kantin's blog

Tactic: Using Mobile Phones for Human Rights

kantin — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:52:45 -0600

Tactic: Using Mobile Phones for Human Rights

Hello all, welcome to the on-going discussion on the tactic: using mobile phones for human rights. Please post your comments, questions, resources, and experiences to share with the New Tactics Community.

The first resource I would like to add to this discussion is link to the Online Dialogue hosted by New Tactics in November 2007 titled: Using Mobile Phones for Action

As the online community builder at New Tactics, I am always looking for ways to enhance our website to promote more activity and collaboration among the community. This is why I am currently looking into an application that allows community members to post comments on our website by texting messages from their mobiles phones! One example of an application like this that already exists is twitter.com. If anyone has any other examples of this - or advice for me on how to it the feature to this website -- I am ALL ears!

Thanks!

Kristin Antin, Online Community Builder

Tactic: Documenting human rights abuses - anonymously

kantin — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:31:08 -0600

Tactic: Documenting human rights abuses - anonymously

An important part of human rights advocacy is the monitoring and documenting of human rights violations. Both monitoring and documenting are very challenging activities in themselves. One aspect of documenting human rights violations that is particularly challenging is the threat that one faces when leaking this information to the public. Threats come in all forms, and are from the violators themselves - governments and/or others in official capacity. It is for this reason that I took interest in a wiki website that allows for people from around the world to post articles online -- anonymously! The website is called wikileaks.

For more information, take a look at Sarah Ingebritsen's article on wikileaks.

How information technology can be used to increase the accountability of leaders and representatives

kantin — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:29:50 -0600

** The following is an eNewsletter from http://www.humanrightstools.org **

Dear readers,

This is the first of two newsletters on the same topic: how information technology can be used to increase the accountability of leaders and representatives.

Have you ever wondered what your nation is saying at the United Nations? How its voting on particular issues? Find out what by visiting UN Democracy, which gives easy access to the transcripts of the General Assembly and Security Council:
http://www.undemocracy.com/

As an example, it makes it easy to read what President Ahmadinejad or President Bush have been saying during recent speeches:
http://www.undemocracy.com/Iran/ahmadinejad
http://www.undemocracy.com/United_States/bush

It also makes it much easier to find document like resolutions and statements, for example below the Security Council documents are sorted by year and by topic:
Year: http://www.undemocracy.com/securitycouncil/documents
Topic: http://www.undemocracy.com/securitycouncil

We caught up with the team who put this amazing resource together, Julian Todd and Francis Irving. We found out that behind this website is a group of dedicated volunteers, who put this together on a shoestring budget, with nothing else than ingenuity, hard work, and superb activist motivation! OK, and now for the interview:
Editors: How is this website meant to be used? What kind of information does it provide?

Francis: All the UN's documents are squirreled away on their hard to use websites, and make it actually impossible to send anyone links to a document, or find it with a search engine. UNDemocracy.com brings all that out into the open - putting the documents into Google, and letting you refer easily to a document.

Julian: By making them accessible to the general internet they can be referenced by research tools such as wikipedia. When you dig out facts buried in obscure reports, or come across the sorry official excuse given for a US vote against an overwhelmingly popular cause, it's important to be able to bring it to the attention of others who would be interested through the power of Web 2.0.

Editors: How is it done, technically? How do you keep it up to date? Are all the documents added by hand?

Francis: It's done automatically, by fancy software we wrote which parses the United Nations documents website, and loads the data into our website.

Julian: The PDF documents are pulled off their server with difficulty whenever they are found. For searchability, the General Assembly and Security Council meetings are converted into structured HTML using a program that starts with the pixel coordinates of every word on the page. Corrections have to be made by hand when names of countries are mistyped or titles are left out.

Editors: Who is behind this? Tell us a bit about the people who developed this website. What kind of financing did you have?

Francis: Nothing, it was built by one person, Julian Todd, with bits of help from others. He had the original idea, and does it in his spare time as a volunteer.

Julian: I paid for the server and bandwidth rental, which accounts for the only up-front cost of the whole project. You don't need money to do good things on the internet. All you need is a bit of imagination and the ability to ignore your family when they tell you that it is immoral to work for no pay.

