Human Rights Tools

NGO experts review the first session of the Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:31:00 GMT

Dear readers,

The first session of the Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review has just ended. No less than sixteen countries came under the scrutiny of their peers. How did the process go? What went well? What must be improved? What are the opportunities and challenges for civil society at national level?

To answer these questions, we interviewed two Geneva-based activists, Budi Tjahjono and Yves Lador. You will find their responses frank and outspoken. Budi and Yves help us map out the path towards a more effective lobbying of the Universal Periodic Review process.

Perhaps the most useful point they underline is the crucial importance of preparing and at national level, and following up afterwards on monitoring of commitments taken by your government. And also how vital it is to generate concrete, realistic and actionable recommendations, which can then be easily put forward by the diplomats at the Human Rights Council.

Watch the video here:
http://www.huridocs.org/involved/conference/interview

Two related points:

1. HURIDOCS CONFERENCE

HURIDOCS is organising a conference, to be held in March 2009 in Geneva, entitled:

"Human Rights Council and International Criminal Court: The New Challenges for Human Rights Communications"

The Conference will bring together representatives of human rights organisations concerned with the collection, management and communication of information on human rights.

The dates will coincide with the start of the March session of the Universal Periodic Review (exact date of latter still to be set). This will allow participants to attend both events on the same ticket.

You can already pre-register by sending an email today to conference@huridocs.org

More information here:
http://www.huridocs.org/involved/conference

2. HRGOWEB WEBSITE
As some of you know, a group of Geneva-based NGOs have put together an online dashboard which provides convenient access to all the information about the Universal Periodic Review: calendar, country reports… and even a direct entrance to the extranet:
http://www.hrgoweb.org/council/

Another new resource on the UPR has also recently been set up:
http://www.upr-info.org/

If you enjoyed this newsletter and found it useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues who share your interest in human rights. You are welcome to post it to your blog, or disseminate it in any way you like.

If you received this newsletter from a friend, and wish to subscribe, visit the web-page below:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/newsletter.htm

We have several exciting issues coming up: using information design techniques to make your data talk, lobbying tips from seasoned advocates, working with indicators to monitor human rights. So make sure you sign up now, if you don't want to miss them!

Best regards, and good luck in your efforts to defend or raise awareness about human rights.

Daniel D'Esposito, Editor
Human Rights Tools
editors@humanrightstools.org
http://www.humanrightstools.org

Subscribe to Human Rights Tools via email by entering your email address below:

Interview: Spin Different

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:04:00 GMT

Dear readers,

This is the second of two newsletters on the same topic: how information technology can be used to increase the accountability of leaders and representatives.

Like UN Democracy profiled in the last newsletter, Spin Different was put together by a volunteer on a shoestring budget: Sam Smith. Another example of what amazing things can be done when ingenuity and a strong volunteer spirit are combined.

http://www.spindifferent.com

We contacted Sam and also asked him for an interview. If you like democracy, web technology, or just a really good interview with a great person, then you will enjoy it:

Editors: How is this website meant to be used? What kind of information does it provide?

Sam: Spin Different lets you compare the words of the "official" spokesmen for the US Whitehouse, the UN and the UK Prime Minister, on any topic you choose.
http://www.spindifferent.com/

You can then see how for some issues, the UN Secretary General is talking about them long before the US or UK start talking about them:
http://spindifferent.com/results/?as_q=Myanmar
http://spindifferent.com/results/?as_q=Burma

We sometimes (like there) fall over the differences of international terminology, but there are some issues which hit the headlines irregularly, but the UN talks about day in, day
out:
http://spindifferent.com/results/?as_q=Darfur

You can also see how some of the subtleties that Downing Street tries to put out just disappears in the domestic press (I'm based in the UK so don't get US TV).

The next thing to add is linking that into iQuango.org/news to get the NGO point of view.
http://www.iquango.org/news

Editors: How is it done, technically? How do you keep it up to date?

Sam: SpinDifferent is a really small site standing on the shoulders of 3 others - it just pulls in the content from The UN Says, The White House Says, and Dowing Street Says (DowningStreetSays being the original which was setup in 2004 by a group of mySociety
people). Each of the 3 works the same way, but that's where any little bit of magic happens.
http://www.theunsays.com
http://www.thewhitehousesays.com
http://www.downingstreetsays.com

Each site has a small computer program (it's printable onto a side of A4) which watches for new briefings to appear (say on the PM website at http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page746.asp). They all follow some pattern, so we can easily pull out the headings and responses, put it all in a database, and give each one a
web page, make it commentable (think of each one as a blog post).

Since we have everything in the database, we can then easily put RSS and Email Alerts on top - so Americans can find out when the Press Secretary talks about their topics of
interest - be it cheese, iguanas, or Iran.

Editors: Who is behind this? Tell us a bit about the people who developed this website. What kind of financing did you have?

Sam: Some friends may have paid for a cup of tea while we were talking about it, but I'm not sure that's the kind of financing you meant. This is all volunteer work - there's no money here at all.

For what happens when you put money and serious time into this, see theyWorkForYou.com or www.mySociety.org
http://www.theyworkforyou.com
http://www.mysociety.org

Editors: What is your next project? If you had a million dollars to spend on a nonprofit idea, what would that be?

Sam: A million dollars, these days, is about 40 million tea bags, which should get some talented or thoughtful volunteers interested and caffinated, somewhere. When that's the case, and they're all talking to each other, anything is possible. Although there's a USD to GBP exchange rate in that calculation, so it might be closer to 40 tea bags by the time you read this, but even that can get you a large amount done.

iQuango.org is the latest project that's up and running - what happens when someone does the SpinDifferent thing for all NGOs? Put the NGO news in a big pot and start stirring. It's in need of more news feeds adding, but does have the option to create custom RSS/email alerts for both the IMF and WorldBank announcements (out of the big 3, the WTO is the only one which doesn't publish enough info to make that possible).

You can then start feeding that stuff into other things, building on it to do more.

