documentation | Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards

Posts Tagged ‘documentation’

Documenting human rights violations through interviews: shared training materials

May 14, 2014

On 14 May the blogger A Paper Bird posted an interesting set of slides that can be used in training human rights defenders. The author also sets a good example by letting them be shared freely:

“One thing I do with some frequency is trainings. These powerpoints reflect a session I worked on recently with the Egyptian LGBT group Bedayaa. The first (download the English version here) deals with issues in human rights documentation in general terms. The second (download English here) deals more specifically with strategies for interviews. I’m posting them here in the hope that they may be useful to activists who weren’t able to attend the workshop, and to people elsewhere as well. Some of the material is specific to Egypt, some is not….. [the slides also exist in Arabic – see original post)

These aren’t copyrighted; I’m not sure how you would copyright a basic skills set. (Actually, late capitalism can copyright anything. What I mean is, I don’t want to know.) However, if you find them interesting enough to adapt or reuse, I ask that you let me know, and cite me as the author.”

via Documenting human rights violations through interviews: training materials English and Arabic | a paper bird.

Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: A Paper Bird, Bedayaa, documentation, Egypt, human rights documentation, human rights violations, interviewing, LGBT, monitoring, powerpoint, Sexual orientation, training, victims

Archiving video should not be a dirty word for Human Rights Defenders

January 22, 2014

This blog has often referred to the growing role of images in the protection of human rights. The Activists Guide to Archiving Video produced by the NGO Witness is one tool that can greatly help those who want to be part of this development. The term “archive” may turn off many human rights defenders as something boring or at least not deserving priority but to neglect it would be a big error. As the Witness guide explains very clearly:

Do you want your videos to be available in the future?
Do you want your videos to serve as evidence of crimes or human rights abuses?
Do you want your videos to raise awareness and educate future generations?

The risks of not archiving are big:

Your videos may exist somewhere, but no one can find them.
Someone may find your videos, but cannot understand what they are about.
Your videos cannot be sufficiently authenticated or corroborated as evidence.
Your videos’ quality may become so degraded that no one can use them.
Your videos may be in a format that eventually no one can play.
Your videos may be accidentally or deliberately deleted and lost forever.

In further sections the Guide help to understand how videos can be made accessible (shared) and brings clarity to tricky issues such as the different formats and copyright.

Worth a visit!!

Activists Guide to Archiving Video | archiveguide.witness.org.

Posted in films, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: activists, archiving video, Civil society, copyright, documentation, Education, evidence, human rights abuses, Human Rights Defenders, human rights films, images, NGOs, short documentary, THF, training, video, video formats, Witness (human rights group)

Can ‘big data’ can help protect human rights?

January 5, 2014

Samir Goswami, managing director of AI USA’s Individuals and Communities at Risk Program, and Mark Cooke, chief innovation officer at Tax Management Associates, wrote a piece about how ‘big data’ can help human rights rather than just violate them. The piece is worth reading but falls short of being convincing. The better prediction of human rights violations which may [!] result from the analysis of a huge amount of data would of course be welcome but I remain unconvinced that it would therefore lead to a reduction of actual violations. Too many of these are planned and willful, while the mobilization of shame and international solidarity would be less forthcoming for violations that MAY occur. The authors are not the first to state that prevention is better than cure but the current problem is no so much a lack of predictive knowledge as a weakness of curing intervention. Still, the article is worth reading as it describes developments that are likely to come about anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in AI, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: AI USA, big data, data, data science, documentation, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, human rights violations, information technology, prediction, technology

New REFWORLD goes live this week: an underestimated tool for Human Rights Defenders and researchers

April 16, 2013

UNHCR’s Refworld 2013 goes live this week at http://www.refworld.org. The website has undergone significant changes based on a feedback received from internal and external users over the years.

Refworld started almost 20 years ago as an ever-expanding series of DVD’s containing the different databases of documentation centre of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. With the wider availability of broadband it switched in 2007 to internet only. It was already then considered an advanced protection information resource which aims to facilitate evidence-based and effective decision-making in refugee status determination procedures. Now it functions more broadly as a key tool for evidence-based advocacy relating to resettlement, statelessness, internal displacement, as well as specific protection concerns. The database, updated on a daily basis, now contains more than 167,000 documents relating to countries of origin or asylum, case law, legislation and policy. Especially the ‘country of origin’ information is relevant to human rights defenders as it is in fact a selection of human rights violations documentation. Also the legal information section is a unique collection of worldwide documentation concerning refugee law and statelessness.

Refworld 2013 features a number of improvements, such as: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in books, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, UN | 2 Comments »
Tags: databases, documentation, DVDs, Human Rights and Liberties, human rights violations, information, internal displacement, refugee law, refugee status determination, refugees, Refworld, refworld 2013, search tool, statelessness, technology, text search engine, UNHCR, united nations high commissioner, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, User experience

HURIDOCS: bursting with new ideas for documenting human rights: case law in Africa and the Americas

February 25, 2013

The HURIDOCS network publishes a Newsletter with many items that are of importance to Human Rights Defenders. The latest issue carries e.g. interesting news on access to human rights case law from the Asian and American scene. In the future it should be possible to have on-line access to the case load of these regional systems which until now are very difficult to find. Connecting these two databases in the future will be possible, but only if they are built on common standards. Developing these is a core function of HURIDOCS as illustrated by an interview with Judith Dueck who has been involved in standard formats for almost 25 years (Judith Dueck looks back upon how it was done). One reason to refer to this article of course the youth picture of me (from 1988) they added!

To get the HURIDOCS newsletter free every 15 days subscribe via the homepage: http://www.huridocs.org/

Posted in human rights | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Advocacy Organizations, Africa, Americas, case law, documentation, documenting, Hans Thoolen, human rights, Human Rights and Liberties, Human Rights Defenders, HURIDOCS, information technology, internet, Judith Dueck, jurisprudence, Latin America, newsletter, Standard formats, technology

HURIDOCS 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?

…….

………

and the rest you have to read yourself on:

http://www.huridocs.org/2012/11/we-were-breaking-new-ground/

Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders, HURIDOCS | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Crete, documentation, embrace technology, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, human rights movement, HURIDOCS, information technology, International Commission of Jurists, Martin Ennals, Non-governmental organization, on-line, Quito, research

Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards