investigation

Uncovering the Evidence

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:19 -0500

Uncovering the Evidence

by Luis Fondebrider

Download full notebook in English and a brief summary in Armenian and Russian below.*note]

Forensic science has been a powerful tool in the scientific documentation of human rights violations around the world, and especially in Latin America. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team has been in the forefront of efforts to train human rights NGOs to use forensic tools to advance their investigations, to provide more support for victims and to strengthen the credibility of their work against impunity. EAAF uses independent investigations to mobilize and persuade both local and international audiences. The information obtained can also provide useful evidence for future prosecutions. This notebook addresses how human rights organizations can make optimal use of forensic science to advance their work for justice and against impunity.

Over the last fifteen years, the scientific investigation and documentation of human rights violations has become a valuable tool in the search for truth and justice in societies emerging from periods of political, ethnic and religious violence. Forensic expertise has served human rights investigations led by official justice systems of states, historical truth-seeking processes, international tribunals and commissions and human rights NGOs. A forensic scientist can answer some questions with a certain degree of precision:

Was the person tortured?
What was the cause of death?
Was the death accidental or intentional?
Can the unearthed bodies be positively identified?

Such answers offer victims’ families and the judicial process convincing proof of what happened. In an objective, concrete way, scientific analysis complements the testimony of a witness, a photograph or a document related to an incident. This kind of scientific evidence may prove to be fundamental for a ruling on whether an accused person is innocent or guilty. In cases of rape, for example, it can be crucial to discover traces of semen that can be compared with the genetic pattern of the accused person. In recent years, the application of the forensic sciences has had a significant impact in countries where abuses were committed by the government or agencies connected to it, be it for political or other reasons. Official versions of events, often false, can be contrasted with physical evidence and their analysis. This allows a tribunal to establish, for example, that a group of people was executed, and in fact did not die in an armed encounter. In this tactical notebook we show how families of victims, their communities and the organizations that they form–human rights NGOs–can use the forensic sciences in their struggle for truth and justice and prevent the impunity that those responsible for human rights abuses often enjoy.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.

Testing for Discrimination

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:17 -0500

Testing for Discrimination: Identifying and Prosecuting Human Rights Abuses

By Bea Bodrogi

Download full notebook below. [*note]

This tactical notebook focuses on the successful transplanting to Hungary of "testing," a tactic developed in the antidiscrimination movement in the United States. In testing, an advocacy organization that has received a complaint of an incident of discrimination, immediately sends out "testers" to replicate the incident. If a person, for instance, is denied a job based on their identity, "testers" are sent out immediately to apply for the same job and document their treatment. This documentation will be legitimate evidence of the systematic nature of the discrimination.

The Legal Defence Bureau for National and Ethnic Minorities (NEKI) was founded in 1994 in response to problems caused by longstanding prejudices against the Roma, the largest ethnic minority in Hungary. NEKI seeks to document the experience of discrimination and demonstrate the absence of legal protection for the Roma. The organization has been involved with cases including police brutality, skinhead attacks, and the denial of employment, housing and service in public accommodation.

Since discrimination is often subtle, direct evidence is rare. Adapting a method used by U.S. organisations, NEKI uses testing to collect evidence with which to challenge discrimination in court. After an incident of discrimination is reported to NEKI by a Roma victim, testers – both Roma and non - Roma – are sent to repeat the experience in order to document whether the incident represents a case of systematic discrimination, and to collect evidence for a possible court case. Testing is thus an evidence-gathering tactic that can fit directly into the legal strategy of an organization like NEKI, one confronting the impunity and public apathy about the prevalent problem of racism and discrimination.

The process is quite straightforward: Once NEKI receives a complaint, testers are sent to the place of the alleged discrimination. If the allegation concerns employment, for instance, testing is done by sending out a Roma and a non-Roma person who have similar characteristics and qualifications but differ primarily in their ethnicity. They are sent out at closely spaced intervals on the same day to apply for a job. To make the comparison clear, each tester is asked to take actions comparable to those of his fellow testers. Immediately after completing the test they record their experiences on a questionnaire detailing all the questions asked at the interview, treatment of the applicant, and the description of the job, including salaries and benefits. The test coordinator can then evaluate from this data whether differential treatment has taken place and decide if legal action can be initiated on the grounds of discrimination.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.

Research for Action

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:13 -0500

by Chubashini Suntharalingam, Southeast Asian Council for Food Security and Fair Trade (SEACON)

Download full notebook below.[*note]

Responding to the rise of free trade in the global economy, the Southeast Asian Council for Food Security (SEACON) set out in 2003 to conduct a unique, participatory research project to investigate the impacts of these macroeconomic changes on small scale food producers in Southeast Asia. Research manager Chubashini Suntharalingam’s notebook entitled "Research for Action" outlines the process. The notebook serves as a useful guide for organizations in creating participatory research projects that effectively involve and empower the people impacted by the issues they are studying.