It'd be nice if someone is interested in data and visualisation of it in novel ways for the mySociety visualisation tool meinedata to have stuff added to it (Mellanrummet or Mptables.com for what it does - the ugly bits are my level of design skill, rather than any necessary limitations of the system).
http://www.iquango.org/mellanrummet/
http://www.mptables.com/

Editors: What are your favorite blogs, websites?

Sam: despair.com is accurate, xkcd.com is funny, ted.com is utterly inspirational, and the www.bbc.co.uk world service and radio 4 podcasts are informative, and some of the ideas ave been lifted straight from offhand comments from various BBC output.
http://despair.com
http://xkcd.com
http://ted.com
http://www.bbc.co.uk

As an example, TheWhitehouseSays.com was built in a few hours after a comment about the differences between the US and UK media at Bush/Blair press conference.

Ok, thanks a lot for the interview, Sam! Please keep us informed of your next creative projects � we are sure there will be many!

For our readers, if you have questions, Sam can be contacted at S@msmith.net. Also visit his blog: http://www.disruptiveproactivity.com

As usual, please forward this to your friends and colleagues who share your interest in human rights, or post it to your blog and mailing lists.

If you have received this from a friend and would like to subscribe, you can do so here:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/newsletter.htm

To send us feedback, just use editors@humanrightstools.org

Best regards, and good luck in your efforts to defend or raise awareness about human rights.

Daniel D�Esposito, Editor
Human Rights Tools
editors@humanrightstools.org
http://www.humanrightstools.org

PS: because you read this down to the very end, we have a little reward for you: this fantastic Iranian Ministry of Intelligence public information video, found by The Arabist blogger. Enjoy and share, its simply hilarious!
http://arabist.net/archives/2008/02/25/dial-113-for-mukhabarat

More from our bloggers: http://www.humanrightstools.org/bloggers.htm

Subscribe to Human Rights Tools via email by entering your email address below:

Interview: UN Democracy

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:02:00 GMT

Dear readers,

This is the first of two newsletters on the same topic: how information technology can be used to increase the accountability of leaders and representatives.

Have you ever wondered what your nation is saying at the United Nations? How its voting on particular issues? Find out what by visiting UN Democracy, which gives easy access to the transcripts of the General Assembly and Security Council:
http://www.undemocracy.com/

As an example, it makes it easy to read what President Ahmadinejad or President Bush have been saying during recent speeches:
http://www.undemocracy.com/Iran/ahmadinejad
http://www.undemocracy.com/United_States/bush

It also makes it much easier to find document like resolutions and statements, for example below the Security Council documents are sorted by year and by topic:
Year: http://www.undemocracy.com/securitycouncil/documents
Topic: http://www.undemocracy.com/securitycouncil

We caught up with the team who put this amazing resource together, Julian Todd and Francis Irving. We found out that behind this website is a group of dedicated volunteers, who put this together on a shoestring budget, with nothing else than ingenuity, hard work, and superb activist motivation!

But Julian and Francis are looking for volunteers to give a hand. The skills they need:

1) Someone who likes reading, researching, editing. They would do lots of the links from Wikipedia material, and give feedback on the rest of the site and interface by actually using it.

2) People with Python, HTML and CSS skills. To improve the website. Anything from minor tweaks to make it look better (spacing, layout), to larger changes to improve the site.

More here: http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog/2007/09/undemocracy-needs-your-help/

So if you�re interested, write to them at team@undemocracy.com

OK, and now for the interview:

Editors: How is this website meant to be used? What kind of information does it provide?

Francis: All the UN's documents are squirreled away on their hard to use websites, and make it actually impossible to send anyone links to a document, or find it with a search engine.

UNDemocracy.com brings all that out into the open - putting the documents into Google, and letting you refer easily to a document.

Julian: By making them accessible to the general internet they can be referenced by research tools such as wikipedia. When you dig out facts buried in obscure reports, or come across the sorry official excuse given for a US vote against an overwhelmingly popular cause, it's important to be able to bring it to the attention of others who would be interested through the power of Web 2.0.

Editors: How is it done, technically? How do you keep it up to date? Are all the documents added by hand?

Francis: It's done automatically, by fancy software we wrote which parses the United Nations documents website, and loads the data into our website.

Julian: The PDF documents are pulled off their server with difficulty whenever they are found. For searchability, the General Assembly and Security Council meetings are converted into structured HTML using a program that starts with the pixel coordinates of every word on the page. Corrections have to be made by hand when names of countries are mistyped or titles are left out.

Editors: Who is behind this? Tell us a bit about the people who developed this website. What kind of financing did you have?

Francis: Nothing, it was built by one person, Julian Todd, with bits of help from others. He had the original idea, and does it in his spare time as a volunteer.

Julian: I paid for the server and bandwidth rental, which accounts for the only up-front cost of the whole project. You don't need money to do good things on the internet. All you need is a bit of imagination and the ability to ignore your family when they tell you that it is immoral to work for no pay.

Editors: What is your next project? If you had a million dollars to spend on a nonprofit idea, what would that be?

Francis: I don't have a new idea (bet Julian does) - but I'd still use the money usefully.

To start off we'd make the UNDemocracy site even better - make it easier to use, and make it cover more documents.

I'd next improve our other website Public Whip, making it easier for people to maintain voting analyses of MPs. (http://www.publicwhip.org.uk)

I'd put the rest into a foundation to make sure both sites can be kept running reliably and be improved over time, as they deserve.

Julian: I am not someone who can convert money into productivity by other people. It would be better to give the money to someone who is provably able get people to work, for money if necessary, and send the keen ones in my direction for collaboration. There are people who can motivate, but can't program. And there are people who can program, but can't motivate.

Editors: What are your favorite blogs, websites?

