Human Rights Tools: About us

Resources for human rights professionals

About us

About this site

Human Rights Tools is currently a 100% volunteer initiative. This means that it is run by very motivated volunteers in their spare time, who also cover all the technical costs. We have put this site together without any external funding.

Why did we create this site?

This site is primarily aimed at human rights activists - persons monitoring the respect of human rights and advocating for positive change. Persons who are passionate about quality human rights work, have a thirst to continually deepen their knowledge, and are looking for a collection of top reference material.

After several years of searching the internet, we gradually discovered and assembled a collection of human rights tools and resources of amazing quality - and all of them were offered by their developers to other human rights workers. Taken together, these tools consitute a formidable resource, and a wonderful example of sharing and collaboration.

However one thing that was missing was a directory which made it easy to access this collection of wonderful tools. This is why we created an E-Library which had to have the following qualities:

We take you straight to the very best tools, not only to a website's homepage

No forest of links, no obsolete pages, no dead links, only carefully selected and up-to-date stuff.

Reviews to pinpoint the strong points and not-to-be-missed features of each tool.

Very accessible for those with low-bandwidth internet.

A clear, intuitive, user-oriented navigation system.

Very simple for users to suggest links or request improvements

We try to organise existing information in ways which make it useful to the end-user, easy to access, well structured, easy to export. Do we fill the brief? How can we improve? Let us know by email.

What status does Human Rights Tools have?

Human Rights Tools is nonprofit organisation established under Article 60 and subsequent articles of the Swiss Civil Code (statutes). It was founded on 10 March 2006 (minutes of constitutive general assembly).

It is based in Coppet, near Geneva (Switzerland), at the following address:

57 Grand Rue, 1296 Coppet
++41 22 776 86 91

How to get involved?

You are welcome to join us: help add new resources to the library, communicate with users and resource developers, etc. If you are really interested in human rights methodology, enjoy web searching, can write in a concise and precise way, and can devote about an hour a week, then please contact us. HTML skills are not necessary.

About the team

Daniel D'Esposito - Editor

Daniel has ten years experience in protection working with the ICRC. After field missions in Iraq, Israel and occupied territories, Bosnia, he worked for at ICRC headquarters' Protection Division in Geneva as researcher, field support officer, head of training unit.

He now works as training officer for HURIDOCS, based in Versoix, which helps other human rights organisations improve their capacity to monitor respect for human rights and document violations.

Daniel holds a BA in political science from the University of Lausanne and an MSc in NGO Management from the London School of Economics. He lives near Geneva, in Coppet.

Barbara Kussbach

Barbara is an Austrian human rights lawyer who currently works as a free-lance consultant in Vienna. She has over ten years experience in the field of human rights, both in the governmental and NGO sector. After having worked as a researcher at the Austrian Constitutional Court and as Coordinator of the "Asylum Lawyers Network" of UNHCR and Caritas, she served as Legal Officer at amnesty international Austria specialising in individual case work and human rights advocacy.

Barbara has also worked with Minority Rights Group International, the Inter-American Court and the European Court of Human Rights gaining experience in strategic case litigation and research and analysis in the areas of enforced disappearances, torture, inhuman treatment and discrimination.

Barbara holds a Master of Laws degree from the University of Vienna (1995), a Diploma in Project Management and an LL.M. in International Human Rights law from the University of Essex (2006).

Helene Hedberg - Bloggers animator

Helene is a Swedish girl in her twenties currently studying a Human Rights programme in Stockholm. She studied the IB-programme during the high school period where a lot of the international engagement was encouraged and broadened. She has been involved in some UN voluntary work besides being part of a lot of church-related projects and a mission organization called MAF.

Besides studying, the involvement in an after school center for mostly immigrant kids in one of the southern suburbs of Stockholm (Varberg) takes a lot of time.

Helene animates the Human Rights Bloggers community, and runs her own blog called undialogue, where issues concerning human rights are discussed and the subject of diplomatic dialogue is debated.

Idowu Ajibade - Research Associate

Idowu is a consultant to a number of organisations promoting human rights, peace, and anticorruption. She recently concluded an assistantship with the International Council on Human Rights Policy, Geneva.

Her professional interest includes; advocacy on constitutional guarantee and concrete implementation of all human rights, with a special interest on fulfillment economic, social, and cultural rights. In the past, she has worked as a Development Consultant, for Leonard Cheshire International, and worked as Program Associate for Freedom House, Nigeria project. She is a member of UPEACE/US Alumni Advocacy Committee to the United Nations.

Idowu holds an M.A degree in International law and Human Rights from the University for Peace, Costa Rica and a B.A in (Philosophy) from Obafemi Awolowo University , Nigeria.

Michael Harris - general web trickery

Michael has alleged that he knows PHP, (X)HTML and CSS, as well as other technologies used on the web. However, looking at the code used to move the courses into a database system, this seems at least partly unlikely. As well as creating the mess that is the courses back-end, Michael is going to do some stuff with the Elgg system, made a nice change on the newsletter page and randomly fix and make mistakes around the website. (Michael specifically disclaims making the website not valid. It was like that when he got here, and Dan apparently likes it that way..)

Web stuff isn't what Michael has any actual qualifications in, however, his first (and currently only) degree is a Bachelor of Arts, with a focus on Political Science. Currently doing an Internship at HURIDOCS, he is looking for a job in Geneva.

Michael can be contacted at harrismw (at} humanrightstools {dot] org, or you can view the website where he keeps some interesting things http://tucs.org.au/harrismw.