Open Global Rights – Bias and Credibility

Open Global Rights is rated Left-Center with High factual reporting by Media Bias Fact Check.

Detailed Report

Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER (-4.5)
Factual Reporting: HIGH (1.5)
Country: Colombia
MBFC’s Country Freedom Rank: MODERATE FREEDOM
Media Type: Organization/Foundation
Traffic/Popularity: Minimal Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY

History

OpenGlobalRights (OGR) is an international platform for analysis and opinion on human rights issues. According to its About page, it was launched in 2013 and has published contributors from more than 90 countries in 35 languages. The publication says it aims to encourage debate among human-rights scholars, activists, practitioners, and researchers across geographic and ideological boundaries.

OGR launched in 2013 as a section of openDemocracy. It later moved to the University of Minnesota’s Human Rights Lab and is currently associated with JustLabs, which OpenGlobalRights identifies as its parent organization. OGR states that views expressed by individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of its editors or affiliated organizations.

Read our profile on Colombia’s media and government.

Funded by / Ownership

OpenGlobalRights operates as an independent human-rights publication associated with JustLabs, a nonprofit-oriented global human-rights and social-change organization. Earlier institutional support included the University of Minnesota Human Rights Lab.

According to OGR’s Partners page, past funding and in-kind support have come from organizations including the University of Minnesota, Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, University of Ottawa, Dejusticia, University of Dayton Human Rights Center, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The publication does not rely primarily on commercial advertising.

Analysis / Bias

OpenGlobalRights publishes from a broadly progressive human-rights framework. Its coverage consistently emphasizes racial and gender equality, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, migrant and refugee protections, economic inequality, climate justice, Indigenous rights, labor rights, and international human-rights institutions.

For example, The future of global economic governance: A rights-based vision argues that existing financial institutions protect wealth and deepen inequality and calls for an economic system centered more strongly on human rights. Similarly, Can the “human rights economy” rebalance power in our politics? advocates shifting attention toward inequality of economic and political power.

Social issues also generally reflect progressive positions. Beyond donor dependency: state accountability in funding women’s rights supports government responsibility for reproductive and sexual-health access, while Anti-gender politics and threats to democracy at the UN criticize conservative opposition to LGBTQ and gender-equality initiatives.

Environmental and racial-justice framing is also common. Understanding climate migration through a racial justice lens: Haiti as a quintessential example describes climate change as intertwined with racial and structural inequality and calls for stronger rights protections for displaced communities.

Current U.S. political coverage is frequently critical of the Trump administration and conservative policies. For example, Donald Trump and the future of human rights argues that administration policies threaten democratic and human-rights institutions, while The Conservatives’ withdrawal from the ECHR: Legal and political challenges characterizes the UK Conservative Party’s proposed withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights as sacrificing rights protections to pursue stricter immigration policy.

However, OpenGlobalRights is not uniformly aligned with the activist left. It publishes criticism of progressive strategies and of the human-rights movement itself. For example, The excesses of identity-based activism undermine human rights argues that some “woke” approaches weaken free-expression principles and place excessive emphasis on identity and subjective experience. The platform has also published debates questioning the effectiveness, legitimacy, and ideological direction of contemporary human-rights advocacy.

Factual standards are strong. OGR’s submission guidelines state that articles should be evidence-based and research-grounded and require authors to hyperlink supporting sources. Submitted pieces go through an editorial process involving review, editing, requests for evidence or clarification, and often multiple rounds of revision. Contributors are typically identifiable academics, attorneys, researchers, activists, and human-rights practitioners.

Because much of the material is analysis and advocacy rather than neutral news reporting, individual articles can present one-sided arguments. However, claims are generally supported by academic research, international organizations, government records, legal sources, and established news outlets.

Failed Fact Checks

• None found from major fact-checking organizations.

Overall, we rate OpenGlobalRights Left-Center Biased based on progressive positions concerning economic inequality, racial and gender justice, LGBTQ and reproductive rights, migration, climate policy, and international human-rights institutions. We rate it High for factual reporting due to evidence-based sourcing, identifiable expert contributors, strong editorial standards, and a clean fact-check record. (D. Van Zandt 10/11/2026)

Source: https://www.openglobalrights.org/

Last Updated on October 11, 2026 by Media Bias Fact Check

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