Francis:
Dave Pollard on life and how it could be lived:
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/

BLDG BLOG on how the man made physical world could be different: http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/

Strange maps:
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/

Julian:
This is Hell - The best ever interviews on this radio show
http://thisishell.net/

Desmoblog - Reminds you what's at stake with PR industry lies
http://desmogblog.com/

HSM Works - Not my favorite, but it's where my paid work comes from.
http://www.hsmworks.com/

Ok, thanks a lot for the interview, Francis and Julian, but thanks also for all the work you�ve been doing to produce this great resource. Both useful and inspiring!

For our readers, as usual, please forward this to your friends and colleagues who share your interest in human rights, or post it to your blog and mailing lists.

If you have received this from a friend and would like to subscribe, you can do so here:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/newsletter.htm

To send us feedback, just use editors@humanrightstools.org

Best regards, and good luck in your efforts to defend or raise awareness about human rights.

Daniel D�Esposito, Editor
Human Rights Tools
editors@humanrightstools.org
http://www.humanrightstools.org

Subscribe to Human Rights Tools via email by entering your email address below:

New service: Human Rights Consulting

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:21:00 GMT

Dear readers,

We are launching our new consulting service, called Human Rights Consulting.

We invite you to have a look at the profiles of our consultants. Collectively, they offer a wide range of confirmed expertise in many areas of human rights, and can work in a range of languages, including English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/consulting.htm

We decided to offer this new service after having a look at existing consulting firms targeting the nonprofit sector. We found that many of them have one or more of the following weaknesses:

- They are often too large to offer very good quality control (when you have a 300-person consultant database, how can you be sure who is really good?) or too small to offer sufficient diversity of expertise (typically a couple of friends who open a micro-firm).

- Fees at larger firms are often high because of expensive overhead - sometimes the consulting firm gets more than the consultant who does all the work.

- Larger firms put up all sorts of barriers to stop clients from interacting with the consultant directly until the deal is signed - a model based on mistrust.

- Learning and knowledge generated by a consultancy is not systematically shared with the wider the human rights community (there are some remarkable exceptions).

So, we decided to do things differently. Our model is based on trust, quality, wide scope, fair costs, and sharing of knowledge:

- Quality guaranteed: we know our consultants well. All have strong experience in their areas of competence, and a proven ability to work as consultants and trainers.

- Wide range of expertise: our group is large enough to cover most areas of human rights and most types of human rights work.

- Easy to access: its really quick and easy to access our consultants, individually or collectively. No complex barriers, no up-front fees, no registration. Simply email them!

- Competitive fees: our services are very reasonably priced, because we have very little overhead. You pay for expert, and not the intermediary!

- Exchange: the Human Rights Tools website + newsletter is the ideal platform to share knowledge generated from consulting work, and accelerate collective learning.

Of the points above, quality is the most important to us. From working with consultants ourselves, we know first-hand that making the wrong choice of consultant can be a costly mistake: not only are the fees wasted, but also the expenses, time and energy spent by the members of your team who have to take the consultant around. We are doing what we can to make sure that this does not happen at Human Rights Tools - we know all our consultants personally and have a lot of respect for their work.

Human Rights Tools will receive 10% percent of the first contract between a client and a consultant, and 5% of the second contract. That's all. This will be used to fund the development of Human Rights Tools as a learning platform.

How does it work? It could not be more simple:
1. Clients browse the online profiles of the consultants.
2. Clients can email their chosen consultants directly, or email consulting@humanrightstools.org to ask us to help identify the right consultant.
3. Client and consultants agree on terms of reference and fees.

Once the project is completed, and with the consent of the client, Human Rights Tools will publish a concise case-summary, in order to share the learning with the wider human rights community. So that others can benefit from the experience!

Visit this web-page to get started:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/consulting.htm

VERY IMPORTANT: If you do not find the expertise you are looking for, or would like advice, then just write to us at consulting@humanrightstools.org. We have an extensive network and we should be able to find exactly what you need.

So, from now on, please make sure you you send a copy of all human rights-related TORs to us at consulting@humanrightstools.org.

We hope you will find this new service useful! As usual, we welcome all feedback and comments, just reply to this email.

Best regards, and good luck in your efforts to promote and defend human rights,

Daniel D'Esposito
Editor, Human Rights Tools
editors@humanrightstools.org
http://www.humanrightstools.org

Subscribe to Human Rights Tools via email by entering your email address below:

Human Rights Short Courses 2008

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:05:00 GMT

Dear readers,

We have just updated one of the most popular pages of our website : the Human Rights Short Courses page.
http://www.humanrightstools.org/shortcourses.htm

It now features more than 60 short courses and summer schools spanning 2008 and 2009, from the general introductions to very specialized courses on indigenous peoples, discrimination, women�s rights, and more.

So be sure to visit and bookmark this page if you are planning to stimulate your neurons and synapses this year. Its always a good idea to take our nose off the grindstone for a couple of weeks to broaden our horizons, deepen our knowledge, make some new friends and have a good time too!

A big thanks to Idowu Ajibade, from Nigeria, who did all the hard work of updating this page. She has just joined HRT�s small team of dedicated volunteers. More about her below:
http://humanrightstools.org/about.htm

We have done our best to make it as exhaustive as possible, but if there is something to add or change, let us know by writing to us at editors@humanrightstools.org.

