Rights and Justice

The Rights and Justice programme has completed a strategic review process and we hope to share this soon. We tentatively hope to open to new applications by the end of the year and we will keep this page updated.

As part of the Quaker tradition, JRCT is committed to the creation of a world that guarantees equal treatment for all people.

We believe that human rights play a vital role in protecting the most vulnerable and in turn benefit the whole of society. We need to grow public support and empathy for the rights of racial and religious minorities, to hold governments to account and to strengthen the hand of those advocating with and for these communities.

The Trust is interested in supporting long-term work to achieve these changes, both incremental reform to effect policy and legislative change, and more transformational approaches to change the public debate. We articulate our policy in three strands but recognise and are interested in funding the overlapping nature of each of these.

What we will fund

• 1. Protection and promotion of human rights and their enforcement in the UK

  The Trust welcomes applications for:

  • policy advocacy and campaigning to protect and promote the overarching framework of human rights for the most vulnerable
  • holding government and public bodies to account for their implementation of human rights commitments
  • work to build public support for human rights, particularly amongst more sceptical audiences and in communities disconnected from political power and influence
  • new voices in the human rights sphere and work to create connections between human rights and social justice issues

  We do not fund work on individual Convention rights, nor do we fund work to address discrimination or under-representation under the Equalities Act, except in the case of race, religion and belief. 

•  2. Promoting rights and justice for minorities who face the most severe forms of racism

  The Trust welcomes applications from civil society organisations that tackle injustices faced by racial and religious minorities, in particular, by Muslim communities, Roma, Gypsies and Travellers as well as broader anti-racist work.

  This includes:

  • monitoring and advocacy for legislation and policies to promote rights for these communities
  • activities to promote political empowerment, in particular, amongst and led by women within these communities
  • efforts to build solidarity amongst advocacy organisations and between advocacy organisations and wider civil society
  • work to challenge ideologies, attitudes and movements that encourage racism and xenophobia.

•  3. Promotion of rights and justice for refugees and other migrants by identifying and tackling structures and systems that may deny them their rights

  The Trust welcomes applications to strengthen the ability of refugees and migrants to
  assert and defend their rights through:
  • support for alliance building and grassroots organisation, including
  engagement with non-traditional allies
  • advocacy and campaigning to prevent the abuse of rights
  • promoting access to justice through civil society organisations which spread knowledge of rights and judicial procedures and embed advances in the enforcement of rights

Caring, Sustaining, and Thriving

JRCT is committed to resourcing care, healing, safety, wellbeing, resilience and sustainability practices at the individual, organisational and field levels that help transform the historic and ongoing trauma, harm, grief and loss from systemic oppression.

We encourage all applicants, particularly grassroots groups and those with lived experience of the issues they’re working on to factor in wellbeing, safety and sustainability costs in funding requests.

Specifically, we wish to encourage work that centre collective care, safety, and resilience of communities most harmed by systemic oppression as part of organising strategies to build collective power towards transformative change. As a funder, we wish to honour and resource the practices communities and organisations may already be using or want to use to nurture care, safety, and sustainability rather than impose our own definition.

Examples of this include but are not limited to:

• Cultural, holistic, somatic, and wellbeing practices relevant to the community integrated into organising strategies
• Trainings for staff and organisers on how to become trauma-informed and healing centred organisations/groups
• Embedding and centring accessibility in organising strategies including political education trainings on disability justice
• Reflective and learning spaces
• Working with transformative justice and conflict resolution mediators to address conflict and embed accountability mechanisms
• Development of collective care strategies to address burnout, PTSD, trauma and exhaustion experienced by activists
• Trainings on security and safety practices, including attention to digital and physical safety and security strategies
• Sustainable infrastructure building to develop healthy organisational culture and policies that centre care, safety, wellbeing and resilience.

Other factors

The Trust focuses on work at both a national and European level, although work at a European level is limited and must have direct relevance to communities living in the UK. Funding for European work related to asylum and migration is primarily channelled through the European Programme on Integration and Migration.

Whilst our focus is to support national advocacy and campaigning, the Trust is open to applications which aim to effect structural change at local and regional levels of policy-making, provided the applicant can demonstrate the wider significance of the work.

Across the policy, the Trust places an emphasis on supporting those who have direct experience of racism and oppression.

Exclusions

• Work concerned with relationships between communities rather than tackling structural injustices
• Service provision or training projects.

Please read the Trust’s general exclusions.