The Pittsburgh Human Rights City Alliance helps build alliances among individuals and groups in our area supporting human rights for all. We support local engagement in national and global human rights movements, and we are part of the North American Human Rights Cities Alliance.
University Human Rights Working Group
The University Human Rights Working Group is a network of faculty, staff and students at area universities working with community leaders to support human rights learning and build university-community relationships that advance the work of the Human Rights City Alliance and its partners.
Housing & Racial Justice
Our work to protect human rights in our city begins with ensuring that every resident enjoys the right to adequate, affordable housing. This requires work to address inequities that stem from long-standing racial discrimination in housing policies. Together we’ve developed a Human Rights Housing Strategy for Pittsburgh that calls for:
- Ending displacement
- Advancing tenant rights and this Tenant Bill of Rights
- Increasing social and non-market housing options
- Building public sector capacity through fair taxation policies
To advance housing justice, we work to support the Pittsburgh Housing Justice Table, a coalition of allied local organizations and independent advocates who believe that housing is a human right and that everyone should have access to the housing they need. We have also led the work to organize the annual Pittsburgh Housing Justice Summits.
International Work
UN Reviews of U.S. Human Rights
We are currently involved in the United Nations Universal Periodic Review of the U.S. government and have participated in filing two civil society stakeholder reports to the UN, including: Discriminatory Taxation Policies Obstruct the Realization of Economic and Social Rights in the United States, and Housing and Homelessness in the United States. Our team continues to work with national allies to put pressure on the U.S. government and win support from international allies and human rights advocates.
Immigrant Rights
HRCA partners with the Global Switchboard, Casa San Jose, and other organizations led by and supporting immigrants and immigrant rights. We also collaborate with advocates and experts in the National Human Rights Cities Alliance to uplift ways cities can organize locally to protect and strengthen immigrant rights.In January 2025, Our national counterpart, the Human Rights Cities Alliance and Young Initiative on the Global Economy, Occidental College hosted a webinar on How Cities Can Defend Human Rights in the Face of Mass Deportations.
How Cities Can Defend Human Rights in the Face of Mass Deportations
Racial Equity & Justice
- Reparations Resource Guide -The global human rights movement has long advocated for reparatory justice to address long-standing impacts of the institution of slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade on people of African descent around the world. Our work seeks to integrate global and local conversations around reparatory justice to bring new thinking to our communities.
- Taking Back our Human Rights! Building a Black Regional Agenda for Justice
- (November 2022) HRCA assisted to facilitate a listening session with Justin Hansford, Professor of Law at Howard University School of Law and an elected founding member of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. For more details, review our summary Taking Back Our Human Rights: Black Pittsburgh’s Appeal to the World and our background page for the event.
- Police Reform
- International reports
- In 2023, HRCA joined allies to submit a report to the UN’s International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in the context of Law Enforcement (EMLER): “Treatment of People of African Descent by Law Enforcement Agencies in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County” (See summary press release)
- Racial Discrimination & Equity in the United States: Evidence from Pittsburgh, (July 2022) HRCA prepared and submitted a Shadow Report to the United Nations CERD Committee (See Executive summary )