Human Rights Support Mechanism Program

The Human Rights Support Mechanism (HRSM) is a USAID-funded, seven-year Leader With Associates (LWA) cooperative agreement aimed at implementing USAID’s Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance Strategy. It’s implemented by the PROGRESS Consortium, which provides technical assistance and support to partners and beneficiaries in developing countries around the world.

Our Objectives

• Promote and protect human rights

• Mitigate effects of human rights abuses

• Provide remedies to victims

• Identify approaches to protect human rights

• Respond rapidly to urgent and unforeseen crises 

PROGRESS Consortium

The PROGRESS (Protecting Global Rights through Sustainable Solutions) Consortium is made up of five primary partners, which work collectively with USAID to identify and implement HRSM-wide strategic priorities, develop and implement Associate Awards (AAs) and Rapid Response Grants (RRGs), contribute evidence to the HRSM learning agenda, and develop and disseminate knowledge products that benefit the wider human rights community. 

5 Primary Partners

Primary partners work collectively with USAID to identify and implement HRSM-wide strategic priorities, develop and implement Associate Awards and rapid response activities, contribute quality evidence to the HRSM learning plan, and develop and disseminate knowledge products that benefit the wider human rights community.

• Freedom House is the prime recipient of the LWA. It coordinates all PROGRESS Consortium efforts and manages the overall award implementation. Freedom House leads in civil society partnerships, fostering local and regional networks and coalitions that advocate for key human rights. Freedom House also provides expertise on documentation techniques, advocacy strategies, and holistic security for human rights defenders.
• American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) provides technical legal assistance, training, research, and resources to strengthen formal justice sector institutions, so they can more effectively fulfill their critical roles in protecting human rights.
• Internews leads activities that strengthen media’s ability to protect human rights and provides expertise to strengthen media actors’ physical and digital safety and security.
• Pact provides expertise to build the organizational capacity of beneficiaries and to conduct applied political economy analysis. Pact also leads initiatives to integrate human rights activities into USAID programs in other sectors.
• Search For Common Ground (SFCG) provides expertise in various areas in the context of peace building, reconciliation, and atrocity prevention activities. SFCG also leads security sector reform, facilitates communityled conflict resolution services, and contributes to programming with youth. There are seven associate partners and two resource partners, which contribute expertise in specific thematic or technical areas on an as-needed basis for AAs and RRGs. 

7 Associate Partners 

Associate partners contribute expertise in specific thematic or technical areas on an as-needed basis for Associate Awards and rapid response activities.

• Synergía: Initiatives for Human Rights provides expertise to protect and promote the human rights of LGBTI persons.
• The International Center for Not-For-Profit Law provides expertise to strengthen legislation governing CSOs engaged in human rights protection.
• Mobility International provides expertise to protect the rights of persons with disabilities.
• The University of Minnesota's OpenGlobalRights supports public opinion polling and surveying related to human rights issues.
• Videre provides support for video recording and documentation of human rights abuses.
• World Organization Against Torture provides assistance to support victims of torture, enforced disappearances, and summary executions.
• World Resources Institute provides expertise to ensure the protection of human rights in the context of environmental and sustainable development challenges.

2 Resource Partners

• RIWI provides support in the form of online citizen surveys to further leverage USAID resources.
• PROGRESS also works with a global law firm that pro­vides pro bono assistance for human rights projects.

HRSM By the Numbers

• $450 million: Total ceiling for Associate Awards

• $12 million: Rapid Response Grants under the Leader Award

• $25 million: Total ceiling for the Leader Award

• 7: Years of Performance (Oct. 2016-Sept. 2023)

• 14: Implementing partners

HRSM Learning Plan

To support the broader human rights community, the Leader Award funds learning initiatives that identify and disseminate effective approaches for protecting human rights, specifically in non-permissive and increasingly oppressive environments. HRSM’s learning agenda generates evidence on three themes: building dense and more diverse networks of human rights defenders as part of a systems-based approach, identifying effective practices for building partners’ trust, and mitigating the risks of intervening in closed and closing environments.  

The learning agenda:

• Emphasizes comparative learning
• Enables learning across Associate Awards
• Builds evidence for human rights-related learning

Based on their scope of work and expertise, HRSM’s primary partners each adopted topical focus areas for their learning initiatives. PROGRESS has developed knowledge products and tools such as an Applied Political Economy Analysis, an Access to Justice Assessment, a Digital Security Framework, and more. These are among the 538 knowledge products and relevant resources available in the PROGRESS ConnexUs platform (formerly DME for Peace). More than 450,000 people have visited the platform since October 2016.