Some very interesting courses we would like to highlight:

1. CLOSING SOON: Monitoring economic, social and cultural rights
The Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies in Geneva (IHEID), in cooperation with HURIDOCS, is organizing a new course on monitoring and documenting economic, social and cultural rights. It will take place in Geneve, 5 � 9 May 2008. This exciting and much-needed course will be timed to match the second week of the ESC Committee, so you should be able to attend both with the same plane ticket! There are still a few slots for paying participants, but you must apply before 3 March 2008.
http://www.huridocs.org/training/escr

2. CLOSING SOON: Video advocacy course
The Video Advocacy Institute, the first of its kind, is an innovative program that trains human rights defenders to successfully integrate video advocacy into their social change campaigns. When: July 19 � August 2 2008, in Montreal, Canada. Application deadline is 2 March 2008.
http://www.witness.org/vai

3. CLOSING SOON: Transitional justice francophone Rabat fellowship program
Transitional justice refers to a range of approaches that societies undertake to reckon with legacies of widespread or systematic human rights abuse as they move from a period of violent conflict or oppression towards peace and democracy. The International Center for Transitional Justice�s francophone Rabat fellowship program will be running from May 2nd to the 25th. It runs for 10 weeks and ICTJ takes in charge the full cost of participation of each participant (including the visa and airfare). Application deadline is 25 February 2008.
http://www.ictj.org/en/workshops/fellowships/ottawa/index.html

4. Justice sector reform, Human rights fieldwork
IHRN is organizing two courses. The first is entitled �Justice Sector Reform: Applying Human Rights Based Approaches� will take place at the National University of Ireland, in Maynooth. The dates are from 16 to 20 June 2008, and the application deadline is 2 May 2008.
http://www.ihrnetwork.org/new-justice-sector-reform.htm

The second IHRN course is entitled �Human Rights Fieldwork - Principles, Strategies and Skills� will be held in the same location, from 26 October to 2 November 2008.
http://www.ihrnetwork.org/hr-fieldwork.htm

As usual, please forward this to your friends and colleagues who share your interest in human rights, or post it to your blog and mailing lists.

If you have received this from a friend and would like to subscribe, you can do so here:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/newsletter.htm

And when you come back from all this training, enthusiastic and inspired, why not tell us about it and send us a couple of photos of those special moments? We love to hear from our readers, write to us at editors@humanrightstools.org

Best regards, and good luck in your efforts to defend or raise awareness about human rights.

Daniel D�Esposito, Editor
Human Rights Tools
editors@humanrightstools.org
http://www.humanrightstools.org

Subscribe to Human Rights Tools via email by entering your email address below:

Issue 8: Human rights maps

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:20:00 GMT

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions,
is located at the end of this message.)
__

Dear readers, 

In this issue we will be reviewing a fantastic mapping tool called the "World Freedom Atlas". Its both very beautiful and wonderfully useful. We will be interviewing its creator, Zachary, Johnson, and you will be amazed to learn that he put it together with practically no money, but lots of hard work.

We will also be having a review of some of the best posts from our bloggers community, carefully selected by Helene Hedberg, which we are sure you will enjoy.

As many of you have realized, this is not a regular newsletter, we publish only when we have something to say. We make no promises, and you may not hear from us for months! So we hope you will enjoy this issue and read it attentively, because even we don't know when you will get the next one!

Some announcements to start: 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: TRAINING AND EDUCATION 

The University of Sydney now has an interdisciplinary MA in Human Rights: 
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/ssp/postgraduate/?part=overview&id=dc055

We asked the programme's director, Dr. Danielle Celermajer, what is special about it. She replies:

"At Sydney, we�ve taken on board the fact that human rights is not just a legal discourse, and not just a political discourse, but a topic that a number of disciplines have something important to say about. In practical terms, that means that our courses are taught across 6 faculties, taking into account legal, philosophical, sociological, environmental, cultural and economic perspectives, and making the links between human rights and other critical areas of concern like bio-ethics and global warming. What we have in mind in this degree is not just conveying the body of existing knowledge, but equipping students to become people who can take human rights into new areas and develop the field; they will be the leaders of the future.

We�ve also included an internship option so students can actually go out and be members of working human rights organizations in Australia and in the Asian region and develop their practice skills, which will be critical to their future career opportunities."

Of course, we could also mention that Sydney is a very nice place to live and study!
 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: TOOLS AND RESOURCES

ILO: New resource guide on disability
This guide is a starting point for anyone beginning research on disability. It provides links to key ILO publications on the topic, ILO labour standards and data, as well as to other resources around the world. This guide was produced in cooperation with the ILO's Skills and Employability Department.
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/support/lib/resource/subject/disability.htm

IPIECA: Human Rights Training Toolkit for the Oil and Gas Industry
Jenny Owens, project manager for social responsibility at IPIECA, wrote to tell us about this very toolkit. It destined to help managers in the oil sector to make human rights-sensitive decisions. We were impressed by the quality of the pedagogy. The trainer manual makes a very effective use of scenarios and dilemmes for discussion. These scenarios make it possible to jump straight into the most thorny issues: how to avoid complicity with a government with a bad human rights records, how to manage relations with local communities. Available in English and French.
http://www.ipieca.org/activities/social/social_hr.php#hftt

BEST OF THE BLOGS

A review of the most interesting posts from our comminity of 50+ human rights blogs, by community animator Helene Hedberg:

Hello fellow friends and Human Rights bloggers! So I�ve been checking out some blogs and here is what�s new from some of them:

Intercontinental Cry
Is dedicated to informing people about the many historical, ongoing, and emerging problems of indiegnous peoples throughout the world. Its recent post from the 26th of November includes a report on the ousting of Australia�s racist government. Congratulating the voters for doing a good job, voting against Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mal Brough and Prime Minister John Howard, it also includes some doubts about whether or not the new government will stop the intervention of Indigenous people in the northern territory. With hope though it is expressed that the new government will possibly sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Check out the blog, even though it�s run by just one person it is frequently updated, very well elaborated and provides access to a great deal of valuable information, links, videos etc.
http://intercontinentalcry.org

Rightsbase
Another interesting blog run by Olivia Ball. Her intention is to address just about any topic, but from a human rights perspective. Something we could all take into account. Her post from the 10th of November looks into how �Blix envisages peace through globalization�. Here she writes about that Hans Blix, foremost known as the weapon inspector of Iraq prior to the current war, recently was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. Including an excerpt from his acceptance speech, Blix had concluded like Dag Hammarskj�l a couple of years earlier; �The UN will not take us to heaven, but it might help us to avoid hell�. The blog contains some useful links and literature suggestions. Pay it a visit.
http://blog.rightsbase.org

