In 2024, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy celebrates its 25th Anniversary. Since its founding in 1999, the Carr Center at the Harvard Kennedy School has been a leading research center that has focused on some of the most intractable challenges facing the world.
Early programs at the Carr Center included the American Exceptionalism Program, the National Security and Human Rights Program, and the Program on Measurement and Human Rights. In the first decade of its existence, the Center made substantial contributions to policy, research, and teaching on genocide, the Responsibility to Proect, counter-insurgency, and interventions.
Today, the Center has evolved to its current focuses on Racial Justice, Technology and Human Rights, Transitional Justice, and the work of Human Rights Defenders.
As we celebrate the Carr Center’s 25th anniversary this year and continue to commemorate the recent 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we remain focused on the many ways that not enough has been achieved in the world of human rights — but we must also applaud the many ways in which the human rights movement has made the world a better place.
To learn more about the Carr Center, the work we've done, and the work we plan for the future, watch our new mission video below.