Our Vision:

• Is of a world where everyone fully enjoys all their human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights members of the Jewish community are actively engaged in promoting and protecting these rights, both within the community and in concert with stakeholders outside of the community.

Our Mission:

• Is to promote and protect the universal rights of all people, drawing on Jewish experiences and values.

We will:

• Make the case for human rights as a legacy of the Holocaust.
• Campaign for change in the UK in defined human rights areas.
• Empower tomorrow’s Jewish human rights advocates.
• Optimise our effectiveness.

Our values underpin all the work we do:

• Solidarity – human rights belong to us all, so we stand for the rights of everyone, everywhere.
• Judaism – we are inspired by Jewish values and experience.
• Collaboration – our work is not isolated, but intertwined with the efforts of others, so we nurture and mobilise relationships.
• Empowerment – we turn today’s Jewish activists into tomorrow’s leaders.

Legacy

We are determined to create a legacy worthy of our namesake, Monsieur René Cassin, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“As we celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights there has never been a more important time to get involved with our work” – Daniel Silverstone

We are the Jewish voice for human rights in the UK

We celebrate:

• the timeless and universal nature of human rights values and protections.
• the distinctive Jewish contribution to the current landscape of international human rights.
• the particular historical role played by our namesake, Monsieur René Cassin, to the development of contemporary human rights values in the aftermath of the Second World War.

What we do:

• we continuously advocate within the Jewish community on the importance of human rights, of the many Jewish contributions to their design and development, and the contemporary importance of human rights.
• we engage with issues and communities outside our community where we feel that much stronger human rights protections should apply and which resonate with Jewish historical experience. Current examples include our work on indefinite detention. modern day slavery and the discrimination faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.

This is an important time. In the new era characterised by Brexit, Trump, the rise of nationalism, and weakening of international norms and institutions, the underlying principles of human rights, and even of the rule of law, are coming under sustained attack.

Principles that have been hard fought for and had appeared firmly entrenched are now being questioned and attacked. The system of human rights protections, largely rooted in the Jewish experience in Europe from 1933-45, is being casually discarded.

As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there has never been a greater need for a strong Jewish advocate, actor and partner making the case for the contemporary importance of human rights values and protection. There has never been a more important time to get involved in our work.