Featured Dialogue Topics

Using National Human Rights Institution mechanisms for addressing discrimination issues

New Tactics — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:22:55 -0500

Using National Human Rights Institution mechanisms for addressing discrimination issues

April 23 - 30

National Human Rights Institutions can be powerful vehicles for the promotion of human rights. This Featured Online Dialogue will focus on ways in which these mechanisms have utilized their mandates and resources to address issues of discrimination. New Tactics is pleased to host these experienced resource practitioners from eight countries (more biographical information).


Margaret Donaldson, HREOC, Australia	Myriam Montrat, CHRC, Canada	Piero Narducci, CHRC, Canada	Lisbeth Garly Andersen, DIHR, Denmark	Mrs. Huriye Aydemir Varisli, DIHR, Denmark

Anna Bossman, GHRC, Ghana	Christine Njeru, KNHRC, Kenya	María Alejandra Nuño Ruiz Velasco, CDHCF, Mexico	Maria Lourijsen, CGB, Netherlands	Christine Jesseman, SAHRC, South Africa

We invite you to join our featured resource practitioners to share your own experiences of engaging with your own National Human Rights Institution. We are beginning this on-line dialogue by highlighting these six theme areas to open the dialogue - please feel free to add new theme areas:

Engaging civil society

Methods for combating and preventing discrimination

Mechanisms available to citizens / organizations

Key challenges (and successes!)

Issue of discrimination and Institutions’ mandates

Key discrimination issue areas

Learn more about how you can participate in New Tactics on-line dialogues.

Join the New Tactics community today so you can share your experiences, ideas and questions.

Truth and Reconciliation Processes: Aiding community healing through addressing impunity

New Tactics — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:43:19 -0500

Truth and Reconciliation Processes: Aiding community healing through addressing impunity

March 26 – April 1

New Tactics in Human Rights’ featured online discussion for March will focus on ways in which Truth and Reconciliation processes have and are being implemented to aid community healing.

Some fundamental concepts behind Truth and Reconcilation (TRC) processes include: 1) future reconciliation is necessary for there to be a peaceful co-existence in a country or community; 2) that reconciliation and peaceful coexistence rest upon knowing as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights that have been committed; and 3) there must be public recognition of the truth that had been hidden for so long by a multitude of falsehoods.

This dialogue seeks to share experiences transitional justice processes known as Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, instituted with the aim of exploring the truth hidden behind pasts characterized by gross abuses of human rights. The conflicts experienced in the countries and contexts of our resource people have unique and particular characteristics. However, we believe that the sharing of these experiences and those of the broader New Tactics community who take part in this dialogue will yield useful lessons for other contexts considering the use of TRC process. Because the effects that violence has on people are always devastating - rippling from the individual to the family to the community to the nation; they demand a treatment that is not only individual, but collective.

There are many questions of importance for our dialogue and we look forward to the many questions that will be raised by the participants. A foundational, and often contentious, question is "What do we mean by ‘truth’?" and as a result, "How do TRC processes deal with the unraveling of differing histories, truths and memories?"

Join our featured resource people and share your own experiences, insights and questions. (Click here for help on how to participate in the dialogue)

Our featured resource people include:

Row1 L-R: Galuh Wandita, Jose Caetano Guterres, and Patrick Burgess (East Timor TRC); Jennifer Prestholdt, Ahmed K. Sirleaf II, and Laura Young (Liberia Diaspora Project Team)

Row2 L-R: Sofia Macher (Peru TRC); Greensboro TRC process team; Glenda Wildschut, and Paul Haupt (South Africa TRC); Neneh Barry (Sierra Leone TRC)

More biographical information

Engaging the Media in Human Rights

New Tactics — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:58:47 -0600

--- Dialogue ongoing...scroll down for the latest entry---

Engaging the media in human rights is an on-going challenge and opportunity. Join our featured resource people and share your own experiences, insights and questions.


Alan Davis, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, development and programme work in Asia.	Mufuliat Fijabi, is a Senior Programme Officer with BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights in Nigeria.	Philippe Duhamel, a Canadian, writes the interTactica blog on the New Tactics website.
		For more biographical information on our featured practitioners.
Davinder Kumar, Human Rights Journalist, London.	Sharon Lamwak, the Advocacy and Communications Officer for ACTV, Uganda.

The media, at least in our highly mediated/industrialized societies, is one of the pillars of power. That's why we need to become skilled at engaging journalists and news editors in giant media corporations, and alternative grassroots information outfits alike.

