IHRIP's History

The International Human Rights Internship Program (IHRIP) began in 1976, when the international human rights movement was young. When the program first began, it was housed at the University of Minnesota.   In 1983, it moved to the Washington, DC office of Institute of International Education (IIE), where it has been housed ever since.  

In its early years IHRIP’s purpose was to provide individuals still in school or just out of school with an in-depth exposure to work in the human rights field.    These internships were what gave IHRIP its name.  Among IHRIP interns during these years were:

• Philip Alston, who later served as Chair of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
• Ligia Bolivar, who went on to co-found PROVEA, a leading human rights organization in Venezuela
• Irene Khan, who from 2001 to 2009 was Secretary-General of Amnesty International
• Bulelani Ngcuka, who was the first national Director of Public Prosecutions in South Africa
• Joe Oloka-Onyango, who later became a member of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights

In 1989, IHRIP shifted its focus from entry-level internships to short-term professional development opportunities for staff of human rights organizations.   This shift was a response to human rights groups’ interest in having their staff be able to access “internship” opportunities for the purpose of further training and exposure.   

These internships/exchanges fit well within IHRIP’s goal, which since 1989 has been to promote the observance of the International Bill of Human Rights by facilitating the exchange of knowledge and experience between and among human rights groups in different countries.   Over the course of 20 years, IHRIP sponsored more than 400 of these professional development exchange projects by staff of human rights organizations in the Global South, as well as Central and Eastern Europe and the republics of the former Soviet Union.  Through these projects, staff learned from human rights groups in other countries, enabling them to gain new knowledge and skills to strengthen their own organization’s work.

In addition to the people-to-people exchanges, over the years IHRIP has facilitated and supported other forms of learning between and among human rights groups.  Since 1994, IHRIP has pursued a specific focus on economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights, collaborating with a large number of organizations to pursue a range of resources to enable activists to better pursue ESC rights work.   These resources include Circle of Rights, Out of the Shadows, and The Banyan Tree Paradox.  In the last several years IHRIP  has devoted increasing attention to budget analysis as a tool for human rights work, and as of 2009 IHRIP-sponsored person-to-person exchanges will focus exclusively on human rights budget work.