In this notebook, we learn about some of the most difficult human rights violations to eradicate–customary or traditional practices based on deep-seated beliefs, particularly those with a spiritual dimension. Respected leaders–at local and national levels–engaged in direct dialogue with perpetrators, victims, other community leaders, and the community at large to facilitate understanding of the practice, while providing alternatives and avenues for abandoning the practice without losing status.

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.

The Korean Women Workers Associations United (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.

In this notebook we learn about the creative and effective use of a mock tribunal to change public perceptions and beliefs regarding violations against women, and to change public policy and law. BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights, in collaboration with CIRDDOC (Civil Resource Development and Documentation Centre), highlighted violations of women’s rights in Nigeria that were viewed by the public as normal or even justifiable abuse.