The UUSC Hotwire
Is a human rights weblog of the unitarian universalist service committee. A nonsectarian organization that advances human rights and social justice in the United States and around the world. Their latest post from the 24th of November deals with the situation where Muslim women are being enforced to wear headscarves. The criticism put forward is done with realization of- and respect for the Muslim women wearing it as a sign of religious devotion, which they have freely chosen. What is put forward here by Lauri Brunner, as she tells us about her visit to Aceh, is the danger of the scarves becoming a �fabric of oppression� in Indonesia as it has in Pakistan when the women are in risk of getting detention or caning for not wearing it. Check out the blog to read more on interesting and important topics.
http://www.uusc.org/blog/hotwire.html

Also, I�ve just updated my blog with some feedback on the human rights event I recently attended:
http://undialogue.blogspot.com

That�s it for now! Keep up the good work! And please let me know if there is a blog to add to the community: helene@humanrightstools.org

MAIN FEATURE: HUMAN RIGHTS MAPS

We were really amazed by the World Freedom Atlas you have put together. Its really useful, contains a host of data, and is also very beautifully executed.

We recommend to take some minutes to explore it, before reading further:
http://www.freedom.indiemaps.com

There is a wide range of data you can visualize, from Freedom House's indicators on civil and political rights, to the Human Development Index, to Transparency International's corruption data, to Reporters with out Borders' Press Freedom Index.

What is even more impressive is that it was made by a student, completed over a summer as part of a university project! (for this course: http://www.geography.wisc.edu/~harrower/Geog575/).

We caught up with the creator of this wonderful atlas, Zachary Johnson, for an email interview:

Editor: How is this website meant to be used? What kind of information does it provide?

Zachary: I initially aimed the World Freedom Atlas at scholars and NGO/IGO workers who already work with the datasets I've included. I hope people use it to explore the data, ask questions, and do some initial analysis. I really don't expect the atlas to necessarily answer questions -- that's not what geovisualization is all about. Rather, I hope it raises issues and awareness and compels users to further explore the complex issues of freedom, democracy, and human rights.

The data are of course available online, and many of the original data providers (Freedom House, Transparency International, etc.) even provide some maps on their websites. As I cartographer, though, I was generally dissatisfied with these maps. Plus, I wanted them to be available all in one place, rather that dispersed across cyberspace.

Editor: How is it done, technically? How do you keep it up to date? Was it difficult to find all the datasets and put them together? How long did it take you?

Zachary: I really improved my programming skills during the 6 months I worked on the World Freedom Atlas. It was done in Flash 8 using its programming language Actionscript 2. The data are stored in a single table in a mySQL database and I use AMFPHP (a group of classes written in the PHP programming language) and some of my own PHP scripts to go back-and-forth between the Flash app and the database (when the user requests a specific variable to be mapped).

Right now the database and application are set up quite flexibly. So if I want to add a new variable or update an existing one, it only takes a few steps and the application will update automatically. Unfortunately I haven't had much time lately to do even these few steps, so there may be a few datasets in need of updating. A couple months into the production of the atlas I discovered the Quality of Governance Institute, a Swedish organization affiliated w ith G�teborg University. They release and constantly update a huge dataset with time series data going back to 1946. I chose to load their entire dataset into my application, though I only go back as far as 1990. I definitely owe a lot to the QoG for collecting and disseminating this dataset. That said, it still took a lot of work to get it into a form usable by Flash, and to import such a huge file into a mySQL table.

I can't even estimate how long it took me to complete. This has been my baby for the past 6 months, and there have been many nights working past 3am on it. Definitely over a hundred hours, and quite possibly over 200. I've also been working on many other projects, taking classes, and (sort of) working on my thesis at the same time, so the atlas has had to take a backseat at some times.

Editor: Tell us a bit about yourself, and why you did this. What kind of financing did you have?

Zachary: This began as a class project for an interactive mapping course at the University of Wisconsin taught by Professor Mark Harrower. We produced a very limited version of the atlas (using only Freedom House data) and turned it in in May. My group-mates gladly turned the atlas over to me and I chose to completely redesign it and repurpose it as a more general geovisualization application for data related to good governance.

So it was a completely independent project. There was no financing whatsoever and I haven't made a dime off of it (and don't plan to, though it will obviously be a very large portfolio piece for me when I'm looking for other, paying clients).

Editor: What is your next project? If you had a million dollars to spend on a nonprofit idea, what would that be?

Zachary: I'm currently working on a couple interactive projects, but these will finish up in December. Those interested can check out my website, indiemaps.com. I really want to continue working on areas related to human rights, population studies, or environmental justice. I'm still looking around for my next project (though I really should finish up my Master's thesis sometime...).

If I had a ton of funding to produce a non-profit application of my choosing, I would likely create some type of web-based Flash GIS application, into which all sorts of users could easily load in and explore their own data, be it about human rights or environmental degradation. Current GIS software is quite powerful, but also very expensive and typically quite hard to use. A Flash-based GIS could incorporate very nice interface design and complete access to anyone with a web browser.

Editor: What are your favorite blogs, websites?

Zachary: I mostly read blogs related to programming, cartography, and information visualization. My current favorites are tecznotes ( http://mike.teczno.com/notes/), Smashing Magazine (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/), and Information Aesthetics (http://infosthetics.com/). I am also quite politically active and read an assortment of political blogs and sites, both liberal and conservative, every morning with my coffee. The New York Times website is currently the leader in journalistic online mapping, and their site typically contains one or two new interactive infographics or maps each week. I should also plug my blog here (http://indiemaps.com/blog/), which I plan to keep active and which should be interesting to those who create, or are just interested in, these kinds of social data visualizations.

MORE HUMAN RIGHTS MAPS....

