Annual Report & Audited Accounts 2022

We are pleased to present our Annual Report and Audited Accounts 2022. This year marks the second full year of our most recent four-year strategy, in which we aim to work for and with ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples across the globe in order to combat persecution, challenge marginalization and realize climate justice.

Scarcity amidst deep adversity is the new normal across our partner organizations in nearly every part of the world. Yet unlike stories that dominate the global press, many minority and indigenous communities we work with simply do not seem to allow themselves to be drawn into despair. Their resilience appears to be based on deeply honed survival instincts coupled with innate humanity and empathy that remain central within their cultures.

As this report shows, this year we once again significantly increased the reach and the impact of our work. While such sustained growth has never been our ambition, the attempt to respond to need has changed our trajectory as an organization. In March this year we sought to bring as many of our staff together in London to reflect on the work done so far as a result of our current four-year strategy and commence the discussions that will shape the next strategy from 2025 onwards. Today, fifty-four years after our founding, MRG staff are increasingly based in locations where their advocacy and programming work is being delivered. They are usually local people drawn from minority communities, who are deeply embedded in the struggle to ensure that minority and indigenous communities benefit from the same rights that are notionally guaranteed to all.

To reflect the near trebling of our organizational size we have made significant changes to ensure we can respond to calls for our work with alacrity. I am now privileged to share the Directorship of the organization with my Co-Director, Claire Thomas, a committed and inspiring minority rights advocate with decades of experience. We have also been actively recruiting Regional Advisers who will liaise with local minority and indigenous communities in each of the world’s sixteen sub-regions. Co-designing programme-related interventions with local organizations and sub-granting to those with the greatest stake in achieving change builds capacity at home. It ensures a reliable flow of knowledge and voices to influence policies at local, national, regional and international levels. Our challenge remains in ensuring that this work gets greater exposure: to educate the silent majorities who are complicit in the current extractive and exploitative system, and to seek their partnership to make the changes that will guarantee a successful, sustainable and peaceful future for all.

— Joshua Castellino, Co-Executive Director