In it, the author first outlines the research methods that characterize a participatory research process. These include the challenges of conducting interviews and organizing focused discussion groups. The author also confronts the difficulties of working with researchers that are untrained in writing documents and reports, as well as the potential issues that must be considered working with participants at the grassroots level. For example, in SEACON’s study, the very people that were struggling economically as a result of the issues that the organization sought to study were also limited in their capacity to participate in the project as a result of these hardships. Taking the time to conduct an interview would mean loosing hours that needed to be spent working. The issue serves to exemplify how, by involving local communities, researches must also be considerate of their unique needs.

Looking beyond the research process, the notebook also details the potential impacts of participatory research that creates thorough, credible documentation at the grassroots level. Not only can the information be utilized in advocacy and lobbying efforts, the research process itself can serve to create a network of activists, informing organizations working on issues that impact study participants, and directly benefiting the people themselves. Participatory research "empowers local communities," the author concludes, "connecting victims of human rights violations to the information they need to become active defenders of their right and to develop creative solutions to human rights challenges."

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from http://www.adobe.com

Making the Global Local

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:07 -0500

Making the Global Local: Applying Global Agreements to Local Enforcement of Human Rights Laws

By Columbus Igboanusi

Download full notebook below. [*note]
See Phillipe Duhamel's creative take on this resource at interTactica!

In the human rights field, there is often a wide gap between the locus of abuse and the policies, laws and treaties that were created to prevent or stop it. Furthermore, often the discussion of these abuses and the law and policies to prevent them are only talked about in high level policy and diplomatic forums. The tactic presented in this notebook helps bridge these gaps. The League of Human Rights Advocates in Slovakia recruits people from the disenfranchised population – in this case the Roma – to serve as human rights monitors. The monitors learn, often for the first time, about their own rights under national and international law. The LHRA and the monitors then work to enforce those rights –that were signed into existence in far-off capitals–in their own town halls, police stations, schools and communities. The information from local monitors is used to present the true, on the ground, impact of national and international laws in the country. The work done in Slovak may provide each of us with tactical ideas to address similar gaps in each of our communities and countries.

This notebook describes the creation and functioning of a systematic volunteer network of human rights monitors in Slovakia, maintained by the League of Human Rights Advocates (LHRA). The LHRA believes that its grassroots monitoring of local compliance with international human rights commitments assists and encourages the state and its apparatus to live up to its international obligations. The LHRA’s investigatory work, public education efforts and high-level contacts with international human rights NGOs also enable it to put considerable pressure on the Slovak government to live up to its international commitments. The LHRA’s volunteer monitors thus help achieve justice for local Roma people and others suffering human rights abuses. In addition, since LHRA monitors are themselves Roma activists living in Roma communities. The LHRA training process empowers them and their communities to understand and stand up for their rights.

See Phillipe Duhamel's creative take on this resource at interTactica!

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.

Making Sense of the Information Wilderness

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:04 -0500

Making Sense of the Information Wilderness

By Sasa Madacki

Download full notebook below. [*note]
See Phillipe Duhamel's creative take on this resource at interTactica!

Sometimes institutional strengthening tactics applied inside an organization improve the way human rights practitioners do their work and what they can do. Organizations that use their resources effectively, can more effectively advance human rights work. In this notebook, the experience of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Sarajevo is presented. They built a strong information system and central role for an information specialist or librarian. The utilization of this information system and information specialist’s skills allowed other staff to better, and more productively, focus on their core programmatic missions. Although the Human Rights Centre is now a fairly large and relatively well-funded organization, the tactic explained in this notebook presents ideas in a way that nearly any group doing human rights work could apply this organizational strengthening tactic.

When I walked into my new office at the library of the Human Rights Centre in Sarajevo, I found myself with two cardboard boxes containing a card catalogue, an inventory list, a thousand dusty books and a pile of documents. A total wilderness. It was an idyllic and inspiring sight: a librarian sitting in the middle of a room surrounded by stacks of papers with the daunting task of creating order out of chaos. Creating this order would yield an efficient tool to promote human rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina – where human rights are so abused and where reliable sources are lacking. In this notebook it is my modest hope to describe the results of this transformation, and what we have learned from it that can help others working for human rights. I believe now that every organization can improve its work and more effectively promote human rights and justice, if it can systematically develop both a library and a librarian’s position appropriate to its own size and objectives. The goal of this notebook will be to take the Sarajevo Centre’s experience and draw out lessons to enable other organizations to develop the tools and skills to more effectively navigate the ever-expanding wilderness of available information that can help them in their work.

