Organizing Diasporas to Realize Rights:

This project is a partnership of diverse migrant community associations in Palermo, Sicily, from its North and West African, South and Southeast Asian, and other communities.

Migrant and diaspora communities and their associations have played essential roles in making Palermo a global center for the promotion of human rights. Even as barriers and violations of many rights persist, the city’s diaspora associations and their members work every day to realize rights in their communities and others.

As the Charter of Palermo, issued by the administration of Mayor Leoluca Orlando in 2015, recognized, the constitutions and laws of Europe and Italy promise many rights: to asylum, shelter, dignified work, freedom of religion and thought, among other human necessities.

A decade after the Charter of Palermo, this project set out to document migrant and diaspora communities’ everyday experiences of the various rights to which they are legally entitled but that often go unrealized. In the project’s first year, we documented migrant and diaspora communities’experiences of human rights in the city today – rights to asylum, housing, work, health care, education, freedom of thought and religion, and more. We asked people what rights are being realized and what rights are lacking in their communities. This website shares the results of this research.

In the project’s second year and in their ongoing work beyond that, our partners are conducting outreach, organizing, and other community-based work to help realize rights among Palermo’s diverse diasporas. The project’s leader in Palermo, the intermediary organization Diasporas for Peace, provides ongoing support for this work.