Mr Adrian Pereira

Adrian Pereira is the Executive Director and co-founder of North-South Initiative (NSI), a Human Rights and Social Justice orientated organisation based in Malaysia. NSI’s mission is to build a society that prioritises social justice via solidarity building (#viralisingsolidarity). At NSI, the social mobilisers team works with marginalised communities from the ASEAN region and beyond to create a competent and resilient movement using critical pedagogy and design thinking. Before setting up NSI, Adrian has worked with 2 UN-accredited international organisations, Pax Romana International Movement of Catholic Students (IMCS) and Dignity International. Adrian has also been involved in the ASEAN Forum of Migrant Labour (AMFL) since 2012. AFML is the official arm of ASEAN which deliberates on labour migration.

The communities NSI works with include migrant workers, refugees, domestic workers, victims of forced labour, small scale farmers, indigenous youths and people living in conflict zones like Patani and West Papua. This includes cleaning up the global supply chain from forced labour and ensuring Businesses and Governments come up with solutions for human rights violations, including promoting gender justice. Adrian believes that while Malaysia has become the “breeding ground” for forced labour in the global supply chain, it has the potential to be a role model for remedies should there be political will and a clear corporate vision from the business sector to right the wrongs. Some of the current tools and methods used by NSI to engage the Business sector includes helpline systems, smartphone applications, remediation, social audits, workers empowerment, middle management training, data collection and evidence driven digital systems.

Even though NSI is a small & lean entity, they have developed competent migrant and refugee leaders who can document evidence of human rights and labour violations. They have also coached interns and volunteers over the years who now contribute via various CSOs. To be sustainable, they have also established formal working relationships with multiple universities, INGOs, Trade Unions, Supply Chains, and Intergovernmental Organizations to produce critical analysis and policy interventions despite having limited resources.

Impact means facilitating the grassroots and those on the margins to operationalise social justice and integrity values by creating organic intellectuals to map their paths via solidarity building.