History

HURICAP emerged from the Special Programme on Africa (SPA), which was an initiative founded by Amnesty International The Netherlands and the International Secretariat in 1994 in reaction to the recurring conflicts and massive human rights violations in Sub-Saharan Africa.

SPA’s initial aim was to explore new ways to strengthen civil society and encourage African human rights activism. Over the years, SPA’s work addressed human rights awareness and mobilising communities in identifying local solutions to local problems, encouraging community-based strategies in addressing injustices and inequality. As part of this process, SPA introduced participatory theatre and created networks of trained human rights activists to work directly with rural communities on human rights issues in selected countries.

Building capacity among partner organizations and human rights networks gradually became a more important aspect of SPA’s work, and as of 2014-2015, capacity building became SPA’s core strategy. The Programme “crowned” its new strategy by changing its name into the Human Rights Capacity-Building Programme (HURICAP). The new name also allowed the Programme to expand its work beyond Africa, towards the Middle East.

In light of its new strategy, the Programme expanded its network of trainers, continued facilitating and developing tailor-made training programmes, and provided intermittent technical advice and coaching.

Since its establishment, the experience of SPA – and later HURICAP – stretches over Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Uganda, Malawi, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, DR Congo, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Somalia, Somaliland, the Gambia, as well as Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) – mainly East Jerusalem. For an overview of the countries we are currently working in, please click here.

Together with PAX (Netherlands), ABAAD (Lebanon) and DefendDefenders (Uganda), HURICAP represents Amnesty International Netherlands in the Strengthening Civil Courage (SCC) alliance. The alliance was established in 2020 with the aim to build upon each other’s efforts and experience in protecting and strengthening civic space; in working on gender equality; in supporting activists and youth leaders working on peace and human rights; and in pushing for international regulation of external stress factors (arms trade, conflict minerals and other businesses).