The Institute’s area of work includes activities related to socio-political impact or direct intervention to foster human rights and their protection. Some of these actions are its own initiatives although the majority are carried out in collaboration with different public institutions, academic centres, non-governmental and other social organisations.
The main objective is to achieve direct impact on human rights protection, even in personal cases. Different types of activities are held to achieve this: specialist courses, advisory services for different social agents or public institutions, reports or actions to directly impact social or institutional actors.
The following actions are especially noteworthy:
- Technical advisory services for social organisations (Rigoberta Menchú Foundation)
- Reports and assessment for Basque institutions (the legal and social situation of stowaways, the philosophical and operational bases of the Basque Immigration Scheme, legislative proposals)
- Direct political actions (the drive to present appeals on the grounds of unconstitutionality, Biscay Declaration on Human Right to the Environment, Luarca Declaration on the Human Right to Peace).
- Work focusing on political impact, mainly though the Training Programme for Indigenous Latin American Leaders.
- The Institute has also participated in programmes to host human rights advocates or actions focusing on specific political impact in southern countries, particularly Colombia or the Western Sahara.
- Foster development cooperation projects jointly with other organisations (University of Rafael Landivar in the Verapaz region of Guatemala, cooperating to set up an indigenous university in Ecuador).
The institute belongs to socially relevant bodies or boards of trustees (Alboan, CeiMigra, Gernika Gogoratuz, Council of Europe expert committees, the Observatory of Religious Pluralism in Spain, Association of Human Rights Institutes – AHRI, Monitoring Committee of the National Human Rights Plan, the Basque Expert Panel for the Social Pact on Immigration).