We need to be interested in "engaging" the media not just as another constituency with some influence, but because it is one of the ESSENTIAL levers of power. The media is integral to civil society. The media -- and this may be a worldwide phenomenon -- bolsters or undermines progress. It makes or breaks regimes. It fosters, or undoes, a culture of respect for human rights.

Failure to impact the media, or at least bring some measure of control over hateful radio propaganda for instance, has been shown to imperil human rights from poor inner city ghettos in America, to the farthest reaches of bloodied African hills. Likewise, triumphant press campaigns through media-savvy efforts that have come to the righteous defense of victims of injustice and abuse around the world, improving and saving thousands upon thousands of lives over the last decades.

So while the media has made us realize we live in a global village, the views it carries can build, or destroy, each of our own individual huts.

In the age of the all-pervading "Branding", billionaire public relations firms and mass manufactured opinion, the media holds a measure of social power that just can't be ignored. That is why indeed, now more than ever, we simply cannot escape engaging the media deliberately, compellingly, in the struggle for human rights.

We are very consciously using "Engage" – an important word to remember – for this discussion. We'll be exploring together the many ways we do and can engage the media. We’ll also utilize one of the tried and true tools of the journalists' trade - the 5 W's and H - "why, who, what, where, when, and how" of engaging media in human rights.

“Why” do you engage the media in your human rights efforts?”

Unarmed Accompaniment

New Tactics — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:59:49 -0600

Featured Tactical Discussion - Unarmed Accompaniment

From January 23 to 29 our featured resouce
people, organizations and community members provided wonderful insights and their experiences regarding unarmed accompaniment.

Unarmed Accompaniment:
Protecting human rights defenders so they can continue their important
work! Human rights defenders do their work in unpredictable and often
dangerous situations and conditions around the world. Unarmed
accompaniment provides a powerful witness to those who may wish to harm
defenders, letting them know their actions will be known.

If you missed that time period, don't worry, you
can still add your comments, questions and ideas. The discussion remains open for the community to continue the exchange. The only change is that the featured resource people have returned to their daily commitments and may not have the opportunity to respond.

To add your comments to the discussion, make sure you are logged in (no login id? become a member now).

Clockwise from Top Left: Liam Mahony, from the network members of Peace Brigades International, Nonviolent Peaceforce Team Two in Sri Lanka, and the ECAP Colombia Team and network members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams - CPT.

You
can review the diverse and interesting biographical information of our featured practitioners.

Many organizations and people around the world have been involved in the amazing gift of providing unarmed protection to human rights defenders. This is not a new tactic - it probably dates back before written history - for bravery and sacrifice are as much a part of our human make-up as violence and self-gain. But we also know that tactics shift and change with the demands of the times. What has this tactic meant to us in OUR time?

Philippe Duhamel, in his inter-Tactica blog shares about his friend, Barbara, in "Heros and the courage to be there"

Philippe Duhamel wrote:

When my friend Barbara left in 1985, the whole accompaniment thing was barely starting. A small-scale intrepid outfit on a shoestring. She joined Peace Brigades International, to protect families of the disappeared in Guatemala.

David Grant, from the Nonviolence Peaceforce, shared with New Tactics that there are many organizations involved [over 80 organizations around the world in the Nonviolent Peaceforce Network] in providing unarmed accompaniment. Let's share where we have come in our time. One question Philippe posed in his blog: "How is accompaniment different in the various countries where projects are now underway?"

We welcome you to continue to share your experiences, comments, questions and ideas! Remember, although this discussion has been "archived", you may still continue and contribute to the discussion.

Using Mobile Phones for Action

New Tactics — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:26:52 -0600

Mobile technology is being used by citizens all over the world as the most affordable and massively adopted piece of technology. How can we harness this technology for advancing human rights and civil society participation?

Our outstanding resource practitioners for the November-December tactical discussion shared and discussed many ideas for "Using Mobile Phones for Action". You can still contribute your ideas, questions and experiences!

Clockwise from top: Evans Wafula (Kenya) Ken Banks (UK), Ellene Sana (Philippines), Natasha Dokovska (Macedonia), Noel Large (Northern Ireland) and Katrin Verclas (United States).

Philippe Duhamel - in his interTactica blog - Harnessing new technology for new tactics provides some great examples to get our creative ideas flowing.

Sending out an SMS -- Supporting human rights work and activism with text messaging, or SMS - Short Messaging Service - functionality
Organizing demonstrations -- Such as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine
Coup de text -- Like ousting a president, it happened in the Philippines
Protest Ringtones -- Highlighting corruption, it's being used in the Philippines

List of topics in this discussion

Using mobile phones to document human rights abuses/government impunity:

Voices of Africa Project, which aims to provide mobile phones to citizen journalists and monitors to work for human rights issues.
Need for legal protection or provisions for sharing information acquired through mobile phones.
Ellene’s example of the Philippines and their movements against past government corruption with mobile devices.

