The Guernica 37 Centre is a not-for-profit organization that aims to revitalize the use of accountability initiatives, to meaningfully impact the lives of the peoples and communities that demand justice for human rights violations and other egregious wrongdoing.
Mission
We aim to restore the social perspective to the quest for justice, by designing our work based on historized contextual analysis of situations in which communities are organizing and confronting abuse of power, violence, and marginalization.
We seek to address situations that derive from organizational wrongdoing and, thus, yield complex patterns of perpetration that require multifaceted responses. Together with local partners, we aim to confront powerful persons and organizations—both public and private—involved in the planning, execution, and cover-up of human rights violations and other abuses of power. At the same time, the Centre activates multiple and consequential forms of accountability. In addition to curtailing illegal action, we seek to promote corrective and preventive change aimed at non-recurrence.
Vision
The Guernica 37 Centre is composed of a group of practitioners, activists, and academics, with varied backgrounds and decades of experience in the accountability field, who share a common perception: accountability discourse is well developed and embodies noble claims, but the results are scarce and legal victories often are disconnected from meaningful change in the lives of the people demanding justice.
Consequently, we strive to invigorate the practice of human rights accountability as a useful mechanism that can impact the lives of rights-holders and claimants. The Guernica 37 Centre will support local claims for justice through tailored approaches that combine specialized knowledge and practice from various disciplines and latitudes to embolden the people with whom we work to continue exercising their rights and striving for what is fair or just.