About INCLO

Executive Directors of the ACLU and Liberty sparked the idea that in a rapidly increasing multi-polar world, national civil liberties organizations across borders should meet, share expertise, collaborate when useful and, in particular, support and stand up for each other.

The 1st leadership meeting of nine domestic civil liberties organizations, from the United States, England, Israel, Ireland, Hungary, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Argentina and Canada took place in London.

Period of informal exchanges, ad-hoc peer-to-peer support and solidarity actions amongst inaugural civil liberties organizations.

Definition of the first three thematic pillars for cooperation and joint actions: Religious Freedoms and Equal Treatment, Information Rights, Protest and Police Brutality.

Institutionalization: First Program Coordinator hired, launch of the first joint INCLO report Take Back the Streets and first joint Strategic Litigation 10 NGOs vs UK, which marks the beginning of INCLO’s strategic use of legal intervention support across all thematic pillars.

The arrest of Yara Sallam, of the Egyptian INCLO member EIPR, leads to the widening of INCLO’s individual solidarity actions and personal support amongst Executive Directors, to include a more holistic approach to practical support to build resilience for INCLO member organizations and support for their staff at risk.

Establishment of INCLO member organizations’ capacity building program, INCLO becomes a legal entity under Swiss law and opens its own bank account. The publication of Drawing the Line, Tackling Tensions between Religious Freedom and Equality, which shall, over the next four years, become a universally validated analysis of this intersection, marks the beginning of INCLO’s ongoing contributions to global standard-setting.

Development of a fourth pillar: Protecting Civic Space and Solidarity Actions. Membership geographical reach widens to India. Launch of Lethal in Disguise and Surveillance & Democracy, two reports that shall mark the beginning of INCLO’s multi-year programs on crowd-control weapons and surveillance technology.

Period of organizational growth to five INCLO’s central team members, including program coordinators for the pillars. Organizations of the first of many International Convenings for Trans Rights Activists. Publication of the first toolkit for NGOs to develop strategies and tactics in response to government attacks

On the way to a true global network: INCLO is joined by members from Russia (2017), Colombia (2018), and Australia and Indonesia in 2019. Publication of consecutive reports on surveillance and use of multiple litigation tactics for and together with our member organizations.

Beginning of the INCLO regranting program to strengthen its members.

Defending and strengthening human rights actors during the pandemic: Development of a COVID-19 resource portal and several COVID-19 related webinars, UN Special Rapporteur submissions and the joint paper Protesting during A Pandemic. Increased collaboration in national, regional and international courts.

Publication of Lethal in Disguise 2, in cooperation with Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), the most comprehensive report to date on the dangers of crowdcontrol weapons, and launch of the dedicated website.