Election monitoring with Mobile phones

NDI’s efforts to aid emerging democracies with mobile phones for election monitoring.
FrontlineSMS’s efforts to monitor elections as well as different changing political situations via SMS technology as a means of disseminating information.
Election monitoring in Nigeria as an example of citizen monitors for elections.
Potential security risks for election monitors.
Citizen vs. Official election monitoring: the ups and downs
ngomobile.org SMS competition
“White Paper on Mobile Phones in Mass Organizing” guide form mobileactive.org

Good and Bad: The possible negative uses for mobile phones:

Delays or interruptions in mobile phone service (at critical times), problems of sending large number of messages.
Mobile phones being used to spread untrue, private, or unfair information
Security concerns for mobile phone users in repressive political atmospheres

SOS SMS

South Africa and the Philippines programs as an example of text alerts/notifications of emergency situations.

Mobile phones to build relationships

Belfast, Ireland example
People behind the tool of mobile phones

Mobile phones during emergencies/disaster situations

Sanjana’s recent example of mobile phone failure
Natural disaster situations: Are phones feasible then?

Reaching out via mobiles

Spamming and privacy on mobile phones
Contacting interested parties via mobile phones
Example in Macedonia
Example of Interface network in Northern Ireland

A Digital Divide

Kenya’s Voices of Africa getting phones to journalists for news reports from various countries that are otherwise harder to reach.
Information coming from Mobile phones/networks and phone capabilities Email vs. SMS: questions of access and availability

Links from the dicussion:

Mobile uses database: http://www.kiwanja.net/database/kiwanja_search.php
Intertactia Blog Post- Top 5 uses for mobiles: http://www.newtactics.org/en/blog/philippe-duhamel/take-new-tactics-ever...
The Economist article on this topic: http://economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10219...
Mobile Active Resource page: http://mobileactive.org/wiki/Main_Page
Pangea Day: www.pangeaday.org
nGOmobile competition: www.ngomobile.org

The Power of Place: Sites of Conscience

New Tactics — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:18:17 -0500

October Featured Tactical Discussion

The Power of Place: How Sites of Conscience Inspire Civic Engagement

During the week of October 24 to October 30, the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience members Sarwar Ali, Trustee from the Liberation War Museum (Bangladesh); Sojin Kim, Exhibition Curator from the Japanese American National Museum (United States) and Ereshnee Naidu, Director of Programs at the International Coalition office in New York were our featured resource practitioners for the discussion.

Please feel free to continue to contribute your comments and ideas to the discussion and let us know what tactics you'd like to discuss in the future by sending your ideas to: newtactics [at] cvt [dot] org

The International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience is a network of historic sites dedicated to remembering past struggles for justice and addressing their contemporary legacies. The Coalition was founded in 1999 by Memoria Abierta in Argentina, the Gulag Museum in Russia, the Slave House in Senegal, Lower East Side Tenement Museum in the United States, and other historic sites that activate the past as a catalyst for citizen engagement in current issues. Working in both transitional societies and long-established democracies, Sites of Conscience use historic preservation, oral history, art installations, and exhibits as the basis for public dialogues, community organizing, and other processes critical for building lasting cultures of human rights. Since its founding, the Coalition has grown to 17 Sites of Conscience leading a network of over 1700 initiatives in 90 different countries. The Coalition provides direct funding for innovative programs at historic sites that foster dialogue on contemporary issues; organizes learning exchanges among member sites, from 1-1 collaborations to international conferences; and conducts strategic advocacy on behalf of member sites and the Sites of Conscience movement.

Liberation War Museum

The Liberation War Museum was established in March 22, 1996, by a Board of Trustees so that future generations can learn about the genocide unleashed by Pakistan military rulers and their fundamentalist collaborators; the heroic resistance of a united people; and international support from governments, public leaders, and media that led to the emergence of Bangladesh as a secular democratic state. The Liberation War Museum, with the help of the Bangladesh Army, excavated two killing fields and displays the uncovered human remains of martyrs. The Liberation War Museum focuses on the young generation through its Outreach and Mobile Museum for students and endeavors to link the contemporary issues of communal harmony against human rights abuses and fundamentalist tendencies to uphold the ideals of the liberation war (e g. democracy, secularism and nationalism) as incorporated in the 1972 Bangladesh constitution.

