The Tulip Award for Human Rights Defenders of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands has this year added a new element: an on-line poll to help select the winner. Anyone can go to http://www.government.nl/ministries/bz/news/2013/10/09/online-poll-for-human-rights-prize.html and choose which of the 44 nominees deserves the prize most. It closes on Friday 18 October Read the rest of this entry »
Posts Tagged ‘on-line’
Nordic Creative Commons Film Festival: Witness on-line discussion 5 September
September 5, 2013
Priscila Neri, WITNESS Senior Program Manager, discusses digital media, freedom of speech and advocacy at the Nordic Creative Commons Film Festival Thursday 5 September at 10:40am ET. She will present two short videos – you can watch them anytime online: People Before Profit and How to Film Protests: A WITNESS Guide to Video for Change) and discuss the use of Creative Commons and why it’s an important resource for activists. You can watch the live discussion on Google Hangout On Air and send Priscila your questions on Twitter using #WITNESSlive or @witnessorg.
The Human Voices of Freedom, Securing Human Rights Online – Event by Internet Freedom Fellows
March 4, 2013On Thursday 7 March 2013 will take place “The Human Voices of Freedom – Securing Human Rights Online” event: a panel discussion and interactive webcast with human rights activists from across the globe at the Human Rights Council, highlighting the importance of protecting freedom of expression on-line. This public event, sponsored by the U.S. Mission to the UN, is to take place from on 7 March from 1pm to 3pm in room XXIII/United Nations Office at Geneva.
The Internet Freedom Fellows program brings human rights activists from across the globe to Geneva, Washington, DC, and Silicon Valley to meet with fellow activists, U.S. and international government leaders, and members of civil society and the private sector engaged in technology and human rights. This year’s Internet Freedom Fellows are human rights activists and active practitioners of digital media from China, Russia, Ghana, Nigeria and Sudan.
Please note: Registration is only required for those attendees who do not hold a United Nations badge.
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?
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and the rest you have to read yourself on:
http://www.huridocs.org/2012/11/we-were-breaking-new-ground/
Protection International announces its 2nd Online Course: Postgraduate Diploma on Integral Protection for Human Rights Defenders
November 13, 2012Protection International announces the 2nd edition of its “Postgraduate Diploma on Integral Protection for Human Rights Defenders and Social Activists”.
It will begin in January 2013. It is organised jointly with the Universidad Pablo de Olavide.
This Diploma is the first of its kind, since it is the only international Postgraduate Diploma addressing the need to protect defenders.
The course addresses that protection in a comprehensive way, covering the existing national, international and regional laws and protection mechanisms; also studying security management, psychosocial support, the design of protection programs, etc. The course will also include an introduction to the protection of witnesses and victims.
The two institutions running it are:
– The Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain) which has been offering Post-graduate education in human rights for many years, and has introduced to the university the critical theory of human rights.
– Protection International (Brussels) which offers an extensive experience working directly for the protection of defenders in over fifteen countries in Africa, Asia, America and Europe.
Directors: Rosario Valpuesta Fernández and Luis Enrique Eguren
Dates: January 2013 – July 2013
Credits: 30 ECTS
Enrolment fees: 800 Euros (certificate fees not included)
Pre-registration and enrolment: Online
Languages used during the training process: Spanish or English
Ash cloud forces Human Rights Defenders on-line
April 19, 2010The True Heroes ‘International Conference on Human Rights and the new Media’ was meticulously planned for 6 months, to be held on 19-20 April in The Hague. Then the ash cloud came and flights to the Netherlands became almost impossible. As a result 25 human rights defenders could not reach their conference and risked to be robbed of the chance to learn more about how to use images and new media to better protect human rights in their own countries.
However, the new media specialists involved in the conference decided to turn the difficulties into an opportunity: to show the world that with NEW MEDIA we can still connect and communicate, exactly what the conference aimed to achieve. So the programme is being adjusted in a
‘2.0’ way, with live-streams, a forum on www.media4heroes.com, etc.
The programme on Monday morning remains unchanged with the participation of Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Verhagen, SMS action by Amnesty International for Emad Baghi, round-table discussions and a soapbox debate in Zeebelt Theatre, The Hague. The programme of the conference can be found on the website.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 