If you like human rights mapping, here are some more goodies to explore:

MapleCroft Maps
Already reviewed in a previous issue, this website provides a number of world maps. Each map allows you to visualize a particular human right of development issue: aid flows, water, military expendure, malaria, landmine risk... and many many more:
http://maps.maplecroft.com/
(also be sure to explore the cartograms at bottom of this page)

Raoul Wallenberg Institute: Human Rights Theme Maps
Good to visualize who is signatory to which treaty.
http://www.rwi.lu.se/tm/ThemeMaps.html

Gapminder
Hans Rosling and his team at Karolinska are experts at making statistical data talk in very evocative ways. Many of you have watched his Ted Talk videos:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/140
Well, an online version of the Gapminder tool is now hosted by Google, so you can make similar presentations yourself!
http://tools.google.com/gapminder/
http://www.gapminder.org/

iQuango.org: Mellanrummet graphs
Sam Smith, inspired by Hans Rosling's Gapminder work, has taken the whole United Nations Common Database and parts of the CIA World Factbook and made it publicly available in Gapminder style. The interesting thing here is that the software running it - called "meinedata" - is freely available for anyone to use, improve, distribute.
http://www.iquango.org/mellanrummet/

European Statistical Laboratory's MDG dashboard
The MDG Dashboard presents the Millennium Development Goals indicators in a highly communicative format. This free database provides 60 MDG indicators for ca. 200 countries and 15 years (1990-2005) based on original United Nations statistics (updated in July 2007). Download the software to play on your computer:
http://esl.jrc.it/dc/index.htm

There are many more dashboards on this rich website, its a bit of a maze to navigate (to say the least...) but you will be surprised what you find. We liked the Fragile States Index: type the name of your country into the box and see how stable or unstable it is:
http://esl.jrc.it/dc/fsi_2007/index.htm
(more dashboards: http://esl.jrc.it/dc/dbgal_en.htm)

FINAL WORDS

Well, we hope you enjoyed this newsletter and found it useful. Please help us by
- forwarding this email with your friends and colleagues.
- posting it to your blog, or to your mailing lists.

If you have not yet subscribed to our newsletter, please sign up here:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/newsletter.htm

That's all for now! Best regards and good luck in your efforts,

Daniel D'Esposito and Helene Hedberg

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Issue 7: The power of email

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:31:00 GMT

Dear readers,

If communicating and disseminating information is important to your organisation, then you will probably find this newsletter very useful - its all about using email for effective outreach.

But before, we start, we have some announcements to share:

ANNOUNCEMENTS: UNIVERSAL PERIODIC REVIEW
Which countries are coming up for review at the Human Rights Council? Well, you will find the list here:
http://www.ishr.ch/hrm/council/upr/order_review_countries.pdf

If your organisation would like to submit information about these countries, hurry up, the tentative deadline is 20 November. Read more here:
http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/upr/noteNGO_041007.htm

ANNOUNCEMENTS: EVENTS
If you are interested in human rights impact assessment, Human Rights Impact is organizing its second conference, which will be held in the Netherlands on 29 and 30 November:
http://www.humanrightsimpact.org/hria-conference/

If you are going, please let us know how it went, what you learned, what were the most useful tools presented. We could include your report in an upcoming newsletter.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: JOBS
Our job board is now probably the best place on the internet to find a human rights job: employers love it and we have had some very interesting positions announced over the past months:
http://jobs.humanrightstools.org/

We strongly advise you to subscribe to the email-alert feature, which will send you each vacancy, the instant it is published. You can expect one email per week. Even if you are not looking for a job, you may find something interesting for a friend!
http://jobs.humanrightstools.org/jt/contacts/accept_invite.php

ANNOUNCEMENTS: BLOGS
Our blog page is a very popular part on our site - we now have over 50 bloggers in the community, so there are new posts every day!
http://www.humanrightstools.org/bloggers.htm

Well, we have some good news: the blogger community now has an animator in the person of Hel�ne Hedberg. She introduces herself:

" I am a Swedish girl in my twenties currently studying a Human Rights programme in Stockholm. I have 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, I am involved in an after-school center for mostly immigrant kids in one of the southern suburbs of Stockholm (Varberg), which takes a lot of my time. I also run a blog under the name of undialogue:
http://undialogue.blogspot.com

I am happy to take upon the role as an animator for this community centre for human rights bloggers and try to develop it and give it that real community feeling we've all been longing for. Lets make it into a joint effort. Emails containing ideas, thoughts or reminders are more than welcome."

Hel�ne can be contact at: helene@humanrightstools.org

MAIN FEATURE: THE POWER OF EMAIL

Michael Gilbert wrote the article below in 2001, but we feel that its still just as relevant today. In fact, the best would be for you to read it now - its short, sharp, and well written:
http://news.gilbert.org/gem

The point Gilbert makes is simple: non-profit organisations spend to much time, money and thought on their websites, and not enough about on developing an email strategy. He shows us that email is a much more personal medium - most people usually read most of their emails, which are seen as calls to action.

Besides, your visitors may never even find your website in the first place - unless you send them there! Let them sign up for an email newsletter or email alert system, so they can trust you to remind them to return when you have something to share. Otherwise they may forget to come back... This is even more important if your target audience has slow internet access, and only goes online to check their mail.

OK, so thanks to Gilbert, we know we need an email strategy. A good place to start is with an email newsletter. Some advice from our own experience:
1. Don't publish too often, or nobody will read you anymore. Don't feel obliged to be regular, just write when you have something you really need to say.
2. Put a very visible sign-up box on every single page of your website and not only your home page - many of your visitors don't enter through the home page.
3. Rack your brains really really hard about how to make your newsletter useful to your readers - this will increase its chances of getting forwarded onwards to others. Work hard on this, and get the opinion of others.
4. Consider using an informal, engaging, lively style - who wants to read yet more politically-correct and bland institutional-speak? Give it an edge, make it distinctive, find your style.
5. Include links back to specific pages on your website where readers can learn more. But also link to other stuff, so as to make it even more useful (see point 3). You are not the centre of the world ;-)
6. Ask for feedback, engage your readers. You probably won't get much, but the few who respond will always have very something interesting to tell you.
7. Run a spell chek before sending, and always prof read.
8. Don't make your newsletters too long - not like ours!