Japanese American National Museum

The Japanese American National Museum is dedicated to promoting understanding and appreciation for America’s diversity by sharing the Japanese American story. It is affiliated with the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, founded to promote principles of democracy and to inspire civic participation. The Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple was built as a place of worship in 1925 in Little Tokyo and was later designated an assembly point for thousands of Japanese American citizens prior to their removal to one of the 10 U.S. concentration camps. The Temple housed the Japanese American National Museum from 1992 to 2000. In fall of 2004, it was transformed into the headquarters of the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy whose mission is to promote principles of democracy and civic participation. The National Center and the Japanese American National Museum are connected by a public plaza and together constitute an important site for civic life.

The Opening Post:

We're very excited to introduce you to this discussion about how to harness and utilize our human need to remember places, events, and people important in our personal and collective histories by creating sites of conscience.

Philippe Duhamel's interTactica blog "On Creative Uses of History" highlights three wonderful points from the International Coalition's tactical notebook, The Power of Place, providing our resource practitioners with a great starting point to tell us why and how they created their sites of conscience:

1. Leverage instinct into tactic. Take a fundamental human need or instinct -- such our need for preserving memory -- and turn it into a great tool for engaging civil society on present day human rights issues and concerns.

2. Combine same-olds to make new. By combining traditional museum science, and human rights activism an entirely new idea emerged -- the creation of an historical site museum of conscience.

3. If you can't join with the big stars, shine with the other misfits. Find other historical site museums of conscience and join together to create an international coalition to support each other, keep creating new ideas, and utilize these great sites to engage the public in both past and present human rights issues and concerns.

Share your own sites of memory or historical power places in your community that hold the potential to be transformed into a site of conscience. Talk with the discussion resource practitioners from the International Coalition about you can start to build it.

Information is Power

New Tactics — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 01:01:42 -0500

September Featured Tactical Discussion

Information is Power: Librarianship and Human Rights

During the week of September 26 through October 2, 2007 outstanding world experts in knowledge activism - Saša Madacki (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Toni Samek (Canada) and Bert Verstappen (Switzerland) discussed with members of the New Tactics community the critical role of librarians and information experts in helping organizations research, document, collect, organize, store and use information for action. Unfortunately, Youk Chhang (Documentation Center of Cambodia, DC-Cam) was unable to join our discussion due to unexpected demands in far-flung villages related to the tribunal process where he had no internet access to participate during the featured week.


Saša Madacki, Toni Samek, Bert Verstappen and Youk Chhang

Saša Madacki, Director of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Prior to taking over as director, he was the Head of Information Research and Library Department at the Human Rights Centre. In 2002, Saša participated in the New Tactics in Human Rights Central and East European Regional Training Workshop and wrote a tactical notebook on library and information services for the improvement of human rights work. Saša’s New Tactics Tactical Notebook: Making Sense of the Information Wilderness: Library and Information Services for the Improvement of Human Rights Work is available as a free download. For more information about the Human Rights Centre at the University of Sarajevo see: http://www.hrc.unsa.ba/en/osoblje.html

Toni Samek, educator and scholar at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta, Canada. For more information see: http://www.ualberta.ca/~asamek/toni.htm She has written An Introduction to Librarianship and Human Rights, a paper presented for Shared Dialogue and Learning: International Conference on Educating for Human Rights and Global Citizenship. Her recently released book, Librarianship and Human Rights: A 21st Century Guide, is available through CHANDOS (Oxford) Publishing (www.chandospublishing.com). The book provides eighteen strategies and over 100 examples of social action applied to library and information work. Plans are in process for a Spanish translation to be released in Buenos Aires in a special Latin American adaptation in 2008.

Bert Verstappen, Programme Coordinator at the Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems, International (HURIDOCS), a global capacity-building network of organisations that use documentation techniques, monitoring methods, information management systems and available technologies in the defence of human rights and the prevention of abuses. Among the many helpful resources and manuals Bert has written is the excellent, What is documentation, available at HURIDOCS website. For more information on HURIDOCS see: http://www.huridocs.org/

Theme “threads” during of the Featured Tactical Discussion week (listed in alphabetical order):

