Can human rights organizations in the global south attract more domestic funding?

Human rights groups in global South countries rely heavily, but not exclusively, on funds from abroad, and this pattern has created a number of vulnerabilities. Conventional explanations for this pattern include political repression, poverty, and cultural particularity. We argue that these do not tell the whole story, however, and offer evidence that local rights groups receive more public support than many assume. Other, less common, explanations for rights groups' reliance on external funds include habit and routine, fear of political manipulation by co-citizens, and, potentially, a failure to provide services that local people deem sufficiently valuable. To broaden their funding base to within-country sources, local rights groups in the global South will have to hire new staff, experiment with new methods, and better define their value added.