We find that Human Rights Watch make a very effective usage of email newsletters to keep people returning to their website: you can subscribe to the general newsletter, but also to a multitude of specific ones depending on your geographic or thematic interests. This helps you filter and access the information you already need as soon as it is published - but it also helps them make sure you keep on coming back! So why don't you do something similar?
http://www.hrw.org/act/subscribe-mlists/subscribe.htm

But what technology to use?

Well, whatever you do, don't use your normal email client (Gmail, Outlook, etc). We have noted that many human rights organisations still send their mass mail using their normal email, in chunks of 100 or so. This is really something to avoid, for four reasons:
- people can see the other persons you are writing to, which is not very professional or considerate of their privacy
- many of the intended recipients will never receive these bulk mails because they are intercepted by spam filters
- there is no built-in unsubscribe information, which is not proper netiquette and can make people angry (see below)
- Its not efficient: there is no sign-up from your webpage, previous issues are not automatically archived online, there are no RSS feeds, etc.

Instead, we recommend to use a mass mail manager which can be installed onto your website. And we have some good news for you: the best ones are actually completely free! The great thing with these systems is that your readers can sign-up or unsubscribe by themselves from your website, so managing your list is completely automatic. Technically, it becomes as easy at using webmail.

There are two types of mass mail manager. The first: the newsletter managers (one-to-many broadcasting) like Dadamail (free and very good, we use it) and PHP List (also free and even betters, HREA uses this). The second: the mailing list managers (many-to-many), like Mailman (also free and feature-laden):
Dadamail: http://mojo.skazat.com/
PHP List: http://www.phplist.com/
http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html

There are of course many other alternatives, and Idealware provide a useful overview here:
http://www.idealware.org/articles/fgt_email_newsletter_tools.php

If you need more help in choosing the ideal mailing list of newsletter for you, then watch this NTEN webinar (50 USD), or the accompanying slideshow (free):
http://www.nten.org/events/webinar/2007/02/28/choosing-an-enewsletter-tool
http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/enews_webinar.pdf

Some will argue that a blog can also be considered as a good outreach method, like a newsletter or mailing list, and of course they are right. Blogs also allow you to make much more attractive layouts, and integrate photos and videos very easily. But blogs do not allow you to broadcast like an email newsletter... unless you install the Feedburner services, which allows your faithful readers to sign up and get email alerts whenever you publish something. Frankly, we are surprised that so many bloggers do not use this free and excellent service.
http://www.feedburner.com/

And what if you don't have any email addresses to start off with? Not much point in sending your email newsletter to.... nobody! Well, there are two things you can do. Obviously, collect all the emails you can from colleagues, partners, and friends. But you also can harvest email addresses from the internet: you will be surprised how many people leave their emails on forums, in databases, in workshop reports.

The best way is to purchase an email spider, which will suck up email addresses from the internet according to key words that you choose, such as "human rights uganda". We have used the following software and found it really good: Email Spider Easy (75 USD): http://www.email-tool.com/

This brings us to the issue of ethics and netiquette. Frankly there is nothing as annoying as being signed up for a mailing list against your will, and having no way of being able to unsubscribe. This is spam, even if its done for a just cause and not commercial profit.

So always to use an opt-in policy: its perfectly acceptable to send potential new readers an invitation to subscribe to your newsletter, especially if you have targeted them carefully. But always leave it up to them to choose whether they want to sign up or not. Likewise, include unsubscribe information and links in all subsequent email newsletters. All good newsletter managers, like Dadamail, will handle this automatically, yet another reason to use them.

... and you want to learn more about using email for outreach, visit this page:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/dir/4_Tech_for_Human_Rights/Using_email_for_advocacy/

What do you think? What is your experience with email outreach and advocacy? We can publish your comments in a follow-up issue.

LAST POINTS...

We welcome and appreciate your comments and feedback - simply respond to this email. Do you know of a resource or event which should be better known by the human rights community? Please tell us, we can profile it in an upcoming newsletter.

We hope your enjoyed this newsletter and found it useful:
- Please help us by forwarding this email with your friends and colleagues.
- If you have not yet subscribed, do so here: http://www.humanrightstools.org/newsletter.htm

What�s next? You'll just have to wait and see! We lots of nice stuff in the pipeline for you, and the next issue is coming really soon.

That's all for now! Best regards and good luck in your efforts,

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

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Issue 6: Good things come in threes!

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 20:47:00 GMT

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is located at the end of this message.)
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This newsletter covers three tools:
1. HuriSearch, the human rights search engine
2. The Universal Human Rights Index
3. What Convention?
4. Varia (some really good stuff in this section too!)

Dear readers,

First of all, we wish you the best of health and luck for 2007!

Good things come in threes. In this issue would like to introduce three information and useful resources for human rights professionals: "HuriSearch", the "Universal Human Rights Index", and also "What Convention".

1. HuriSearch, the human rights search engine
http://www.hurisearch.org/

This search engine allows you to search over 3000 human rights websites: in total over three million pages.

This content is always fresh, because HuriSearch indexes the content of these 3000 websites every eight days for most websites, and every day for the larger ones. You can test the "freshness" by doing a search for a recent case that you are following: does it give good results?

As we know, the source of information is crucially important in human rights work. HuriSearch makes it possible to focus searches on information published in a particular country, by a particular type of organization, by a specific organisation, or in a specific language. Just to a first search, then look at the options in the right column of the results page - you will be impressed!

HuriSearch also used articifial intelligence to analyse your search results for keywords. It recognises terms which may be significant, such as "police" or "refugees". You then click on a keyword, to access all the results which mention it. You will also find these features on the right column of the search results.

We contacted James Lawson, who is a HURIDOCS board member and the initiator of HuriSearch:

Editors: James, why was it necessary to create HuriSearch? Doesn't Google do the job?

