The City of Geneva and the Martin Ennals Foundation announce the 2013 edition of Martin Ennals Award, which will take place on Tuesday 8 October 2013 at 18h00 at the Uni-Dufour, Geneva. The Laureate will be announced Read the rest of this entry »
Archive for the 'HURIDOCS' Category
SAVE THE DATE: MEA 2013 CEREMONY ON 8 OCTOBER IN GENEVA
June 29, 2013HURIDOCS exists 30 years: my interview now on line
November 30, 2012
Hans Thoolen talks about the excitement of founding HURIDOCS, why the human rights community nowadays resembles a church with too many priests (and too few believers) and what made Latin American human rights defenders embrace technology before everyone else. Looking back at decades of involvement in human rights work, he also sketches out his idea of a multimedia platform that gives human rights defenders the space to inspire others.
What was the most exciting idea about founding HURIDOCS?
It started for me and the others at this conference in 1979 near Paris. During this conference we sensed there was space for better cooperation among NGOs, especially with new technology. Mind you: this was 1979, well before the internet, and information technology was hardly used. Our idea was to somewhere, somehow seek some level of agreement among NGOs – or at least to create the tools with which working together would be possible in the future.
in 1982 Quito with Jose Antonio Viera de Gallo from Chile
Hans Thoolen (second from right) at the Quito conference in Spring 1982, the most important conference before HURIDOCS was officially founded a few months later.
How did you move on from there?
That idea survived the meeting and there was some money left over from the Ford Foundation and that was used to have informal consultations. So for a few years, Martin Ennals, who had just stepped down as secretary-general of Amnesty International, Friederike Knabe, Laurie Wiseberg, Bjorn Stormorken and myself (working for the International Commission of Jurists) were the people who worked on the follow-up. We had meetings in London, Brussels, Oslo and Geneva and we were asking NGOs what they thought of the potential of information technology and testing out ideas on information exchange.
That slowly lead to the first big conference, in Quito, Ecuador, in 1982, partly because the Latinos had taken to the use of technology well before the West – in the NGO world, not in the business world, of course. This maybe was surprising, but when you thought about it, not that strange.
Why not? And how did this lead to the founding of HURIDOCS?
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and the rest you have to read yourself on:
http://www.huridocs.org/2012/11/we-were-breaking-new-ground/
Course on Security and Protection for human rights defenders, on the internet
June 16, 2011E-learning course: Security and protection for human rights defenders and social organisations is designed for NGOs, social organisations and individuals. It lasts for 60 hours over 3 months approximately 5 hours per week and is hosted by Protection International training staff protection experts with extensive training experience in many countries. The first course, in Spanish, is to due to start in mid 2011, English and French courses will follow.
Education and training for Human Rights Defenders is a broad subject with different needs. One such crucial need is security. The present course aims for human rights defenders to develop various skills, capacities and strategies to allow them to improve the level of security and protection, both for themselves and also for the people they work with.
Proof of experience working in these fields is required, along with the existence, or possible existence, of a risk to their security, because of their work activities. Armed conflict or political repression, due to their activities as human rights defenders, could be examples of suitability. The admission criteria will give priority to those people having the largest potential impact on human rights defenders’ security. The enrolment fee will depend on various factors – such as country of origin or residence, the institution the participant is involved with, the course duration, etc. For more information visit: http://www.protectionline.org or write to: e-learning@protectioninternational.org
I received this via E-learning course: Security and protection for human rights defenders and social organisations | HURIDOCS.
specialized search engine on human rights relaunched
July 5, 2010The NGO HURIDOCS announces the launch of a new, Open-Source version of HuriSearch (http://www.hurisearch.org) , its specialised search engine for human rights information. HuriSearch is an effective Internet search tool, very useful for human rights researchers and advocates, academic staff and students, journalists, diplomats and staff of international organisations. HuriSearch searches the content of over 5000 human rights websites, with a total of almost 7 million pages. This content is always fresh, because HuriSearch indexes the content of these websites very frequently. The source of information is crucially important in human rights work and HuriSearch makes it possible to focus searches on information published in a particular country, by a particular type of organisation, by a specific organisation, or in a specific language. Search results are based upon relevance of contents rather than website popularity – which makes the pages from smaller, specialized organisations more visible than on other search engines.
Feedback is appreciated but please send it directly to: search@huridocs.org
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 