The Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) is a human rights organisation based at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. We use the law to bring about social change in society through a combination of research, advocacy and litigation. We have 5 programmatic areas all of which are guided by our 4 key pillars of work, namely: Expanding the agency of marganisalised actors; horizontal application of the Constitution; developing critical partnership with the state and taking an intersectional and gendered approach to human rights violations. The promotion and protection of human rights defenders is a cross-cutting theme throughout our 5 programmes.