Archiving Human Rights for Advocacy, Justice and Memory
Contribute your knowledge of human rights work by participating in our dialogues

Join the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) and the New Tactics online community of practitioners for an online dialogue on Tactics for sustaining the well-being and security of defenders from June 20 to 26, 2012

New Tactics has hosted a number of dialogues on keeping human rights defenders safe and well: Staying Safe: Security Resources for Human Rights Defenders (July 2010), Self-Care for Activists: Sustaining Your Most Valuable Resource (Sept 2010) and Being Well and Staying Safe: Resources for human rights defenders (June 2011). Through these conversations, we were able to bring together human rights defenders in the field, organizations that work to support defenders, funders, trainers, mental health practitioners and others interested in well-being and security.  From this base of individuals, organizations and information, we are excited to host a dialogue that focuses on the...

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Join WITNESS and the New Tactics community for an online dialogue on Archiving Human Rights for Advocacy, Justice and Memory from May 16 to 22, 2012.  Archiving and preservation have long taken a backseat to more urgent aspects of human rights documentation and advocacy, but that is beginning to change. Human rights archives are increasingly playing a pivotal role in advocacy, restorative justice, historical memory, and struggles against impunity. At the same time, however, archivists and activists alike are grappling with the mounting challenges posed by the proliferation of digital documentation. How can we ensure that the critical documentation created today will be preserved and accessible in the future?

In this dialogue, we will explore the tactics and methods used by archivists to preserve human rights information. Are you new to this topic? This is an opportunity for you to learn...

Summary-writing in progress

Thank you for joining the New Tactics community for an online dialogue on the topic Working with corporations to assess and improve human rights impact from April 18 thru 24, 2012.  The commitment for the featured resource practitioners to participate in this dialogue is now over - however, it is still possible to add comments below.  We will write a summary of this dialogue which will be posted on this dialogue page by June 2012.  Check back then!

Corporations can have an enormous impact on human rights - both good and bad.  As corporations become more global, the potential impact on human rights also grows. Targeting governments as the primary duty-bearers for upholding their citizens’ rights, the international community has created a collection of treaties to hold governments accountable for their human rights impact.  Without comparable treaties and mechanisms to define...

Featured Tactic
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Concentrating production of soccer balls in monitored facilities to prevent child labor

To verify that children are not working on the production process both inside and outside the factory, Reebok relies on the services of local human rights monitors who regularly, about twice monthly, inspect the production facilities. These monitors interview workers and supervise inspectors who oversee the shipments of panels in and out of the factories. They also maintain ties with the local community and visit surrounding villages to confirm that no Reebok balls are stitched outside the factories. As a result of these efforts, Reebok can now offer soccer balls labeled 'Guaranteed: Manufactured Without Child Labor.'

Re-discover interTactica!

Check out these past interTactica posts and re-discover this great resource. Thank you interTactica for 3 wonderful years of tactical advice!

Blog: Four leverage points on the money

Philippe Duhamel's picture
LeveragePhoto cc: macca.

 

Do you feel the Earth is getting trashed faster than we seem to be able to save it? Do you sometimes share in the despair that our dependance on Big Oil & SUV's — with their attendant wars, food to ethanol follies, and other tar sands insanities — will bring down civilization faster than the ice caps and Greenland are melting?

 

Petroleum, mining and other corporate interests are in a head-on collision against local, land-based cultures, in a conflict so deep the whole world is its battlefield. Solutions based on morality, human values, respect for nature, and sheer common sense appear more inaccessible now than ever.

 

It's a battle of two worlds, simply said. A global clash: Earth and living creatures on one side, Cash on the other.

 

Well, here's how leverage works:

 

1. Find a place to stand (the support base, also called the fulcrum, or pivot);

 

2. Find a lever (a long enough stick);

 

3. Locate the pressure point (where you stick the lever);

 

4. Work like hell from your end of the stick;

 

5. Move the world (...thanks Archimedes!)

 

Because it funds and underwrites all large-scale projects, when you want to save some corner of the planet, you may find yourself in need of moving the world of Finance. That's when knowing about the following four leverage points could come in handy.

Highlighted Community Dialogue

Blog: Using development entry point to participate to local governance

ntakobatagize's picture

In many circomstances, talking about human rights and citizen participation would harm policy makers and local governments, as individuals and /or institutions.

New Tactics in Action: Stories of impact

Read stories about the impact that the New Tactics project has had on human rights work around the world.

pruhanya's picture
  I have been affiliated with the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT)'s New Tactics Project since January 2009 and I must appreciate the enormous knowlege that I have gained from working with Nancy Pearson and Kristin Antin particularly with the Dialogues tactics.
Recent comments
sangwand's picture
sangwand What are the new challenges and opportunities for human rights archivists?
Thanks for bringing up this point, Michelle. Do you know of any use cases in which cell phones provide the primary access point to human rights archives? Our partner, the Kigali Genocide Memorial (KGM) in Rwanda, is wrestling with this issue as well. KGM has been collecting video oral history...
sangwand's picture
sangwand How have archives played a critical role in promoting or defending human rights?
Great points, Kristin. I agree with Grace that while standards are useful, there will never be a standardized vocabulary that can be applied to all human rights materials and collections. The Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI) has been grappling with this issue as we work with a very...
Sojourner's picture
Sojourner What is human rights archiving and why is it important?
Here in the U.S, we believe that the way they teach the Civil Rights Movement in schools and present it on TV seriously distorts the history that we lived and created. One of the main reasons we started building the Civil Rights Movement Veterans website (www.crmvet.org) was our understanding...
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