About us
Why not rights? It is the question we could never get a good answer to.
Why Not Rights is a small human rights organisation based in Accra, Ghana. We were formed around a simple frustration: people in this country lose their homes, their liberty, their health and sometimes their lives to abuses that are already illegal, and there is often nobody standing next to them when it happens.
So we do three things. We support victims of human rights abuses directly, with a listening ear and practical referrals. We document and report what happened, so that individual harm becomes public record. And we run an open archive of human rights stories in Ghana, because the reporting that does exist is scattered across international organisations, wire services and local newsrooms, and it disappears quickly.
Our work covers everyone, and it deliberately includes the people others avoid. LGBTI Ghanaians, women accused of witchcraft, people held in police cells, communities living beside poisoned rivers, journalists arrested for a post. These are not separate causes. They are the same question about whether the Constitution means what it says.
We are independent and not aligned with any political party. We are funded by people who believe this work should exist.
How we work
The person decides
Nobody's story is published, shared or escalated without their informed consent. People can change their mind at any point, and we will remove what we can.
Evidence over outrage
We publish what we can source and stand behind. Where we are summarising other people's reporting, we say so and link to it.
Everyone, without exception
Rights do not depend on who you are, who you love, where you were born or what you are accused of. That is the whole point of them.
Small, close and useful
We work where we are, in Accra, and we would rather do a few things properly than announce many programmes.
Work with us, or tell us what we are missing.
We welcome partnerships with lawyers, clinicians, journalists, researchers and community groups across Ghana. If you have a story that belongs in the archive, send it to us.