Using social media to promote human rights
“I had no words to add, I just sat down for some minutes. I felt she wanted to spare me from listening, listening to horrors that many others preferred untold,” wrote Rosebell Kagumire on her blog.
Rosebell, a human rights activist and multimedia journalist, wrote about her encounter with a woman at a medical center in northern Uganda. “I should not be telling you this,” said the woman as she was recounting the story of her abduction and the years of sexual violations she suffered during the civil war.
Rosebell's blog features commentaries and stories on political issues with a focus on women's rights in Uganda and the region. Her blog is very popular among young people who are looking for an independent analysis of events not usually found in traditional media.
Promoting human rights through social media, mobile communication and digital networks is not only Rosebell’s objective but the goal of six other writers, bloggers and journalists, all human rights defenders in their countries, who have been nominated Internet Freedom Fellows by the U.S. Department of State.
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/InternetFreedom.aspx
Can social media help protect human rights?
As the use of social media becomes increasingly mainstream, it is changing the character of rights advocacy and communication around the world, with rights defenders and organizations continuing to refine their online presence and expand their ability to reach a global audience.
The Human Rights Commission of Australia has embraced social media: They are active on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and blogs. Citizens can register complaints online to the Human Rights Commission of New Zealand. The Equality and Human Rights Commission in Britain is also onboard with social media. The South African Human Rights Commission established an e-learning portal, partnering with educational institutions to promote human rights education. Most mainstream human rights advocates and campaigners use social media as an integral part of their outreach. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Witness are among the internationally recognized advocacy and research organizations now using Twitter to share information and calls to action. Amnesty International has said that social media is key as it explores the future of human rights activism.
Modern forms of communication and new media have made the world smaller. The Arab spring is perhaps the best example of using social media to spread messages of human rights and dignity.
The Social Network for Justice and Human Rights
The Social Network for Justice and Human Rights (Rede Social de Justiça e Defesa dos Direitos Humanos or, Rede Social) is a human rights organization that supports the work of social movements in Brazil through legal assistance, trainings, reporting and media campaigns on abuses of human rights.
Rede Social provides training and legal assistance to members of social movements and promotes communication and networking activities at the national and international level. Rede Social works with a variety of civil society organizations, including the Landless Workers Movement (MST), Pastoral Land Commission, Movement of People Displace by Dams, The Movement of Quilombolas (rural communities of African descendants) and the Organization of Popular Movements to combat against human rights violations such as asassinations, pre-emptive arrests, wrongful incarcerations, and death threats and other forms of intimidation toward leaders and members of social movements.
Rede prepares and submits human rights cases and petitions nationally and internationally; trains community members as human rights monitors and researchers; conducts popular research; and produces educational materials, books, and reports; and coordinates the organizations within the network. Rede Social also produces an Annual Report of the Human Rights in Brazil, with the goal of pressing, informing the public, fighting against impunity in the rural areas.
How Social Media is Transforming Human Rights Monitoring
Social media is increasingly helpful to not only monitor emerging human rights emergencies, but also to uncover incorrect information. A recent example is when Twitter helped me to spot incorrect contextual information on a newly uploaded execution video from Syria. This is just one instance in which crowdsourced expertise from social media can open up new opportunities for human rights organizations. Having that said, the challenges and pitfalls are numerous. I thought about these issues a lot while preparing for a Truthloader debate last week on how citizen journalism is changing the world. Current case in point is the upcoming elections in Kenya, which are probably the best (citizen) monitored elections in history
SOCIAL MEDIA AND HUMAN RIGHTS
The Internet and social media have become increasingly important in political activity. Blogging, video-sharing and tweeting were crucial in the political events in North Africa and the Middle East in 2011. They are important to human rights defenders everywhere. But the use of these new technologies to assert old freedoms has been met with repression by some governments.
A recent study of 37 countries by Freedom House cites increasing website blocking and filtering, content manipulation, attacks on and imprisonment of bloggers, punishment of ordinary users, cyber attacks and coercion of website owners to remove content, in attempts by authoritarian states to reduce political opposition. It suggests that Internet restrictions around the globe are partly a response to the exploding popularity, and significant role in political and social activism, of sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Governments consistently or temporarily closed down such sites in 12 of the countries studied, including Egypt and Tunisia where democracy advocates relied heavily on Facebook to mobilise supporters and organise mass rallies.
sources:
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/middle-east/twitter-to-the-rescue-how-social-media-is-transforming-human-rights-monitoring/
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