About the Institute for the Advancement of Justice & Human Rights

The Institute for the Advancement of Justice & Human Rights (IAJ) is an independent non-governmental organization that monitors, investigates, and documents human rights violations by U.S. authorities. Its mandate covers the full range of human rights obligations binding on the United States — by ratification, by signature, and under customary international law — in every setting of official conduct.

The IAJ is a California 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation (EIN 99-2887013), entirely independent of government funding and direction.

What the IAJ Is — and Is Not

More than 120 countries have established a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI): an independent body, created by the state and measured against the UN Paris Principles, that monitors and protects human rights at home.

The United States does not have a GANHRI-accredited NHRI, nor any institution that meets the Paris Principles criteria. This is not a bureaucratic gap. It is a structural gap in the implementation of the international legal obligations the United States has accepted. The case for establishing one has been put to the U.S. government repeatedly: by UN treaty bodies, most recently the Human Rights Committee in its 2023 Concluding Observations (CCPR/C/USA/CO/5); by other states in the Universal Periodic Review, beginning with the first U.S. review in 2010–2011 (in 2020 the United States noted, rather than accepted, those recommendations); by the American Bar Association (Resolution 512, adopted August 2024); and by the Campaign for an NHRI in the United States, a national coalition of civil and human rights organizations. The government has not acted.

The IAJ is not an NHRI and does not claim to be one; only the state can establish an NHRI. The IAJ is an NGO organized under Paris Principles standards of independence, breadth of mandate, and public reporting. To the extent possible for a civil society body, it performs investigative and reporting functions of the kind the Paris Principles assign to NHRIs, in the continuing absence of one. It is not a substitute for a state-established, internationally accredited institution.

What the IAJ Investigates

The IAJ’s mandate extends to any human rights violation by official conduct, in any setting. Its current and developing lines of work include, but are not limited to:

Judicial processes, family courts, and child protective services. The IAJ’s initial intake has been concentrated here, and this is where its analysis of official harm outside physical custody is most developed.
Immigration enforcement, border operations, and immigration detention. Conditions of confinement, medical neglect, the separation of families, arbitrary detention, and removal to countries where persons face a real risk of torture.
The rights of Indigenous peoples. Indigenous child removal, violence against Indigenous women and girls, and the protection of lands and cultural life — conducted with respect for the sovereignty of Indigenous nations and with their consent.
State-sponsored human experimentation, including the CIA’s MKUltra program. No investigation has yet begun; the IAJ is reviewing publicly available accounts and invites accounts from survivors and their families.

Across every matter, the IAJ examines discrimination, retaliation against people who assert their rights, the treatment of children, and the absence of effective remedy.

The IAJ’s Work So Far

The IAJ opened intake in August 2025. In September 2025 it submitted to the UN Committee Against Torture its Preliminary Shadow Report, which identified 24 recurring patterns of official conduct plausibly amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and requested a confidential inquiry under Article 20 of the Convention Against Torture. The IAJ’s legal framework is set out in its Analytical Memorandum, UNCAT and jus cogens: a contemporary perspective, which distinguishes the positions it argues from settled law. The IAJ’s publications are listed on its Resources page.

On 25 October 2026 the IAJ issued its first national human rights report, State of Human Rights in the United States of America, performing a reporting function of the kind the Paris Principles assign to national human rights institutions. Built on the record that civil society organizations and States placed before the Universal Periodic Review, together with the findings of UN bodies and the IAJ’s own, it states the IAJ’s assessment that the United States is in a condition of systemic non-compliance with its human rights obligations.

The United States did not take part in its scheduled November 2025 Universal Periodic Review before the UN Human Rights Council (Human Rights Watch). The review has been rescheduled, with consideration of the United States set for November 10, 2026. Ahead of the review, the IAJ wrote to the Permanent Missions in Geneva of 186 UN Member States and to civil society organizations in the U.S. stakeholder record, and it has distributed its report to non-governmental organizations, to the Permanent Missions of 192 UN Member States, and to the President of the Human Rights Council and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Our Core Commitments

Breadth of mandate. The IAJ investigates all forms of human rights violation by official conduct under all frameworks applicable to the United States. No treaty is privileged over another; no category of rights, population, or period of history is excluded.
Independence. Entirely free of government control, judicial influence, and political direction. The IAJ sets its own investigative agenda on the basis of complaints received and evidence gathered.
Recognition of defenders. Human rights defender status is not conferred by the IAJ, by a state, or by any credentialing authority; it is recognized from a person’s words and conduct. IAJ directors, officers, investigators, members, and volunteers — together with the complainants, witnesses, and cooperating professionals who document, report, testify, or otherwise act peacefully and in good faith to promote or protect human rights — are human rights defenders within the meaning of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders (Article 1). Retaliation, intimidation, stigmatization, surveillance, obstruction, professional discipline, or punitive litigation directed at any of them because of that activity is itself a human-rights concern — whether carried out by public officials, enabled by official acquiescence, or left unprevented, uninvestigated, unpunished, or unremedied despite the state’s due-diligence obligations — and the IAJ treats such conduct as within the scope of what it documents and reports.
Methodological rigor. Istanbul Protocol (2022) standards applied to every investigation of torture or ill-treatment, alongside the methods appropriate to other violations. Findings grounded in evidence, clinical methodology, and multi-treaty legal analysis — not advocacy or assertion.
Epistemic precision. The IAJ distinguishes preliminary findings from verified conclusions, argued legal positions from settled doctrine, and independent expert evidence from case record documentation. Where legal questions remain contested, the IAJ says so.
Respect for survivors and communities. The IAJ works with the informed consent of the persons whose experiences it documents, and with respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of Indigenous nations. It does not speak for those who have not asked it to.
Rehabilitation as a goal. The IAJ proceeds from the conviction that persons who violate human rights can, when confronted with independent documentation and provided with education and standards, reform. Its communications with public officials are instruments of correction alongside instruments of accountability.

Disclaimer of Authority and Guarantees

The IAJ is an independent NGO organized under Paris Principles standards. It possesses no state-conferred legal authority, enforcement power, or jurisdictional control over any court, agency, or public official. Its work is investigative, educational, and advisory in nature.

Its findings, recommendations, and publications are non-binding and intended solely to inform public discourse, provide documentation for competent international bodies, and support systemic reform.

Engagement with the IAJ does not create any legal entitlement, representation, or assurance of remedy. Individuals and institutions are advised to seek appropriate legal counsel or governmental channels for matters requiring enforceable action or adjudication.

Recognizing any person — whether IAJ personnel or a complainant, witness, or other participant — as a human rights defender describes the protection that peaceful human-rights activity carries under international standards. It does not enlarge the IAJ’s authority or alter the limits stated above. Defender status protects peaceful activity; it is not immunity from lawful, proportionate, non-retaliatory legal process, and it does not protect coercion, harassment, defamation, the unauthorized practice of law, obstruction of lawful process, or other independently unlawful conduct.

Separately, the IAJ holds everyone who works with it to its own professional standards: evidentiary discipline, due regard for due process, confidentiality, and respect for the dignity and autonomy of affected persons. These are conditions of working with the IAJ, not conditions of human rights defender status.

More About the IAJ

The United States has not established the independent national institution that its international human rights commitments contemplate.

The IAJ’s existence documents that absence. Its work, across the full breadth of human rights obligations binding on the United States, shows the kind of findings such an institution would be positioned to make.