BRIDGE and HURTIs Human Rights Training Institutes
The Human Rights Training Institutes are designed to train a new generation of human rights defenders and to tackle critical concerns in their communities. Grounded in popular education and liberatory pedagogies, the Institutes provide the building-blocks of base-building and movement-building, provide skills on intersectional solidarity, abuse documentation and monitoring and building grassroots power.
BRIDGE: The Human Rights Training Institutes
BRIDGE is a political education project by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) created to build and sustain alliances between immigrant and non-immigrant communities, movements, and institutions. Launched in 1998, the BRIDGE initiative aimed to unite diverse communities to address issues like racism, globalization, and human rights.
More than two decades later, as criminalization, incarceration, and state-sponsored violence have become central to immigration management, we relaunched BRIDGE as a political education initiative designed to cultivate community leadership, foster intersectional alliances, and strengthen community power. Given the urgency of this political moment and the growing threats to human and civil rights under the Trump administration, we launched HURTIS, the Human Rights Training Institutes, designed to cultivate a new generation of human rights leaders who will address critical social justice concerns in their own communities.
Grounded in popular education and liberatory pedagogies, the Institutes provide the building-blocks of base-building and movement-building, provide skills on intersectional solidarity, abuse documentation and monitoring and building grassroots power. In this era of militarism and authoritarianism, we also support communities challenging the pervasive injustice of mass detentions and deportations. Each HURTI is tailored to the unique cultural context and realities of each community. Together, participants, organizers, and facilitators create an environment that allows for an in-depth exploration of how international human rights frameworks can be leveraged to shape and influence local policy.
At the core of HURTIS is the process of accompaniment –a popular education principle that prioritizes collaboration beyond the institutes. This approach allows participants to build community, solidarity and continue sharing knowledge and turning experiences into actionable change.
NNIRR’s approach is rooted in intersectional, decolonial, and anti-racist human rights frameworks, aiming to mobilize communities and create long-term, transformative change through popular education, cultural organizing, and liberatory pedagogies.
For more information contact us at hurtis@nnirr.org. HURTIs is available in both English and Spanish.
International Human & Migrant Rights Work
For over three decades, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) has been a pioneering force in advocating for the rights and dignity of migrants in the US and around the globe. As a founding member of Migrants Rights International (MRI), NNIRR helped lay the groundwork for a unified, global network of migrant rights organizations and advocated for rights-affirming pathways for regular migration and regularization programs as well as gendered-sensitive protections for people on the move.
International Human & Migrant Rights Work
For over three decades, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) has been a pioneering force in advocating for the rights and dignity of migrants in the US and around the globe. As a founding member of Migrants Rights International (MRI), NNIRR helped lay the groundwork for a unified, global network of migrant rights organizations. Our leadership has been instrumental in amplifying the voices of migrants, uplifting critical concerns at borders and creating various influential multi-sector alliances dedicated to systemic change. Through our active involvement in the Women in Migration Network, we ensure that gender perspectives are integrated into international migration policies, creating a more inclusive and just future for migrant women and their families.
In 2020, NNIRR expanded its reach by joining Bloque Latinoamericano, forging new partnerships with migrant rights organizations across the Americas to advocate for migrant rights and respond to the urgent needs of families on the move. As members of Bloque, we have successfully lobbied key international bodies such as the UN and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to prioritize the protection of migrant rights and address the root causes of migration. This work has been critical in shifting regional conversations and policies around migration.
From organizing impactful delegations to global events like the UN Conference Against Racism and Xenophobia in South Africa, to leading protests at the World Trade Organization’s ministerial meetings, to facilitating migrant civil society interventions at the Global Forum on Migration and Development, NNIRR has consistently demonstrated its ability to drive meaningful change at the highest levels. Our advocacy has made human rights and migrant justice central to global migration policies.
Through our ongoing partnerships with the migrant rights and global labor movements, NNIRR continues to advance labor protections, fight migrant abuse, and push for people-centered development that values human dignity and community well-being.
Human & Migrant Rights Organizing at the Border
NNIRR is a leading voice in raising awareness about the devastating consequences of militarized border policies—human rights violations, migrant disappearances, and the preventable tragedy of migrant deaths that continue to unfold every day. Through strategic partnerships, organizing and network-building, NNIRR amplifies the voices of those affected by these injustices, pushing for bold action that puts human dignity and human rights at the center of migration and border governance.
Rights-centered Migration & Border Governance
Since its inception, NNIRR has been a steadfast advocate for human rights in the U.S.-Mexico border. As immigration reforms are nationally discussed, negotiated, or postponed, NNIRR has highlighted the link between militarization and the growing incidence of human rights abuses, migrant disappearances and fatalities at the border. We have championed rights-sensitive migration frameworks at local, national, and global levels. Through collaborations with global civil society organizations and UN agencies, NNIRR has provided crucial guidance on key international frameworks, including the OHCHR Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights at International Borders and human rights protections included in the Global Compact on Migration.
In response to the crucial question of how to make human rights meaningful at the local level, we have focused on capacity building and leadership development in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, a region central to both human rights and racial justice. Thirty years after the introduction of the “Prevention Through Deterrence” strategy, militarized migration management—including walls, checkpoints, and surveillance—continues to fuel racial profiling, sexual violence, and a relentless cycle of criminalization and deportation. This blatant disregard for human life has resulted in nearly 10,000 migrant deaths, with countless others still missing since 1998.
To further complicate the situation, subnational policies like Texas’s Operation Lone Star (OLS) have intensified an atmosphere of racialized violence, marked by arbitrary arrests, unlawful detentions, and invasive surveillance. These policies critically impact access to essential services and create a pervasive sense of insecurity for Latinos and Indigenous communities, who are frequently racialized and questioned by border agents.
In response to these interconnected social injustices, our border organizing initiative fosters platforms for collective thought and action among women, working-class people, people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ communities in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Over the past three years, we have trained over 115 grassroots leaders—primarily women of color—on integrating human rights values into their organizing and applying an intersectional feminist lens to address issues such as climate change, displacement, migration, race, and borders, strengthening our ability to address current and future human rights challenges.
Key Objectives:
- Strengthen rights-centered organizing at the border by establishing an intersectional human rights agenda in national immigration discussions.
- Address the mass deportation crisis through an intersectional lens and foster a human rights culture in border communities, empowering people to identify, invoke, and reclaim their rights in everyday life (home, work, school, and civic spaces).
- Collaborate with experts, forensic teams, and families to address migrant deaths and disappearances and develop preventive measures.
- Integrate documentation and storytelling to capture and amplify the experiences of communities facing human rights abuses.
