While any response must always take into account the specific details surrounding the emergency situation, Synergía is a member of the Dignity for All: LGBTI Assistance consortium (http://www.dignitylgbti.org/). This program provides emergency assistance to activists, organizations, and communities that are under attack and require urgent support.

Please visit the Dignity for All website for information on the types of support that this program can provide and information on how to submit an application. In addition to Dignity for All, activists and organizations can also contact the following emergency funders that provide urgent support in times of crisis:

• Frontline AIDS – Rapid Response Fund: https://frontlineaids.org/our-work-includes/rapid-response-fund/
• Frontline Defenders: https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/
• Urgent Action Fund: https://urgentactionfund.org/

The primary space within the African system for the protection of human rights for Synergía remains the African Commission for Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACmHPR). Established by the African Charter, the mandate of the ACmHPR includes both protecting and promoting human rights on the African continent.

Sessions of the African Commission not only offer opportunities to elevate and advocate for increased attention and response to Synergía and our partners’ priority domestic issues, they also provide avenues to hold States accountable in instances where their action or inaction has constituted a human rights violation and/or abuse – specifically through the ACmHPR’s State reporting function.

Based on the progress achieved within the context of the ACmHPR, we work with our partners to integrate regional successes – including resolutions, concluding observations and/or recommendations from State reporting, commission country missions, and others – into their ongoing domestic human rights advocacy efforts in their countries.

See https://www.achpr.org/ for more information on the African Commission.

The Inter-American system for the protection of human rights offers a number of spaces in which human rights issues can be advanced. Synergía and our partners primarily focus on advocacy within the Organization of American States (OAS) and its annual General Assembly (GA); the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR); the Inter-American Court of human rights (IAC); and the Summit of the Americas.

Within these spaces, we and our partners seek to reinforce existing and advance new forms of soft law and other instruments that create more inclusive repsect for human rights across the Western Hemisphere. In particular, Synergía’s involvement in the LGBTTTI Coalition of the OAS – including as the Coalition’s current coordinating entity – has allowed us to elevate domestic human rights concerns before State representatives and other relevant decisionmakers working within these spaces. These efforts have led to a number of critical successes – including the passage of OAS resolutions, IACHR public hearings, and IAC cases, all of which we use to support our partners in catalyzing their ongoing domestic advocacy.

• See http://www.oas.org/en/ for more information on the OAS.
• See https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/ for more information on the IACHR.
• See http://www.corteidh.or.cr/index-en.cfm for more information on the IAC.
• See http://www.summit-americas.org/default_en.htm for more information on the Summit of the Americas.

Our work involves engagement with a wide range of domestic, regional, and international stakeholders – both directly and indirectly through the work of our partners in a number of settings. Of primary importance to us is our work with partners participating in human rights movements whose work is grounded in the needs and priorities of local communities. These partners include individual activists, informal groups, formally structured organizations (both registered and unregistered), and networks.

In addition to our partners, our work also engages those stakeholders who work with and/or are the target of our partners’ human rights advocacy work. These stakeholders include broadly focused human rights organizations, law and policymakers, social leaders, religious leaders, members of the media, those working in the private sector, a broad range of State institutions, National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), and those working within the contexts of regional and international systems for the protection of human rights.

While we are intent on ensuring our partners are recognized for their work and leadership in the human rights advocacy we support, such public recognition may – in many places – expose our partners and other stakeholders who participate in our work to a range of security risks. For this reason, we do not publish specific partner information directly on our website.

The support for our work comes from a variety of sources – including private and public foundations, donor advised funds, individual donors, governments, and multilateral institutions. While we promote those supporting our work when possible, the sensitive nature of our work often creates risks for our staff and partners when attributing the sources of this support. Thus, we work with those supporting our work to identify those instances in which their support can be made public along with the specific information they can share without heightening the level of risk for our staff and partners.