Human Rights Center Zeferino Ladrillero (CDHZL)

Winning the award would strengthen the organization in many ways, it could place us as a referential social political actor; It would strengthen our dialogue with local, national and international decision-makers.
It would give us such a referential in our locality that it could mean the liberation of hundreds of innocent people or prisoners of conscience. It could also impact the safety of the members of the organization as well as of the more than 30 communities that we accompany in the defense of their rights.
Likewise, the economic strengthening would allow us to have a greater social impact than we have had so far and multiply our scope and results.
We would use the financing and support of the award, acquiring infrastructure that allows us to professionalize our work as well as generate self-sustainable projects that generate permanent economic resources for financial support to our collaborators

The Human Rights Centre Zeferino Ladrillero (CDHZL) was founded in 2012, as a result of the social movement "Alianza Unica del Valle" (AUV) that defends the right to decent housing that was suppressed in 2011 by state police forces and shock groups, which resulted in the imprisonment of 42 men and 3 women.

Zeferino Ladrillero is one of AUV's longest-running activists, so it was decided to adopt his name for the organization.   This symbolizes that anyone can and is an advocate when defending some human right and represents that the defense of human rights is done by the people, whether indigenous, field workers, or from low-income neighborhoods.

Our vision is to become a space for training and professionalization of human rights defenders. A place where people interested in transforming lives can enable themselves and find a team that supports them.

  Our purpose is to make human rights violations visible to the public and to strengthen, with legal   defense, visibility, documentation, education and psychosocial support, the processes of fighting for the human rights of the people, organizations and individual rights that have been violated; establishing us as a social political actor for the discussion of the public agenda.

Water stress in Mexico ranks 24th out of 164 in the global ranking. It is one of the 44 countries considered most at risk of reaching "Day Zero", i.e. a point where there is not enough water to meet the needs of its inhabitants. Even 15 of its states are about to run out of water. 22  million people are affected, of which 7 million live in rural areas.

On the other hand, Mexico today is one of the "deadliest" countries for human rights defenders along with Colombia, the Philippines, Honduras, Brazil and Guatemala,as it was revealed by the global analysis published by Front Line Defenders. Human rights defenders, such as Kenya Hernandez, an indigenous activist currently held in a maximum security prison (whom we support), were attacked for their work in the defense of indigenous land and groups.

State of Mexico has the highest  level of impunity  in the country. It is even in a worse situation than the Philippines (a country with the highest  impunity rate in the world).>span class="y2iqfc">

We conduct strategic litigation, designed with the participation of communities to deal with and make visible the damage to their lands.

We are an organization that works 100% with a social base. We provide tools for them to generate their human rights strategies and we include psychosocial impact as an important aspect for social struggle. We are going from the micro to the macro.

Our strength and impact is because we have a wide territorial scope and we go to places that other people don't go. We support struggles that in addition to being risky are complex in nature for the actors involved.

Firstly, we do a review of the territory/land. Then we identify what we are up against and design legal, media, educational and psychosocial defense strategies to always address conflict together with the community.

Most of the communities that we accompany defend water, a healthy environment and seek their autonomy, human rights that are a prerequisite for the exercise of others and necessary for a dignified life. Likewise, the scope is enhanced because we're talking about wide territories that don't serve political-administrative demarcations but rather environmental characteristics, so the impact is 7 million inhabitants just for mentioning the issue of wáter. 

Another important impact is the fight for the freedom of innocent people who have been fabricated crimes. Only the State of Mexico, has a population of just over 32,000 prisoners, most of whom have self-incriminated as a result of acts of torture.

By means of training sessions with community activists, we design community, legal and communication strategies to address conflicts seeking a positive transformation. Even some of our collaborators are even young people who have participated in the struggles of social movements.