monitoring
Dialogue: Using Shadow Reports for Advocacy
Shadow reports (often called 'alternative reports') are submitted to treaty monitoring bodies at the United Nations and other international institutions as an alternative to a government's official report regarding the human rights situation in its respective country. This online dialogue will be a space for practitioners and scholars to share experiences, challenges, successes, resources and tool for the effective use of shadow reports to expose the reality of the human rights situation in their countries.
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Using government budgets to monitor its legal obligations, commitments, and progress in advancing child-specific rights
The Children’s Budget Unit (CBU) has been using national and provincial government budgets as monitoring mechanisms to advance child-specific socio-economic rights. Budget monitoring allows CBU to analyze how government conceptualises, implements, and allocates budgets to fulfil its legal obligation to help realize these rights. The rights of the child are explicit, and the government is legally bound to fulfil them: in the South African Constitution, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the African Charter, the child has the right to political, socio-economic, cultural, economic, and environmental rights. In addition, the South African Constitution specifies that the child has the right to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services, and social services.
Establishing Independent Monitoring Boards for prisons to ensure humane and just treatment
The Independent Monitoring Board in England and Wales (IMB) is not a pressure group but a constant presence in a prison, independent of the Governor, staff and prisoners, monitoring that the prison is being run according to the rules. The IMB consists of a group of lay people living locally to a prison who are appointed by the Minister for Prisons to go into the prison, unannounced, at any time of the day or night and who may go anywhere they like in the prison and speak to prisoners out of sight (where safe) and hearing of staff. There is an IMB in every prison in England and Wales consisting of approximately 14 members.
Dialogue: Ballots, not Bullets
Photo CC: Seb L.
A car mechanic in Southern Ghana shows an inked index finger, evidence he has voted in the presidential election. On December 28th,
2008, Ghanians held the second round of presidential elections which
saw former vice-president, and opposition candidate John Atta Mills win
a majority of the vote, and being elected to a four-year term.
"It's not the votes that count. It's who counts the votes." — Josef Stalin
As I hear and watch intently with the rest of the world the
inauguration speech of US president Barak Obama, I am reminded that an
authentic electoral process can signify major political change. After
years of inauspicious results in this part of the world, I had almost
forgotten about the power of genuine elections.
notebook: Using Government Budgets as a Monitoring Tool
In this notebook we learn about how to use national and provincial government budgets as monitoring mechanisms to advance child-specific socio-economic rights. Budget monitoring allowed them to analyze how the government implements and allocates budgets to fulfill its legal obligation to help realize human rights.
notebook: Promoting Human Rights Professionalism in the Liberian Police Force
In this notebook, we learn about the efforts, ability, and commitment
of law enforcement personnel–one of the most difficult groups to reach
regarding human rights–to address and confront human rights issues and
violations from their own perspective and within their own ranks.
notebook: Making the Global Local
In the human rights field there is often a gap between local human rights abuses and the international laws and treaties that are meant to prevent these abuses. The League of Human Rights Advocates in Slovakia recruits members of a disenfranchised population and trains them to become human rights monitors. These monitors watch for human rights abuses in their own locality and then translate international human rights laws and apply them to their local situations.
notebook: International Monitoring Bodies: Powerful tools for leveraging local change
This notebook demonstrates how international mechanisms can be a powerful tool for organizations trying to bring about change in their community. This notebook uses the example of Northern Ireland and describes how the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) was able to successfully utilise the UN Committee Against Torture to pressure the UK to establish mechanisms and standards for human rights.
notebook: Familiar Tools, Emerging Issues: Adapting traditional human rights monitoring to emerging issues
Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights uses traditional human rights
monitoring methods to document human rights abuses, but in this
notebook we will learn how the group has also made a practice of
adapting this methodology to emerging human rights issues. Minnesota
Advocates has identified and developed practical and sustainable
strategies for adapting human rights monitoring methods to address
domestic violence (in Eastern Europe and the U.S.), child survival (in
Mexico, Uganda and the U.S.) and transitional justice (in Peru).
Featured Dialogue
Dialogue: Tactics That Tickle: Laughing All the Way to the Win
Join us for this online dialogue featuring Tactics That Tickle: Laughing All the Way to the Win from March 24 to 30, 2010.Humor is a powerful nonviolent tactic that has the ability to prevent and counter activist burnout, engage more supporters, and increase the chance of getting media attention. Join us on March 24!
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