Classification of librarians: ‘keepers,’ ‘navigators,’ or ‘protectors’?
Human rights and the internet
Ideal traits/skills in a librarian : What to look for when seeking a “librarian”
Importance of both domestic and internationally oriented sites for aggregation of information
Importance of librarians for website information organization
Importance of librarians in documenting/archiving human rights violations
Importance of sharing information
Inter- library collaboration and networks
International librarianship
Librarian training (What it should entail, the need to keep current on it, its importance)
Librarians equal efficiency and saved funding
Librarians’ roles
Making information manageable: using librarians for more efficient documentation and information organization/retrieval
Neutrality vs. politics of librarians (the necessity for politically progressive librarians
One person libraries and inter-librarian connections
Relationship of librarians with the internet
Resource material listings (articles, websites, networks)
Right to Know Day - September 28th
Starting a documentation center or small library
Youth and librarianship (Importance of reaching out to a younger audience amid all the technological advances and changes in a librarian’s role)

---------------

OPENING POST OF THE DISCUSSION

Welcome to our first Monthly Featured Tactical Discussion. We are so pleased to highlight Philippe Duhamel’s interTactica blog post that beautifully summarizes our usual perceptions and biases about librarians. He also draws out key points from Saša Madacki’s tactical notebook that provide a perfect opening for pulling out some reactions for both our extraordinary resource practitioners and those participating in the discussion.

Philippe Duhamel wrote:

I must admit my prejudice. Those in the profession are the epitome of neutral, technical, and boring. Or so I thought.

Boy was I wrong. Blame early childhood experiences.

Forget the cold lady with the glasses who goes Shhh! behind mouldy bookcases. Get a read beyond stereotypes. Find out about a radical new breed of freedom fighters who can bolster knowledge democracy and boost your overall effectiveness.

My preconceived biases about librarians were first shaken in a New Tactics notebook entitled Making Sense of the Information Wilderness: Library and Information Services for the Improvement of Human Rights Work, by Saša Madacki, head librarian at the Human Rights Centre in Sarajevo. I discovered documentalists, information specialists, and archivists — however you want to call them — can actually be of use to us in the movement. Some even describe themselves as activists! I was blown away.

Beyond help to organize reference materials, I found in the tactical notebook many other ways librarians can assist our work, our organizations, and indeed the world. Let me share seven.

1. From wasteful ignorance to faster, better decisions. Sometimes, key decisions are postponed or never made because critical information is missing. Worse, you make a decision based on incorrect information, or facts that weren't checked properly. As a knowledge worker, a librarian can hunt decision-making facts faster, and better. Your document specialist can also identify research carried out elsewhere, to avoid unnecessary duplication. Don't waste time in ignorance. Find out early. Ask a librarian.

2. One copy makes the rounds. Your librarian can make sure there are no duplicates of costly subscriptions or materials around the office, managing resources so they are shared efficiently. This saves time and money. Hugely.

3. Go for the find, not the search. Most of us whose work depends partly on research usually spend over half of our time looking for stuff, online or otherwise. A librarian can cherry-pick for you the best reference material on a given subject. You're in a crunch to write a major project proposal? Your librarian can gather the statistical highlights, the documented evidence, the testimonies, freeing you up to do the other productive things. Like writing the actual proposal, and getting it out the door.

4. From blunders to homers. Some of your colleagues may make errors of fact or judgement that end up costing money or credibility. Or, because they don't know enough about your organization's culture, history and accomplishments, volunteers can make erroneous assertions or embarrassing statements. Your librarian can take charge of verifying facts for all internal reports, public statements and external publications. That can save the day.

5. From organizational amnesia to historical ownership. Say this big anniversary is coming up... You scramble to put together bits and pieces of your past achievements. Wow, sure looks like someone purposefully tucked away your historical photos in every imaginable places! A librarian can package your organizational memory for wider use. When a journalist or a researcher comes calling, you can be ready with your neat little folder. Your legacy is important. Make sure your contemporaries, and future generations, can access it.

6. From information overload to easy up-to-dateness. Your specialist can monitor your individual interests and keep tabs on the field for you. When a new book or interesting paper appears, you get an alert based on current files under your responsibility and your profile of interests.

7. From dusty archives to knowledge democracy. You may be spending too much time looking for information, instead of using it, and disseminating it. “Disseminating materials is the librarian’s foremost responsibility”, says Saša Madacki. Your librarian also doubles as a computer specialist. They can evaluate and manage the best possible software solutions for you. They can create databases to improve access to your internal records and key contacts, like membership, donors, and the media. They can train staff on how to use organizational databases and manage their own documents.

— Okay. Librarians are cool. Question: Now how do I get one?

If that’s not enough, here are a couple more questions to start, or keep, the ball rolling:

What are some of the first steps any human rights or social change organization (small or large) can take to vastly improve how they manage documents and information?

Are there tried and true methods from the field of library science that should not be forgotten in the “technology information age” of today?

New Tactics Community Members