Artists for Human Rights is a non-profit organization shining light on human rights abuses and solutions.
About US

AFHR harnesses and gives voice to the creative energies of artists and activists in the cause of raising human rights awareness around the world. Working with like-minded groups and individuals, AFHR creates campaigns embracing film, music, visual arts and literature which are designed to inspire, educate and ultimately be a call to action that touches hearts and minds which is where truly, all meaningful change begins. 

Speaker series
Our speaker series features the leading authorities on the most pressing human rights issues facing the world today. Our guest lecturers include noted authors, activists, educators, and Nobel Laureates, and their accomplishments have garnered accolades that include a Peabody Award, an Emmy Award, a Pulitzer Prize nomination, and the Nobel Peace Prize
Donate
Your charitable contribution can help us further expand our reach, amplify our message, and help spotlight ongoing crisis and those in need.
 
We are a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Your donation is tax-exempt to the full extent of the law.  
Speaker Series GUests
Our Hope and Human Rights Speaker Series Initiative is to Turn Raised Awareness into Action
John Prendergast
Lisa Kristine
Kerry Kennedy
President José Ramos-Horta
Ruchira Gupta
Jack Healey
Gary White
John Bul Dau
Projects
Free a Village
Artists for Human Rights (AFHR) has partnered with Voices4Freedom to free an enslaved village in India from generational slavery. Our initiative has helped free over 100 people! 
AFHR Founder Anne Archer and President Donna Isham traveled with Voices4Freedom outside of India’s holiest city, Varanasi, to see the village that AFHR is in the process of bringing to freedom. The 3 year program begins by opening a school for the enslaved village children. As the children learn to read and write, they and their parents are educated about their human rights. Simple. Miraculous. As these enslaved children and parents learn their rights while the children learn to read and write, the parents begin to understand and come together for maybe the first time as a self-determined community based on self-respect and shared human values. With knowledge comes power. They stand up for their legal rights, and the enslavers, like school-yard bullies, begin to back away looking over their shoulders for who else has found them out. Generations of slavery meets freedom forever.
Art & Advocacy

Visual Arts are perhaps one of the oldest forms of Man’s creative expression.  Long before film, CD’s, DVDs, radios and televisions, artists expressed themselves visually. Artists in the Renaissance gave us paintings, etchings, sculptures and visions that brought in a new Age of Enlightenment. Artists for Human Rights, knowing the power of the visual artist from painters to sculptors to photographers, brings together these artists and ignites them in the name of basic human rights.

Already this has exploded into an internationally touring human rights art exhibit seen in New York, Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Florence, Italy. Artists creating pieces inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have captivated audiences around the world. With their message of peace, tolerance and human rights, Artists for Human Rights Visual Artists is at the precipice of a new renaissance, a renaissance of human rights.

Artists for Human Rights (AFHR) continues to raise awareness through our Art and Advocacy series featuring leading artists using their art to bring awareness of pressing human rights issues. Our guest lecturers include award-winning photographers, sculptors, painters, and multi-media artists whose impactful work is etched in our consciousness pushing us to stand up for human rights and demand change.

James Gray Gallery
Biennale Internazionale dell’Arte Contemorancea di Firenze
Monterrey, Mexico Art Exhibit
Song Byeok Art Exhibit
You Can make a difference

Artists have the ability to touch society so profoundly that positive change can come about as a direct result. Our greatest thinkers throughout history have always been the greatest advocates of human rights because they know so well how vital it is that the individual’s freedom of self expression is protected. Therefore I have formed Artists for Human Rights to give voice and bring about greater awareness among all peoples of the world of all of our human rights as laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Because artists have the ability to elevate the culture, we as artists, uniting to make known the human rights of all peoples of the world, can bring about greater peace and tolerance.

– Anne Archer
Founder, Artists for Human Rights

Anne Archer Headshot
United Nations Logo

UDHR proclaimed by the UN in 1948

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. View the list of the thirty basic human rights outlined in this milestone document.

The Universal declaration of human rights
Artists for Human Rights (AFHR) was formed as a non-profit organization with the purpose of promoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and thus raising human rights awareness around the world by knowing them, demanding them and defending them.

AFHR welcomes all peoples of the world to join us – the only prerequisite – support and affirmation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We work with like-minded individuals from all walks of life, all disciplines, races, creeds and nationalities and allied organizations to bring the full force of artistic expression to bear in the human rights arena. As a united front, our intention is to enlighten and elevate the culture by raising our voices together thus bringing about increased sanity and tolerance in our troubled world.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude.

There are more than 40 million people enslaved in the world today – that’s double the amount of people taken from Africa during. the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

According to federal government data, over 70 percent of people are held in privately-run immigrant prisons.

Everyone has the right to education.

More than 72 million children of primary education age are not in school and 759 million adults are illiterate and do not have the awareness necessary to improve both their living conditions and those of their children.

These are just a few of the basic human rights that all people around the globe should be entitled to. Sadly, many aren’t. As artists, we have the ability to help shed light on these unfortunate circumstances. Becoming informed is the first step.
Contact US

Artists for Human Rights
Post Office Box 22830
Carmel, CA 93922

Get in touch

Please fill out the contact form below to reach AFHR.

    “Where after after all, do universal human rights begin? small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works . . . unless these right have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted cirizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”

    - Eleanor Roosevelt, Chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Commission 1948