The Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) is a US non-profit international human rights organization based in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1998, CJA represents survivors of torture and other grave human rights abuses in cases against individual rights violators before U.S. and Spanish courts. CJA has pioneered the use of civil litigation in the United States as a means of redress for survivors from around the world.

The Center for Justice & Accountability is dedicated to ending torture and other human rights abuses while vindicating the rights of survivors to seek truth, justice and redress. Through criminal and civil litigation, CJA works to create a record of truth and refine human rights jurisprudence, while promoting the principles of universal jurisdiction and the rule of law. Often, the impact of CJA's casework extends beyond redress for the immediate plaintiffs and can serve as a catalyst for transitional justice movements abroad. While CJA works to close off the United States as a safe haven for violators of human rights, the organization also supports efforts to prosecute violators in national courts around the world.

In August 1998, The Center for Justice & Accountability filed its first case, Mehinovic v. Vuckovic, on behalf of a Bosnian torture and detention camp survivor. Since then, CJA has pursued an extensive docket of human rights cases, winning favorable verdicts in all cases that have gone to trial. As of early 2009, CJA has filed high-profile cases against the following former military or political leaders who were responsible for systematic human rights abuses:

In recognition of its accomplishments, CJA was awarded the Third Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights on October 1, 2007. The Dodd Prize is awarded biannually by the University of Connecticut to an individual or group who has made a significant effort to advance the cause of international justice and global human rights.

CJA is part of a movement of legal non-governmental organizations who use civil litigation to enforce international human rights law in the U.S. CJA's litigation draws on two principal statutes: the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) (also known as the Alien Tort Claims Act) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA). These statutes grant U.S. courts jurisdiction to hear civil actions filed against perpetrators of gross human rights violations, even when those violations took place overseas.

Since the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeal's landmark 1980 decision in Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, this class of civil action has opened up U.S. federal courts to the implementation of international law and human rights safeguards:

In the twentieth century the international community has come to recognize the common danger posed by the flagrant disregard of basic human rights  ... Among the rights universally proclaimed by all nations  ... is the right to be free of physical torture. Indeed, for purposes of civil liability, the torturer has become—like the pirate and slave trader before him—hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind. Our holding today  ... is a small but important step in the fulfillment of the ageless dream to free all people from brutal violence.

The authors of International Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts—the authoritative manual for ATS and TVPA litigation—echo the Filartiga ruling: