Government of Canada

Experience with Government of Bangladesh

  • Ministry of Home Affairs
  • Ministry of Women and Children Affairs
  • Anti Corruption Commission.

Areas of Technical Expertise

  • Formation of Counter Trafficking Women’s Forum (CTWF) at Union Level to prevent human trafficking and unsafe migration and working as watchdog group in the community
  • Capacity building of the stakeholders including Counter Trafficking Committee, law enforcement agencies, judiciaries, local administration, locally elected bodies, media personnel etc on human trafficking and its related laws, migration, good governance, HIV/AIDS issues
  • Networking and partnership with the NGOs and CBOs with grassroots, national and international level
  • Women’s empowerment through improvement of socio-economic condition of the survivors by providing socio-economic benefit packages
  • Capacity building of the female members of locally elected bodies at Union level on different development issues
  • Rescue, Repatriation, Rehabilitation and Integration of survivors
  • National and Local level advocacy on different development issues including human trafficking issues
  • Human Rights and legal education at grassroots level
  • Paralegal training at community level
  • Training on human rights issue
  • Fact- Finding on human rights violation cases including human trafficking