Our 2025-27 Strategic Plan
Our three-year plan to advance human rights and challenge injustice in Australia.
Human rights belong to all of us.
Human rights are a guiding compass so that every person, no matter who we are or where we come from, can live a life with dignity and freedom, protected and enforced by the law. But human rights have faced severe challenges over the last few years. The COVID-19 pandemic, the rejection of a Voice to Parliament, rising cost-of-living, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and surging Islamophobia and antisemitism in Australia, alongside devastating war and humanitarian crises globally, have exacerbated the inequality, injustice and oppression which many people face every day. This is why the Human Rights Law Centre exists.
We exist to take fearless human rights action for a fairer future for everyone.
We challenge Australian laws and policies which stand in the way of justice and equity for all.
Our Strategic Plan 2025-2027
Watch this short video introducing the Human Rights Law Centre’s 2025-2027 Strategic Plan.
Our Purpose
Fearless human rights action for a fairer future for all.
Our Vision
People and communities live with dignity and have the power to challenge injustice, and human rights are at the core of institutions and laws.
Legal Director Keren Adams and Bougainville community leader Theonila Roka Matbob look over the former Panguna mine.
Our Theory of Change
If the Human Rights Law Centre works as a trusted partner to those affected by inequality and uses our resources and power to address legal and structural inequalities, then our laws will better protect everyone and people will be more able to access justice when needed in Australia
Our Strategy
Working in partnership with people and communities, we challenge Australian laws and policies which stand in the way of justice and equity for all.
Goals
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We will ensure there is a clear link between the laws and policies we advance, and how they address inequalities rooted in and reinforced by racial and socio-economic injustices.
We will achieve this by:
Updating the Centre’s measurement of impact to ensure effectiveness.
Prioritising initiatives which actively advance racial and socio-economic equality.
Using our human rights based approach to examine the impact of legal reform and advocacy on marginalised communities.
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We will improve the way we work to increase staff wellbeing and organisational impact. This includes the Centre’s core operations, legal practices, management, workplace culture, public engagement and fundraising.
We will achieve this by:
Consolidating the Centre’s policies and procedures.
Enhancing staff wellbeing and accessibility through a continuous improvement plan.
Ensuring organisational support needs and functions are properly identified and resourced.
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We will deepen our partnerships with people, communities and their organisational advocates to advance reforms. We will also find new ways of sharing resources and power.
We will achieve this by:
Updating the Centre’s partnership principles.
Embedding anti-racism across the Centre’s work.
Adopting a rights-based framework for community participation.
Exploring resource and power sharing models across our work.
Our Tools
We achieve our goals using a strategic combination of legal action, policy solutions and advocacy.
Legal action - we take strategic legal action to secure redress for people and communities in need, to ensure accountability, to establish precedents that protect human rights and to prompt law and policy change.
Policy solutions - we conduct analysis, consultation and research to develop policy solutions to change laws and policies to advance human rights.
Advocacy - we advocate with decision makers, in the media and through national and international accountability mechanisms to secure law and policy reforms to advance human rights and protect them from attack.
Partnership - we work alongside people and communities affected by human rights violations and place their voices and interests at the heart of our work.
Anti-racism
The Human Rights Law Centre is committed to advancing anti-racism, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in our workplace systems and structures, as well as in the legal, policy and advocacy work that we do.
As an organisation established to promote and protect human rights, the Centre actively works to identify, understand, and challenge systemic oppression and exclusion on the basis of race, indigeneity, gender, sexual orientation, age and disability, among others.
The Centre recognises that the realisation of human rights cannot be achieved without dismantling systemic racism and discrimination and addressing the ongoing impacts of colonisation. The Centre is also committed in its own human rights work to removing barriers to full participation of staff and the communities we work with and bringing an intersectional lens to all aspects of our work.
The Human Rights Law Centre team in 2024.