Editors: What is your next project? If you had a million dollars to spend on a nonprofit idea, what would that be?

Francis: I don't have a new idea (bet Julian does) - but I'd still use the money usefully. To start off we'd make the UNDemocracy site even better - make it easier to use, and make it cover more documents. I'd next improve our other website Public Whip, making it easier for people to maintain voting analyses of MPs. (http://www.publicwhip.org.uk) I'd put the rest into a foundation to make sure both sites can be kept running reliably and be improved over time, as they deserve.

Julian: I am not someone who can convert money into productivity by other people. It would be better to give the money to someone who is probably able get people to work, for money if necessary, and send the keen ones in my direction for collaboration. There are people who can motivate, but can't program. And there are people who can program, but can't motivate.

Editors: Ok, thanks a lot for the interview, Francis and Julian, but thanks also for all the work you've been doing to produce this great resource. Both useful and inspiring!

For our readers, as usual, please forward this to your friends and colleagues who share your interest in human rights, or post it to your blog and mailing lists. If you have received this from a friend and would like to subscribe, you can do so here: http://www.humanrightstools.org/newsletter.htm

Best regards, and good luck in your efforts to defend or raise awareness about human rights.

Daniel D'Esposito, Editor
Human Rights Tools
editors [at] humanrightstools [dot] org
http://www.humanrightstools.org

New Tactics del.icio.us page - please contribute

kantin — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:27:08 -0500

Hi all,

For all you excited about these new technology possiblities, please take a look at the New Tactics del.icio.us page at

http://del.icio.us/newtactics

I've created this page to 'bookmark' and organize website links for all of us working on the project. Those helping me research the Feature Dialogues can post relavent website to this del.icio.us page and we can all see them by searching under an appropriate tag. I guess this is a bit hard to explain, but please go check it out and you'll get the hang of it! The password for this page is: techn@l@gy, but you don't have to be logged in to recommend links to 'newtactics', I think anyone can do this. But if you are doing some serious research, it might be easier to log in and then make a button in your browser to post it.

Other example of how we can use this:

- if you come across any orgs using cool new tactics in human rights, you can post the website on the del.icio.us site

- if you come across some great new technologies that we can utilize, you can post it!

- if you come across new eNewsletters and places to promote new tactics and our featured dialogues, you can post it! etc.....

Good luck! Email me with questions.

New Tactics Volunteers!

Kubatana in Zimbabwe using mobile phones tactic!

kantin — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:30:23 -0500

I was on my way home last night, when I heard a story on the radio about "a human rights organization in Zimbabwe using mobile phones for their advocacy campaigns," and I thought, "wow that is innovative!" Then a few seconds later I realized that they were talking about our very own Kubatana!

Kubatana encourages members of civil society to give them feedback on the human rights situation in Zimbabwe through mobile phones. They have developed this SMS network of over 1800 Zimbabweans with the help of Ken Banks of Frontline SMS. The application created by Frontline SMS and Kubatana allows the organization to send out hundreds of text messages to those that have chosen to 'subscribe' to the message-blast. The subscribers can then text comments, responses, and questions back to Kubatana. Kubatana sometimes takes these text messages and posts them on their blog

Kubatana uses a variety of technologies to communicate with Zimbabweans - SMS is one of them. The organization sends out notifications of public events, inspiring quotations, selected comments from current and past articles and statements, and website content converted into thought-provoking tasty 160 character messages.

To sum up the importance of encouraging such dialogue, Kubatana exclaims - "Democracy is a two way thang!"

Click here to listen to the 3-minute radio show!

Further resources on this tactic:

Click here for more information about Ken Banks and other human rights practitioners using mobile phone technology to advance human rights!

Tactical notebook - "Sending out an SMS: A rapid-response mobile phone network engages a youth constituency to stop torture fast"

New Tactics online dialogue - "Using Mobile Phones for Action"

Questions? Comments? Interested in adapting this tactic to your human rights strategy? Post a comment below!

