The Royal Marine Conservation Society of Jordan (JREDS) engaged over 70 organizations and 2300 people to build a coalition of experts and civil society organizations to intervene in the rapidly depleting coast line and preserve the right of the Jordanian people to access public beaches.
Egyptian organization el3askarmap combines crowdsourced research efforts and online tools to gather data and map the presence of military personnel in civilian positions within different state-run institutions such as ministries, villages, cities, economic bodies, and others.
Anonymous artists created mock postage stamps honoring people and places that had a profound effect on the Syrian Revolution.
In Lebanon, an LGBT advocacy organisation (not to be named here for privacy reasons) created a Facebook profile with no photo and no friends to safely mobilise people who needed support, community connection and/or wanted to find others interested to advocate for LGBT rights. The profile served as a way to direct people to the organisation's website without threatening their security or anonymity by publicly linking them with an LGBT organisation.
Amnesty International USA (AI USA) used Twitter to urge the United States Department of State to respond to human rights violations in Bahrain.
In order to circumvent internet censorship in China, bloggers have created a lexicon which makes puns out of words and phrases in the Chinese language to talk about forbidden topics. It started with the 'grass-mud horse' – a mythical creature which sounds nearly the same as a dirty insult – as a tool to ridicule the government's blocking of vulgar content online.
Men submit photos of themselves dressed as women to the “Kurd Men for Equality” Facebook page to support women’s rights.
The police forces of Marivan, Iran, punished a criminal convicted of domestic abuse by forcing him to wear traditional Kurdish women’s clothing. This punishment was meant to be a form of public humiliation. However, many men felt that the punishment was derogatory towards women and began a Facebook campaign to tell the Iranian authorities that “being a woman is not a tool to humiliate or punish anyone.”
Street artists from URA.RU in Yekaterinburg, Russia decorated potholes with the faces of local politicians in order to get them to address severe road quality problems.
The streets in Yekaterinburg had long been plagued with many unfixed pits and potholes. Despite the efforts of URA.RU, a local news website, the problem persisted. Local politicians were more concerned with their public image than with improving the streets, so none took a genuine interest in finding a solution.
In Cairo, Harassmap uses SMS and mapping technology to identify areas where sexual harassment is likely to occur and partners with local shop owners to create “safe zones” in those areas.
Ruta Pacifica, a feminist, pacifist, anti-military organization in existence since 1996 organizes caravans of thousands of women in Colombia to visit regions hardest-hit by conflict. The caravans serve as a way for women from different areas to come together in support against the conflict, exchange ideas, and fight for an end to human rights abuses. As a result of the ongoing civil war in Colombia, different areas of the country have become increasingly isolated from one another, as the roads and borders between them are frequently controlled or blocked by the various armed groups. By traveling these roads, the caravans of women break through not only the physical roadblocks, but the psychological barriers of despair and isolation that allow the war to continue.
For more information on this tactic, read our in-depth case study.
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