Tactical Notebooks, network

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.

Engaging Key Stakeholders

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

by Syed Asif Atlaf Chowdhury and Roy Romesh Chandra

Download full notebook below. [*note]

In this notebook, we learn about how the development agency CARE-Bangladesh involved key stakeholders, particularly a transport workers’ union, in the task of HIV/AIDS prevention in Bangladesh. Although Bangladesh has one of the lowest HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world, it is surrounded by countries in which the disease is widespread, and many worry that it is only a matter of time before it spreads to Bangladesh. Transportation workers, such as truck drivers, are particularly at risk of contracting and spreading the disease. CARE-Bangladesh worked to gain the trust and respect of the Bangladesh Truck Driver’s Federation and then together implemented a program of advocacy including health education and services through integrated partnership. Particularly important was the cultivation of a sense of ownership of the project on the part of the union, including the employment of paid peer educators and the use of union premises for outreach work and health services. The story of CARE-Bangladesh’s work provides important insights into engaging key stakeholders in advocacy work that is socially acceptable and relevant to the lives and experience of target communities.

Since the first identification of HIV and AIDS, their prevalence has been particularly high in communities situated on transport routes, such as border posts and port towns and cities. The HIV virus spreads as people travel, so transport workers are particularly vulnerable. Although Bangladesh is currently rated 161st of 166 countries and territories in rates of HIV/AIDS, it is in close proximity to Asian countries with relatively high rates. Rather than wait for the epidemic to arrive, CARE-Bangladesh sought a strategy that would prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

CARE-Bangladesh recognized that it was crucial to engage transport workers, unions, and companies as key stakeholders in combating the spread of HIV/AIDS. As a result, in partnership with the workers’ union and associations, and with owners of the transport companies, we initiated a behavioural change program to prevent an HIV/AIDS epidemic and to provide quality health care services to transport workers, especially truckers. Because we planned to give the project over to its participants–namely the transport union–after the initial design phase, the primary stakeholders, especially the union, have been actively involved in program development and activities. By holding the union accountable and responsible, CARE-Bangladesh has facilitated a process whereby the workers’ union has become an implementer of health care services, including prevention services, related to sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV.

The active involvement of the union has brought many positive results. Its participation and sense of ownership have been essential in sustaining the program and making it socially acceptable. Union involvement was also instrumental in the scaling up of project activities and the ability to quickly create a nationwide service network.

To address the mobility and needs of some 300,000 transport workers, the program now has 45 Drop-In Centres (DICs) nationwide, each called "Traveller," about 300 paid peer outreach workers, and 25,000 volunteer peer educators (recruited from the transport workers themselves). Approximately 4,000 transport workers receive health services from the DICs each month. The project has also established a system for the social marketing of condoms through Peer Outreach Workers and more than 200 local depot holders. On average, 200,000 condoms are sold through this system every month. The establishment of these DICs not only addresses the mobility of transport workers, but greatly improves their access to effective health care services.

In this notebook we share our experience of engaging critical key stakeholders–CARE-Bangladesh, the transport trade union, and the transport workers–to create a holistic approach to HIV/AIDS education, prevention, and treatment. We hope our experiences will be helpful for others who want to work with community-based organizations, unions, and other civil society actors in the context of their own countries and issues. And we hope this effort will provide a model for establishing effective cross-border interventions as well.

*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

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.

Breaking the Silence

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:07:59 -0500

Breaking the Silence

By Rafal Pankowski

Download full notebook below.[*note]

In this notebook, several tactics used by a volunteer organization in Poland, Nigdy Wiecej (Never Again), are featured. Like many organizations, Nigdy Wiecej uses a number of tactics to carry out its work. Two of the tactics explained in this notebook are the use of cultural resources in the community to recruit activists and the organization of activists into an information-gathering network. The experience highlighted here demonstrates ways that these tactics have been used to engage and involve young people, a segment of the population whose attention can be challenging to capture and even more difficult to hold onto. Not only is different tactics described but also, how the tactics are combined to reinforce and strengthen each other. While Nigdy Wiecej used these tactics to fight racism and neo-fascism, one can imagine other ways that they might be applied to broaden involvement in human rights, especially among the youth population.

Never Again (Nigdy Wiecej) is an anti-racist network and publication in Poland. More importantly, it is part of a growing movement against racism in Europe. Rafal Pankowski describes here how Never Again uses cultural events such as concerts and football games to recruit young people to this movement. Through this recruitment, they have organized an extensive network of volunteer correspondents throughout Poland to report on and challenge the tolerance of extreme-right and racist groups and ideas in their society. These correspondents are taught to carefully and regularly report any and all incidents of racism and xenophobia in their districts. Never Again’s organizers then process and synthesize this information, publishing it in a magazine that is distributed to thousands of readers, including many mainstream journalists, throughout Poland and Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people have been introduced to the concepts of human rights and anti-racism at Never Again’s concerts. Thousands have signed up to join the organization. Of these, over 150 have been trained to serve as volunteer correspondents, each one producing monthly reports. The result is the most exhaustive source of information on hate crimes and racism in Poland.

The publication serves not only for general education: It has also provided important investigative reporting that has prompted coverage of these issues in the mainstream Polish media. This strategic combination of cultural recruitment, maintenance of a broad volunteer network, careful documentation and public education is Never Again’s unique contribution to our tactical notebook series. This notebook provides an overview of the creation and functions of Never Again’s volunteer correspondents network. It includes some basic background information, describes how cultural mobilization is used as a recruiting method, discusses the way the network functions, both in the field of gathering and of distributing information, and explains difficulties involved in sustaining a network on a voluntary basis. Finally, some attention is given to possible applications of Never Again’s experience in human rights struggles in other countries.

*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.