As part of the on-going REMHI (Recovery of Historical Memory) Project, several dioceses of the Catholic Church in Guatemala have mobilized their own members to collect testimonies from victims of state violence and, now that these have been compiled into a 4-volume report, to disseminate and return that history to the afflicted communities and individuals.  During Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, close to 200,000 people were killed or disappeared and entire villages and communities were destroyed, primarily by state security forces.   REMHI’s approach has been unusual relative to other truth and reconciliation efforts in its grassroots mobilization of individuals from the afflicted areas as “agents of reconciliation” and in those individuals’ efforts to thoroughly involve and interact with the victims.

The Black Box Foundation was founded in 1997 to address long-standing prejudice in Hungary and Romania toward the Roma minority, a group of people previously having no medium through which to address the prejudice they faced and help others learn about their culture. The Foundation uses television to help the Roma reach out to members of their communities; it trains five-person teams—comprised of Hungarians, Roma, and Romanians—in video production, provides them with equipment, and secures monthly airtime on local television stations for their programs. Team members obtain funding for their productions, and serve as writers, editors, directors, and production staff.

Tactic Information

Intervention type: 

Building Human Rights Cultures and Institutions - Building capacity

Objective: 

to address long-standing prejudice in Hungary and Romania toward the Roma minority

Sector initiating tactic: 

Civil society

Sector intended to affect: 

Civil society

WITNESS empowers human rights organizations around the world to incorporate video as an advocacy tool in their work. Rooted in the power of personal testimonies and in the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words, WITNESS and its partners’ videos have been used

Tactic Information

Intervention type: 

Building Human Rights Cultures and Institutions - Building capacity

Objective: 

To strengthen grassroots movements for change by training them to create and use video evidence before courts and the United Nations

Sector initiating tactic: 

Civil society

Sector intended to affect: 

Civil society

Since 2000, the Human Rights Observatories Network has worked with youth groups in various regions of Brazil, inspiring them to learn about human rights and to learn how to report on and to monitor their communities’ access to rights.

Tactic Information

Intervention type: 

Building Human Rights Cultures and Institutions - Building awareness

Objective: 

To train young people to monitor human rights.

Sector initiating tactic: 

Civil society

Sector intended to affect: 

Civil society

The Centre for Victims of Torture (CVICT) in Nepal created a process of community mediation as an alternative to the criminal justice system. CVICT did research on what types of disputes were occurring, then developed a training course for community leaders, including women and Dalits (of the untouchable caste), on settling disputes with a rights-based community mediation method. Community mediation would be available for disputes other than violent crimes, and would be made available to everyone, regardless of age, sex, class, or social caste.  The mediation system is improving access to justice and the dynamics of power in the three districts where it has been carried out.  It is also greatly reducing the number of arrests: In the first year, two-thirds of cases were resolved through mediation while one-third went to the police and the courts.

For a detailed exploration of this tactic, please click on the following link to consult our tactical notebook, <b><a href="http://www.newtactics.org/en/AccesstoJustice">Access to Justice: Creating local level, citizen action mediation bodies to ensure human rights</a></b> by Dinesh Narayan Suddhakar.

Tactic Information

Intervention type: 

Prevention Tactics - Removing opportunities for abuse

Objective: 

To circumvent the problem of police abuse through a process of rights-based community mediation

Sector initiating tactic: 

Civil society

Sector intended to affect: 

Civil society