Tactical Notebooks, Mexico

Taking on Our Own Defense

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:16 -0500

By Miguel Angel de los Santos

Download full notebook in English and Spanish below.

Chiapas, one of the Mexican states, has a major record of human rights violations especially regarding Indigenous and rural peoples. Previously, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) dealt with this problem, denouncing the violations and giving legal assistance to the victims. The model raised by the Network of Community Defenders constructs a new tactic in the defense of human rights. It proposes that victims and their communities become involved by electing their own defenders. This role has proven to be highly effective in practice–particularly using their own language–and has gained attention in communities.

This notebook presents a contextual framework that helps to understand of the circumstances that have caused the proposition, as well as the process of the formation and the development of the network itself. One of the most important elements of the model is the organized participation of the community in order to design their own defenses. In the context described in the notebook, the model of intervention that created the Network of Community Defenders has proven to be effective. It is possible, nonetheless, to think that with appropriate adjustments one can develop ways to adapt the tactic with populations equally marginalized such as women and migrants, among others. The actions of the Network of Community Defenders have created other interesting experiences in Chiapas for adapting the tactic. For example, a group of women’s rights defenders emerged from the community, appointed under similar mechanisms, called "barefoot lawyers."

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Side by Side: Protecting and encouraging threatened activists with unarmed international accompaniment

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:14 -0500

Side by Side

by Liam Mahony

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Since the mid-1980s, human rights groups and other activist organizations being targeted with repressive abuses have been calling on international NGOs to provide them with direct accompaniment by international field workers. These field workers – usually volunteers – spend twenty-four hours a day with threatened activists, at the premises of threatened organizations, in threatened communities or witnessing public events organized by threatened groups. The international presence serves as a deterrent against the use of violence. In order to ensure this deterrence, these international accompaniment organizations are part of transnational networks poised and ready to mobilize political pressure against perpetrators should their volunteers witness any attacks or should their clients be further threatened.

"I can say with certainty that the fact that we are alive today is mainly because of Peace Brigades’ work." – Luis Perez Casas, Lawyer’s Collective Jose Alvear Restrepo, Bogotá, Colombia

International protective accompaniment is the physical accompaniment by international personnel of activists, organizations or communities threatened with politically motivated attacks. Peace Brigades International has been developing this tactic since the mid-1980s, sending hundreds of volunteers into different conflict situations around the world. PBI currently sustains a presence of about 80 people working in several conflicts, responding to requests for accompaniment from all kinds of threatened civil society organizations.

Accompaniment can take many forms. Some threatened activists receive 24-hour-aday accompaniment. For others the presence is more sporadic. Sometimes team members spend all day on the premises of an office of a threatened organization.Sometimes they live in threatened rural villages in conflict zones. This accompaniment service has three simultaneous and mutually-reinforcing impacts. The international presence protects threatened activists by raising the stakes of any attacks against them. It encourages civil society activism by allowing threatened organizations more space and confidence to operate and by building links of solidarity with the international community. And it strengthens the international movement for peace and human rights by giving accompaniment volunteers a powerful first-hand experience that becomes a sustained source of inspiration to themselves and others upon their return to their home country. This tactical notebook will analyze how protective accompaniment works, based on the substantial experience of PBI in Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti, Sri Lanka and El Salvador. Since the 1990s, numerous other organizations have also provided protective international accompaniment in other settings, modifying the approach according to their particular identity and mission. In the final section of the notebook I will also offer a brief comparative discussion of several of these experiences.

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Familiar Tools, Emerging Issues

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

Familiar Tools, Emerging Issues

by Jennifer Prestholdt

Download full notebook below.

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.