See Phillipe Duhamel's creative take on this resource at interTactica!

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.

Familiar Tools, Emerging Issues

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:02 -0500

Familiar Tools, Emerging Issues

by Jennifer Prestholdt

Download full notebook below. [*note]

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).

With the help of hundreds of volunteers, Minnesota Advocates has monitored human rights conditions and produced more than 50 reports documenting human rights practices in more than 25 countries. Minnesota Advocates uses traditional human rights monitoring methods to document human rights abuses, but has made a practice of adapting the methodology to address cutting-edge human rights issues. The findings on violence against women in Mexico, Nepal, Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States have been published in reports that include an analysis of each country’s legislation related to women’s rights and the local law enforcement system, as well as recommendations on how to bring laws and practice into conformity with international human rights obligations.

We have recently adapted the methodology used overseas to help us investigate and document the difficulties that refugee and immigrant women in our own community face in obtaining services and protection from domestic violence. Minnesota Advocates also used traditional human rights monitoring methods to document excessive and preventable child mortality as a human rights violation in three countries, each representing different levels of development: the United States, Mexico and Uganda. We then published a report, Global Child Survival: A Human Rights Priority, using these case studies to illustrate that certain groups of children, minority children for example, suffer systematic violations of their rights. Underlying economic and social factors linked to child survival must be addressed in order to effectively combat high rates of preventable child deaths.

Most recently, we have adapted our methodology to monitor transitional justice mechanisms and processes. Countries such as Peru and Sierra Leone are in the process of transitioning from violence and repression to peace, justice and reconciliation; the growing momentum for transitional justice marks a new era in human rights work. More and more frequently, that shift involves confronting past human rights abuses and making institutional reforms in order to protect human rights. Human rights monitoring is one way to help ensure that transitional justice processes move forward.

Using this tactic of monitoring and reporting, we feel that we have been able to make some significant longterm improvements in human rights. This notebook will discuss how Minnesota Advocates identifies and develops practical and sustainable strategies for adapting human rights monitoring methods to emerging human rights issues. By documenting the tactic in this notebook, we hope to spark some creative applications of common human rights monitoring methods in order to improve human rights in different contexts.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.

Engaging the Media: Building support for minimum wage reform

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:01 -0500

by Jee Hyeon Kim, Korean Women Workers Associations United (KWWAU)

Download full notebook below. [*note]

The KWWAU and its partners effectively engaged media to raise public awareness and concern regarding the minimum wage system, thereby assisting in the creation of a social movement that has succeeded in changing the minimum wage law to afford greater protections for workers, especially for women.

This tactical notebook shares the efforts of Korean Women Workers Associations United (KWWAU) to engage the South Korean media to build public awareness about South Korea’s unjust minimum wage system. As you will see, this was one of many coordinated tactics employed in their campaign to change the minimum wage law and system in order to provide living wages to the most vulnerable workers.

Successful engagement of the media most often requires many other supporting tactics. KWWAU shares the approaches they found were most helpful in engaging the media: credible documentation of the problem, petitions to demonstrate public interest in the issue, and visually engaging performances and demonstrations that are easily captured by the media. With media interest, our campaign was able to expand, bring in new supporters, and provide us with leverage in our negotiation and lobbying efforts.

In the aftermath of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) crisis in 1997 there was a swift increase in the numbers of poor workers in South Korea and the minimum wage re-emerged as a social issue. The greatest victims of globalization in South Korea were women, like other countries funded by the IMF, many Korean workers were laid off and transformed into irregular workers.

Prior to the use of this tactic, the KWWAU was involved in organizing subcontract women workers to advocate for their rights. In the process of their labor organizing work with this segment of irregular workers in 2000, they discovered the problem of the minimum wage system. The low minimum wage had become an urgent problem, particularly among subcontract workers in South Korea. KWWAU determined they needed to work to raise the increment of the minimum wage so subcontract women workers would benefit. KWWAU began organizing nation-wide campaigns in nine cities, resulting in the first challenge to the Korean minimum wage system since its inception in 1988. Beginning in 2002, other organizations joined the KWWAU in advocating for improvements in the minimum wage system. A "minimum wage network" was established. The campaign expanded to other regions, focusing on raising the minimum wage and transforming the minimum wage system itself.

The KWWAU’s efforts have resulted in significant changes to the minimum wage law that improves working conditions for minimum wage earners. Their efforts have also transformed the annual decision of the Minimum Wage Council into an important social issue in South Korea. The KWWAU and its partners succeeded in raising public awareness and concern regarding the minimum wage system, and creating a social movement that has made it possible for many poor women to benefit from increasing minimum wages and greater protections.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.