Date: December 8th, 2006

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This newsletter covers three topics:
1. Rightswire, the new social networking service for human rights
2. Human rights blogs - an update
3. Human rights jobs in Geneva



1. RIGHTSWIRE, THE NEW SOCIAL NETWORKING SERVICE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Dear readers,

We would like to share some good news with you: the human rights community will soon have its own online social networking service, thanks to the Rightswire project. It will be completely free of charge.

This project is still under development, however you are invited to help shape its future services by filling in an online form. It's quite easy and will not take you a long time:
http://rightswire.com/survey/index.php?sid=1

What is online social networking, and what will it do for you? Simply put, Rightswire will help you meet peers who share your professional interests, from all over the world, and communicate with them easily - people who you would simply never have been able to meet otherwise.

What are the features of an online social service? Well, there are three that will be particularly relevant to us human rights people:

Profiles: members can use a number of fields to descibe their professional interests and experience. They can then search these profiles to find peers. For example, if you are preparing a training on monitoring in Indonesia, you can use Rightswire to find project partners or possible participants in this country. Or if you need advice on how to organise a campaign, you can find and ask other members who have described themselves as knowledgeable in this area. Recruiters also increasingly head-hunt using social networks.

Of course, there are other social networks for business professionals, like "Linked In" (see: http://www.linkedin.com). The problem is that their profile descriptors are very business-oriented, with terms like "marketing" and "engineering" - thanks to Rightswire, we will have categories which really match what we do, such as the type of human rights work we do (advocacy, monitoring, community awareness, etc) and the type of rights we are interested in (rights of women, rights of refugee, etc). So we can find each other better!

Groups: we will also be able to create or join virtual groups. For example, your editor looks forward to joining or creating a group on monitoring human rights violations, because he is interested in this field. Others may want to create a group for the persons who attended a particular training or seminar, so they can keep in touch easily and share news.

Instant messaging and email: online social networks usually also provide means to communicate with other. "So what", you will say, "we already have email and Skype". Maybe so. But once all your colleagues, contacts and friends will be on Rightswire, you will find yourself using the built-in messages more and more because they are so convenient: you can see who is online and chat immediately. In the student world, the social network serviced called Facebook (see http://www.facebook.com) gives a good example - more than 80% of the students in the United States apparently now have a Facebook account, and use it as the primary means of communication with each other. Do they still use normal email? Yes, to write to their grandmothers...

The Rightswire project is being put together by Jeff Henigson, who took a sabbatical from his job managing the GIS unit at Reliefweb, especially to build it for us. Thanks Jeff, your efforts are really appreciated! We can't wait to try Rightswire out!

In the meantime, don't forget to do the survey:
http://rightswire.com/survey/index.php?sid=1


2. HUMAN RIGHTS BLOGS

In a previous issue, we announced that we were working on a special section on our website bringing together human rights bloggers. Since then, several bloggers contacted us, and we found quite a few more using blog search engines.

We put them all on one convenient page, which to our knowledge is the first comprehensive listing of human rights blogs:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/news/bloggers.htm

This page has two columns:
- The left column lists all blogs in alphabetical order
- The right column lists the last 15 posts from all blogs - very easy for you to check whats new!

While researching the blogs for this page, we made some quite interesting observations:

first observation -- Human rights bloggers are a diverse group
Some blogs are serious, others are sarcastic and cynical, yet others are humorous. Some cover a particular country, some cover a theme, like women's rights, the protection of the environment, racism or torture. Some post every day or more, others once a week or less. Some write in English, others in Arabic or Chinese, and Cehz Rémi even write in three languages: English, French and Spanish! Altogether, they form a colorful energetic community, and both fun and informative to read.


second observation -- Blogs are proportional to censorship
Have a look at the country-specific blogs that we found: a quick and unscientific survey seems to indicate that the number of blogs is proportional to the level of censorship. All of the countries for which we found more than two blogs, are at the bottom of the Reporter Without Borders press freedom index:
http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=639
- we found two blogs for India, which scores 106th on the RWB index
- we found two blogs for Egypt, which scores 143th on the RWB index
- we found two blogs for China, which scores 159th on the RWB index
- we found two blogs for iran, which scores 164th on the RWB index

It is as if bloggers emerge as a counter-reaction to attacks against mainstream media and human rights groups, as an elusive network of guerilla-reporters which is very difficult for a repressive State to silence.

The exception is Palestine: we found at least ten blogs about the human rights situation there, and it's hard to classify as it's not listed on the RWB index (although it does not seem to repressive against its press or human rights defenders).

third observation -- There don't seem to be that many human rights blogs after all
According to Technorati, there are today no less than 55 million blogs. And how many of these are human rights blogs? Well, we only found 55. Yes, thats right, only 55 - this means one human rights blog in a million is about human rights.

Of course, we probably did not find all the blogs, although we looked very hard: on Technorati (www.technorati.com) or Google Blogsearch (blogsearch.google.com). And we did not list all we found, such as inactive blogs or blogs that are mainly about international politics, with only a passing reference to human rights.

Why are there so few human rights blogs? It's a pity, because in the field of human rights, there is a lot to blog about. And today, blogging is both free and easy (you can open a free account on bloggers.com or wordpress.com in less than a minute).

Our impression is that too many of us could be excellent bloggers, but simply don't realize it: we underestimate our value as providers of information and commentary. If you are following the human rights situation in a particular country or a particular human rights issue, you can perform a valuable service by using a blog to report on what is happening in this area and providing an independant opinion or local perspective. Not everybody has the time or opportunity to follow your topic as you do!

So... if you are a human rights blogger and are not yet listed on this page, let us know, we will add your blog immediately! And if you are planning to start a human rights blog - congratulations! Let us know as well - we can help you get the word out.

Some useful links:
http://www.bloggers.com/ (free blogs)
http://wordpress.com/ (more free blogs)
http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542 (handbook for cyber-dissidents)
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/14/blogging-for-beginners-2/ (some really good tips for beginners and fun to read)


3. JOBS IN GENEVA

If you would like to work in Geneva in the field of human rights, this could be your lucky month! In our job section you will find announcement for no less than 7 human rights vacancies! All the details here:
http://jobs.humanrightstools.org/

... and if you get one of these jobs, let us know and come to visit (your editor works and lives in Geneva).


As usual, please share this email with friends and colleagues who share your interest in human rights - and social network and blogging in particular!


Best regards,
Daniel D'Esposito, editor
editors@humanrightstools.org
http://www.humanrightstools.org





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