Katie Redford
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Katie Redford 1995 fellow
Bold Idea
Challenge environmental abuses in countries where few other organizations can safely operate by exposing and publicizing earth rights abuses through campaigns, reports and articles.
Organization
Earth rights are those rights that demonstrate the connection between human well-being and a sound environment -- including the right to a healthy environment, the right to speak out and act to protect the environment, and the right to participate in development. Too many people in the world are denied those rights.
Earth Rights International (ERI) is one of the only organizations to assemble on-the-ground information about the human rights and environmental situation inside the country. ERI runs various projects each of which is designed to promote and protect earth rights in different ways: by using the US or international legal system as a tool for change; by training and educating affected peoples so they become their own best advocates; by documenting, writing about, and publicizing abuses; by engaging international institutions in the struggle to censure earth rights abusers; and by strengthening networks and coalitions so that a united front against earth right violations can be provided.
Biography
Katharine Redford, Esq., co-founder and U.S. office director, is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, where she received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Human Rights and Public Service. She is a member of the Massachusetts State Bar and served as counsel to plaintiffs in ERI's landmark case Doe v. Unocal. Katie received an Echoing Green Fellowship in 1995 to establish ERI, and since that time has split her time between ERI's Thailand and US offices. In addition to working on ERI's litigation and teaching at the EarthRights Schools, Katie currently serves as an adjunct professor of law at both UVA and the Washington College of Law at American University. She has published on various issues associated with human rights and corporate accountability, in addition to co-authoring ERI reports such as In Our Court, Shock and Law, and Total Denial Continues. In 2006, she was selected as an Ashoka Global Fellow. Katie has been profiled in Be Bold and Your America: Democracy's Local Heroes.