James: "No I don�t think google, or any of the major search engines do the job well enough. The major commercial search engines tend to rank, well known, northern based organisations at the top of their results lists, with the more grassroots organisation�s pages lost in the depths never to be seen. I have the greatest admiration for the work carried out by major NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, to name just two of the sites that frequently top results lists for human rights searches, but there are literally thousands of human rights ngo�s in the world, many working in extremely difficult conditions, who produce valuable first hand information on events. Without the work of these smaller NGOs, the major international NGOs would be much less effective, as they rely on these partners in the field for much of their information. HuriSearch allows journalists, activists and researchers to discover documents and organisations that would otherwise go un-notice
d.�

Hurisearch was launched last December. HuriSearch is a HURIDOCS tool (see http://www.huridocs.org). It comes in seven language interfaces (including Arabic and Russian). And it can handle documents in 77 languages, and all kinds of alphabets.

2. The Universal Human Rights Index
http://www.universalhumanrightsindex.org/

The name is very long, and the interface could be more cheerful. But make no mistake: this tool is simply fantastic, so make sure you bookmark it in your favorites.

What does it do? It provides you with instant access to the observations and recommendations of the expert bodies:
- the new Human Rights Council (since 2006)
- the seven Treaty Bodies which monitor the implementation of the core international human rights treaties, including the work of all the special rapporteurs, working groups and international experts (since 2001)

Better still, you can search all of these recommendations and observations combining the following fields:
- both by region and by country
- by right: right to life, right to work, etc
- by cluster or rights: administration of justice, cultural rights, etc.
- by body: CAT, CRC, CEDAW. etc.
- by type of affected persons: internally displaced, rural women, street children, etc.

So.... this means you do all kinds of useful searches:
- a very simple search, for example retrieve all the recommendations which concern your country, and view them on the same page
- a more complex search: all the recommendations concerning street children in Asia, made by the CRC.

And if you want more than just the recommendations or observations, the full text it comes from is just a click away!

Of course, on of the major advantages of this tool is that is makes it very easy to see what the expert bodies have been saying to a particular country, making it easier for civil society to monitor what exactly this country is doing to improve its respect for human rights of its inhabitants.

We contacted Andrea Aebi, the project director, for her views on who should be using this tool, and why.

Andrea replies: "The Universal Human Rights Index was primarily conceived for diplomats negotiating at the Human Rights Council, human rights experts in governments and national human rights institutions, NGOs and universities.

One of the main added values is to considerably accelerate access to official UN documents. No need to read through hundreds of pages anymore; with a few clicks, you will see what international experts said, or did not say, about the implementation of each right in a specific country or region. All countries are covered and all rights as well as cross-cutting issues such as human rights and counter-terrorism or human rights and structural adjustment.

Moreover, we believe the Index compiles objective and reliable information. It comes from independent international bodies and experts that are independent, and it is classified by rights, strictly following the legal approach of the experts. We did not interpret this information, we compiled it. Thus the Index can serve as a basis for discussion on the human rights situation in the world, for instance in the debates of the Human Rights Council. "

UHRI was developed by the University of Bern, Switzerland (Institute of Public Law ) and the University of Montreal (LexUM).

3. What Convention?
http://www.whatlaw.org/

This database also provides access to the text of treaties and conventions, and information on ratifications. Its not exactly as new as the other two, but is also rather good.

We must admit we really like this little database, because it can do some really nice things:
- you can can get a list of all the treaties signed by a particular country, on about a particular domain or topic
- if a country has signed some reservations in a treaty, it will tell you in bold and you can click to see those reservations
- it also gives you the list of countries which have ratified each treaty

And best of all: you can actually search for individual articles from treaties, also by domain and by treaty. For example:
- all the articles concerning disabled persons, or education, or fair trials (topic/issue)
- all the article about indigenous peoples (domain), from treaties signed by Russia (country)

"What Convention" comes in English, French, and Spanish versions, which is very nice. But if you want Russian, Arabic, or Chinese, then the best is to visit the good old Minnesota human rights library:
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/treaties.htm

This resource was launched by Mandat International last year (http://www.mandint.org/). We have spoken with them, and they have some really exciting features to add to it! We will not kill the surprise, but promise let you know when the time comes.

4. Varia

- Our blogger community now has over 50 blogs, and its great! Have a look, we are sure you will discover something new here. And a particular tribute to blogger Sarah Meyer, who has put together some useful research on a possible war between the US, Israel, and Iran, on her blog "Index Research:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/news/bloggers.htm
http://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2007/01/iran-war-resource-info.html

- Some more jobs available, and interesting ones too. United States, Ukraine, Sri Lanka:
http://jobs.humanrightstools.org/

- If you are planning to take a sabbatical to study for a Masters this year, then beware of approaching deadlines - send in your application as soon as you can. Apply several schools to be safe - and not only the famous ones!
http://www.humanrightstools.org/hrt/hrt/masters.htm

- OHCHR has at last updated their database on human rights education and training - its very good. Check it out here and bookmark it while you're there:
http://hre.ohchr.org/hret/intro.aspx

- We came across this excellent really fascinating presentation by Swedish professor Hans Rosling. He uses freely available statistical data to debunk some myths we have about developing countries.... We guarantee you will be amazed!
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=hans_rosling
bigger version here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4237353244338529080&q=hans+rosling

- A nice way to end a newsletter is with some humor. Our friends who work at the UN will have a chuckle about this Dilbert comic strip:
http://www.planetd.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/Dilbert_at_UN.jpg

OK, hope you enjoyed the tools we describe above and that they will help you be even more effective in your work. As usual, please share this newsletter with friends and colleagues, and feel free to post it to your blog or translate it into another language.

And if you have received this from a friend, then you can sign up for coming editions of the newsletter here:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/news/newsletter.htm

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

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Issue 5: Rightswire, blogs, and jobs in Geneva

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 22:25:00 GMT

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is located at the end of this message.)
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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 R�mi 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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