The three organizations coordinating HRC have provided materials and training for thousands of activists around the world. Through this work, we have developed close ties and relations of trust and understanding with local activists. We also have considerable expertise building web sites specifically for users in developing countries with limited web access and slow Internet connections.
For the past 14 years, the Center for the Study of Human Rights' Human Rights Advocates Training Program has provided training to over 150 leaders and activists from developing countries. Forefront has a membership network of nearly 60 leading grassroots human rights activists working in 30 different countries. Its publications have reached more than 5,000 groups worldwide, and 1,500 activists had training and technical assistance through its programs. The Digital Freedom Network has aided activists in their work by designing web sites that widely publicize their work and working with them to create web-based activist campaigns that have generated over 150,000 protest letters around the world.
Human Rights Connection developed out of our longstanding relationships with local activists. Over the past year, both Forefront and the Center for the Study of Human Rights conducted surveys of respective network members to determine the priority needs of frontline human rights activists. The response was overwhelmingly in support of the creation of mechanisms to further information-sharing, networking and collaboration between activists from different parts of the world.
Our combined 50 years of capacity-building experience with human rights activists has shown us that it is often difficult for local activists to get practical information to guide their work and to share with other activists valuable lessons that they have learned through their own experiences. Consequently, the combined knowledge and experience of decades of human rights activism is either lost or simply not shared. Activists waste energy, time and valuable resources as they find themselves fighting the same battles and repeating the same mistakes. The result is a movement that cannot build on its successes or learn from its failures.
In order to bridge this gap in information sharing, our web site will address the factors that contribute to the challenges that human rights activists face. These factors include:
- Limited access to training: While existing human rights training programs serve a valuable need, they unfortunately cannot meet activists' overwhelming demand for their programs. For example, the Center for the Study of Human Rights' Advocates Training Program receives over 300 applications for 15 positions each year. Activists no doubt find the assistance that these training programs provide useful, but they cannot always have access to them. Also, the few activists who complete a training program need new and innovative ideas to improve their work when they return to their organizations.
- Expensive printed material hard to obtain: Unable to attend training programs, activists can turn to printed material for help. However, such information is rarely available in one place. Furthermore, bootstrapping organizations cannot afford to spend the time and money to order publications from developed countries, where most of the existing material is produced.
- Overwhelming amount of online material: Many activists are willing and able to use the Internet for getting information, but they literally cannot afford to do extensive research online because Internet access is expensive in most of the world. Some sites contain so much practical information that they are too overwhelming for activists in developing countries who cannot afford to find exactly what they need. Other sites provide excellent human rights data but fail to give activists the ideas and tools they need to expand their work.
- Language barriers: Usually written by people in the global North countries, much of the current material is available only in English, a language that many activists cannot read.
- Material not tailored to meet activists' needs: Much of the material currently available is written by and targeted towards the needs and concerns of activists in the global North countries. Activists can turn to information currently available in print or on the web, but this material is not specific to human rights organizations and tends to be academic or theoretical. It usually fails to provide practical strategies or examples of best practices drawn from the experiences of other activists. There is little access to ideas and materials developed by activists in the global South for work in developing countries.
All of these factors make "reinvention of the wheel" a persistent problem. Activists develop self-taught expertise at great cost of time and energy better spent on other aspects of their work. Once they learn these valuable lessons, they do not have the opportunity to share their knowledge with others.