Tactics for healing, encouraging dialogue, and reconciliation processes in Kenya

kantin — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:54:08 -0500

This is a request for ideas and experiences from you - the New Tactics online community, to share with leonida in Kenya.

Leonida wrote:

We have just finished working recording voices of Kenyan women and girls victims of post electoral violence, we intend to use this as an advocacy tool in the community and to aid in the healing and reconstruction process at the grassroots.

Do you have any suggestions regarding training topics or links to training materials that we can use as we embark on the healing , dialogue and reconciliation process?

New Tactics material for healing, promoting dialogue, and reconciliation:

Tactical Notebooks:
- I'll Walk Beside You - In this notebook Glenda Wildschut and Paul Haupt outline the victim accompaniment process for the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that developed the concept of "briefers" to install a victim-friendly process. Victims were provided with the opportunity to testify and be supported before, during and after the process. The TRC selected briefers–chosen from the caring professions, such as ministers, social workers and nurses–from the community to provide this support. The briefers acted as volunteers and were trained to perform various tasks with regard to the entire structural process of the TRC. As a consequence of the sustained, supportive work of the briefers during the entire process, victims better understood their legal, emotional and practical position...
- Rebuilding Communities - In this notebook, we learn about building local and long-term capacity building within communities to address massive human rights atrocities. The Center for Victims of Torture has instituted an intensive training and supervision model for refugees to develop local capacity for providing understanding and skills for mental health support to rebuild communities after massive human rights atrocities. CVT has instituted the training model in refugee camps in Guinea and Sierra Leone for refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia. The model combines intensive, hands-on training of refugees with ongoing supervision. These refugee "mental health specialists" build their capabilities, provide individual and group therapy for traumatized individuals and use their skills toward rebuilding their own communities and support systems...
- Public Audiences - The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Peru is one of the most recent experiences of processes of transitional justice, institutionalized with the aim of exploring the truth hidden behind a past characterized by massive abuse of human rights. One of the central activities in this process is the Public Audiences, created with the aim of legitimizing and dignifying the personal experiences of the victims in order to support the therapeutic and recuperative work on their behalf.
- A Mock Tribunal to Advance Change - In this notebook we learn about the creative and effective use of a mock tribunal to change public perceptions and beliefs regarding violations against women, and to change public policy and law.
Online Dialogues:
- Truth and Reconciliation Processes: Aiding community healing through addressing impunity
- interTactica posts (by Philippe Duhamel):
  - Hard truths and the way of the anger and the tears - When whole systems were erected for the sole purpose of repressing and silencing you, how do you recover your voice?
  - Before you organize a mock tribunal: 14 things to think about - When faced with problems such as weak or no enforcement of human rights law, or even the lack of proper national legal instruments, how can you determine whether a mock tribunal is the right tactic for you? What factors should you weigh in before you decide?
  - Organizing Tips for Citizens Tribunals - A mock tribunal is not a kangoroo court. The more your mock tribunal adheres to recognized standards of a fair trial, and resembles the existing proceedings in your country, the more credibility the endeavour can earn.

Please share your own ideas and experiences for Leonida on healing, dialogue and reconciliation by posting a comment to this dialogue. Need help participating in this dialogue? Click here.

A call for creative solutions to aid the survivors in Burma

kantin — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:26:21 -0500

With the latest official figures at 38,500 dead and 27,838 more missing, and Burma's junta tightening access to areas hit by Cyclone Nargis - it is vital that we collaborate on ways in which we can aid the survivors in Burma.

Only a few international relief organizations are now on the ground in Burma, and are under-staffed and under-resourced and are therefore unable to adequately deal with the overwhelming need there now. The BBC writes "Residents have told the BBC's Burmese service how private citizens have been trying to distribute water and supplies from their own cars - but soldiers have been confiscating the goods."

As it seems unlikely that relief organizations will be able to reach those in need, what resources do we have to aid these survivors in Burma? Are there creatives ways in which we can use technology to support those on the ground? For example, could we use Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, the Hub (for video advocacy), blogs?

video test

kantin — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:11:03 -0500

this is the body