A podcast featuring the people and ideas that are driving -and disrupting -human rights around the world. You can learn more about the project at our website, www.strengthandsolidarity.org. We welcome your feedback and your suggestions. In particular, if you have a poem or text, a speech, or a piece of music that expresses something important about your own commitment to rights, please tell us about it at pod@strengthandsolidarity.org.
Amid constant pressure to raise funds for short term objectives, and to achieve promised impact, human rights organisations can lose sight of the bigger picture and focus inward. Yet they are part of a community of actors seeking to secure “all rights for all people” and that holistic goal requires long term strategy and commitments. Veteran human rights worker Mona Younis and Kate Newman, chief executive of Intrac, a UK-based group focused on global civil society strengthening, tell host Akwe Amosu what they are doing to support a more expansive vision in the field.
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20 Nov 2025TRANSCRIPT
59. China: Staying the course
For ten years between 2003 and 2013, Chinese organizer Lu Jun worked to build a movement of advocacy and litigation to secure human rights. He first joined the fight against stigma attached to people with Hepatitis B that limited their access to education and work, and later founded what was to become the main human rights organization in China, the Yirenping Center. But that was under then President Hu Jintao. When Xi Jinping came to power, political space shrunk sharply. In this episode, Lu Jun reflects on how a nationwide network of lawyers and NGOs coped with the crackdown and shows how human rights work continues.
Contact us at pod@strengthandsolidarity.org
We are now publishing our newsletter on Substack, if you would like to subscribe: https://substack.com/@strengthsolidarity (https://substack.com/@strengthsolidarity)
Transcript availble here. (https://open.substack.com/pub/strengthandsolidarity/p/episode-59-transcript-china-staying?r=5hdw1j&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false)
2 Oct 2025TRANSCRIPT
Best Of: North Korea: What future do Koreans want, and do they agree?
While Strength&Solidarity is on a break we’re taking the chance to re-up some favourite episodes.
Back in December we featured an episode about North Korea – but with a twist. Beyond the ritual condemnations of egregious practices under Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, it’s rare to get a close-up view of what the people who escape from North Korea think and feel about their lives and the future they want. Hanna Song, Executive Director of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, reflects on what she has learned – a more nuanced and complex picture than is usually painted.
And in the Coda, a Zimbabwean human rights lawyer relies on soccer to keep things cordial. Music by Oliver Mtukudzi.
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Quick Links
Click here to read the Episode 48 Transcript (https://strengthandsolidarity.org/podcast/48-north-korea-what-future-do-koreans-want-and-do-they-agree/).
Hanna Song bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hanna-song-25055a114/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/hanna-song-25055a114/)
Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB): https://en.nkdb.org/ (https://en.nkdb.org/)
NKDB: 2024 White Paper on North Korean Human Rights: https://en.nkdb.org/activitynews/?idx=125777386&bmode=view (https://en.nkdb.org/activitynews/?idx=125777386&bmode=view)
UN: Report of the commission of inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea: https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-idprk/reportofthe-commissionof-inquiry-dprk (https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-idprk/reportofthe-commissionof-inquiry-dprk)
Inside a recent episode
60. Human Rights: Expanding our ambition
Published 10 Dec 2025 · Transcript excerpt
[…] Yeah, so I've been part of two pilots, they took place in the US actually, and they were very different, which was interesting in and of itself. I think in the first one, it was an organization that had had a recent change in leadership and quite a disruptive period before we piloted the tool. […]
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