Tactics

Are you looking for ideas and inspiration on how you can achieve your human rights goals? Then you’re in the right place. Below, we have over 250 examples of successful human rights tactics.

Browse all of our tactics or use the filters below to filter by type of tactical aim, tactical action, human rights issue, and geographic region or keywords. You can select multiple items in each filter by holding the Ctrl/Command or Shift keys while selecting the items of your choice; selecting an item under one filter will cause the other filters to adjust to only show items that match your existing selections. Use the Reset button to clear your choices.

Using online rural news to connect village society

Amader Gramer Khobor is a first-of-its-kind online rural news service that covers daily happenings in village society, as no online news service in Bangladesh practices rural journalism with the provisions of time-to-time updating in the same day. Amader Gramer Khobor, part of Amader Gram which means “Our Village Development Project,” is unique and effective because through this tactic, village societies that are isolated can for the first time be connected.

Using Living Newspapers to bring world events into the classroom

The Living Newspaper Project is an innovative program to reinvigorate civic education through the dramatization of contemporary human rights issues. The current project builds on the United States Federal Theater project, created under the 1930s New Deal to put unemployed researchers, journalists and performers to work creating theater pieces about events of the day.

Using international lobbying leverage to advance national adoption of international policy mechanisms

In September 2008, the Association Libanaise pour l’Education et la Formation (ALEF) launched an international lobbying campaign at the European Union (EU) and United Nations (UN) in order to push the Lebanese state to ratify the Optional Protocol of the Convention against Torture (OpCAT).

Using interactive theatre and participatory video techniques to prompt community participation and social mobilization

The Interactive Resource Center (IRC) has created a strong network of grassroots theater groups as an alternate system of community participation and social dialogue. The essence of IRCs work is to use interactive theater to trigger community dialogue through direct community participation on human rights issues.

Using illustrated children’s literature to educate children and adults of their rights and to foster a culture of human rights

The Arab Penal Reform Organization (APRO) publishes a series of illustrated children’s books called Activist Ali’s Team to educate children and adults of their civil and legal rights as well as to foster a culture of human rights in Egypt. The book series follows a curious ten-year-old named Ali and his male and female companions. Each book – in the series of 36 – focuses on a specific civil or human rights topic.

Using humor to put an oppressive government in a lose-lose situation

The nonviolent civil-resistance movement initiated by Otpor! in Serbia used satire and other unconventional ways of successfully spreading its message of resistance against the tyrannical regime of Slobodan Milosevic.

The Milosevic regime ruled over Serbia and Yugoslavia for about 13 years. To maintain control, the Milosevic regime was infamous for arbitrary arrests, beatings, imprisonment and even murder of avid opponents.

Using fake money to protest prevalence of bribery in public service sectors

The Anti Corruption movement, 5thPillar recently began distributing “Zero Rupee” notes to Indian citizens to give to any civil servant they come across that asks for a bribe. Corruption in the form of bribery is commonplace in India particularly in Chennai where the campaign began, and the Zero Rupee Note serves as a protest of this trend.

Using participatory education to empower communities to exercise their human and civil rights

Education for Life (ELF) uses an accelerated learning system approach with grassroots educators and leaders to contribute to grassroots community empowerment throughout the Philippines. They want grassroots communities to have more power to decide their development, including control of their resources. This empowerment includes the organization of people in the community and access to lifelong education. The key component is an organic grassroots leadership that can be a partner to outside institutions such as NGOs and national government agencies.

Using documentation to draw up a ‘blacklist’ of unacceptable political candidates and moving the public to vote against them

People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) worked with a coalition of civic organizations to establish criteria by which to identify corrupt politicians and to campaign against those politicians in order to improve citizen involvement and politician responsiveness in South Korea.

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