Session 1: Documenting Human Rights Abuses

In this session, participants were asked to discuss how they might adapt the tactics presented to different issues in other contexts. The activity resulted in the following outcomes, as described by the participants themselves.

You represent an organisation that advocates for minority populations in your country. You would like to create a campaign to highlight wage discrimination against minorities in order to depict to the national government that minorities are not been compensated according to their qualification and experience. Foreign workers are in fact getting paid higher than the minorities. The minority group has brought forward their plight to your organisation for assistance.

• What information would you need from the minorities to begin this campaign?
• How will you access this information? From where?
• What tactics might you use to intervene on this issue?

Participants from FET Villagearrived at following strategy to be adopted to deal with the situation.

Steps to implement tactic:

• Hold discussions with the people who have been receiving lower wages than others for similar work in a similar capacity.
• Conduct analysis of existing laws dealing with Wage Laws.
• Look into the practices of organisations/sectors who have been discriminating against their employees.(Sample survey)
• Meet with various governments departments concerned with issues related to Wages and Minorities (Specifically Minority Commission and Labour Department)
• Hold public demonstrations with support and involvement of media to highlight the issue of minorities (with reference to the case of lower wages.)There will be debates/talk shows/discussions in the media to highlight the case.
• File a writ petition with the courts. To bring about desired changes, if need be, in the existing laws dealing with wages and employment.
• The process/work would go on till desired changes are brought about in the existing system.
  

Your organization would like to launch a "Stop Domestic Violence" campaign to address the issue of violence against women in your country.  You believe that domestic violence is widespread, but there is no existing documentation of how women are affected by the problem as this is an issue that is not often discussed publicly. 

1. What information would you like to gather for your campaign?  (10 minutes)
2. How will you gather this information in a way that is sensitive to the victims? From where? (15 minutes)
3. What tactics might you use to build an effective campaign on this issue?  (10 minutes)

Since March 8 village group members are from different countries, we realised that the campaign tactics depend on the country context. However, we agreed on the following:

The following information should be collected to develop the tactics:

• Obtain statistics on domestic violence from shelters, police, NGOs
• In rural areas, gather information from village administration and villagers about how widespread domestic violence is and victim

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