2026 Annual Report

Summary

In this difficult year for human rights, we’ve been asking ourselves how we can make the greatest impact. We decided to reorganize our work around three key pillars: truth, justice, and community. These concepts underpin all of our work and reflect what we see as the most urgent human rights issues of our time. As companies and governments develop new technologies that threaten safety, privacy, and livelihoods, we affirm our commitment to investigating those impacts and pursuing justice through science, technology, and law. We do this by investigating human rights violations and international crimes; setting standards for practitioners; and training the next generation of human rights defenders.

Between July 2025 and July 2026, the Human Rights Center worked to document human rights violations, hold perpetrators to account, and strengthen democratic principles. Among the many efforts you will read about in the following pages, we worked with professional partners and UC Berkeley students to:

• Investigate the conditions of CECOT prison in El Salvador, where the U.S. administration deported Venezuelan migrants, in partnership with Human Rights Watch and Cristosal;
• Document the use of crowd control weapons against protesters by U.S. law enforcement officers in partnership with Physicians for Human Rights;
• Track atrocities committed by the Wagner Group and Malian armed forces against civilians, and advocate for their prosecution in a landmark submission to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in collaboration with TRIAL International;
• Train displaced Sudanese journalists and human rights defenders to investigate atrocities in their home country, in partnership with the International Center for Transitional Justice;
• Improve outcomes for LGBTQ+ youth living in humanitarian settings with new research-based guidance, in partnership with Ukrainian and Venezuelan youth; and
• Strengthen protections for agricultural workers during wildfires in California by evaluating new evacuation regulations and recommending policy changes at the state and local levels, in collaboration with grassroots organizers.

Together, we will continue to build community, defend facts, pursue justice, and foster a world where everyone’s rights are upheld. Thank you for being part of our community.