What is FORGE?
Background & Need
Against the despair of critics who announce that current challenges spell the “endtimes” of human rights and the defensiveness of traditional actors who double down on conventional tactics, the Future of Rights and Governance (FORGE) program at CHRGJ is committed to proposing new ideas and strategies for the next generation of global rights and justice thinkers and doers.
We will provide scholars and practitioners from around the world with a space to come together to reflect, connect, dissect successes and failures, learn from each other, and develop near- and medium-term experiments for the field.
Through a lens of looking back to look forward, the FORGE program will explore the following questions:
What are the successes and failures of the last decade?
What lessons can be learned for them?
How can we envision and plan for the next decade of global rights and justice work?
What specific solutions and experiments need to be undertaken to address existential challenges to global rights and justice?
Overview
Drawing on its long experience with experimental and systems thinking approaches — as well as methodologies such as foresight and design thinking — the FORGE 2025-2035 Program will identify, incubate, and mainstream solutions (aka, experiments for change) that help bolster the efficacy and legitimacy of global governance and justice in the next decade and beyond. In other words, FORGE will unlock tools and strategies that will help shake global governance and justice out of a sub-optimal current state, creating momentum toward a more impactful and flourishing future for both fields. Some experiments for change will be butterflies, others may be moonshots.
The FORGE 2025-2035 Program launched with a conference in November 2023, but comprises a wider effort to facilitate the knowledge production, design, and implementation of solutions needed to orchestrate a more experimentalist model of global governance and a reinvigorated system of global justice. Coming out of the conference, 4 experiments for change will be further developed, a methodology toolkit will be published, regular virtual meet-ups will be hosted for the surrounding community of practice, and a series of articles exploring key ideas and initiatives will be published through Open Global Rights (OGR).
To learn more, we invite you to read this framing article: Human Rights 2030 by César Rodríguez-Garavito.
Timeline
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Submissions to participate
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Registration & logistics
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Early engagement & co-creation with participants
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FORGE 2023 Conference in New York City (NYC)
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Synthesis and information dissemination | Selection of 4 experiments for change
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Ongoing support to 4 experiments for change & foresight lab | Development of methodology| Bi-monthly practitioner workshop series
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FORGE 2025 Conference | Progress showcase of experiments for change
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Reflection, impact measurement & documentation of proof of concept for 4 experiments for change | Documentation & dissemination of methodologies toolkit
