In 2008, the Museum of the Person Network and the network of the Center for Digital Storytelling joined together to create a celebration of life story work in the context of social justice.  The campaign declared May 16, 2008 the International Day for Sharing Life Stories, in part to honor the birthday of noted oral historian, Studs Terkel.  The campaign reached 20 countries and over 100 separate events were held. In 2009, the theme Journeys Toward Justice was chosen to reflect a specific focus on human rights and migration stories for this year's event.  We have chosen to create a twitter/cell phone based project that will begin on this day to collect and map twitter 140 character texts,  as well as image and video testimonials about people who have made a difference in their lives in their or their communities journey toward justice.  Our current website, ausculti.org, will be re-launched in mid-april based on the model of the current site of the Brazil Memory Network (see http://www.bmr.org.br), one of the projects of the Museum of the Person.  Our goal is that by expanding our grassroots campaign around life stories to include, we can expose more and more people to the importance of life story writing and media work in the cause of social justice.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the culmination of a 50-year movement to create the first permanent court established to prosecute perpetrators (no matter how powerful) of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.  But in its first cases the ICC urgently needs cooperation from the international community to fulfill its justice mandate as it confronts an entrenched culture of impunity.  Currently 108 countries are members of this treaty-based court, but powerful nations China, Russia and the U.S. have not ratified the treaty, known as the Rome Statute.  Ultimately all of us are the international community, and our project’s goal is to greatly expand a global citizens constituency to demand that our leaders support an effective international justice system, spearheaded by the ICC, with actions to support the Court’s arrest warrants, and pursue universal ratification of the Rome Statute.  

IJCentral, in tandem with documentary film “The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court”, will be at the core of a social network for global justice constituents, implementing a multi-platform citizen engagement strategy using geolocated mobile phone SMS text messages to generate a worldwide conversation about the rule of law and visualize the social network on the IJC Map. A joint survey conducted in Uganda (one of the ICC situation countries) by the Human Rights Center, the Payson Center for International Development, and the International Center for Transitional Justice shows that when people know more about the ICC, support for the ICC increases.

IJCentral has launched in beta stage, with Twitter adapted to the IJC Map as an initial entry platform to the global justice conversation.  We plan to expand the conversation by adding low entry barrier access such as an SMS short code and in-country mobile numbers using FrontlineSMS software with our local NGO partners around the world.  For example: after a screening of “The Reckoning” a high school class in Boston, using FrontlineSMS, could have a real time SMS Q&A with Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp leader Dennis Lemoyi in northern Uganda, one of the characters who appears in the film.  At this stage the site also includes resources such as the IJC Blog, aggregated IJC News, and the IJC Video gallery with ICC footage updated weekly, and links to all of our NGO partners and their Action alerts.  

A 3-year citizen engagement campaign will drive new constituents to IJCentral through screenings conducted around the world with our NGO partners and national/international television broadcasts of “The Reckoning”, and online delivery of the film and related media modules for activists and educators.  Our measures of success will be the creation of a broad global database of international justice constituents that can be reached for calls to action in support of the ICC’s justice mandate, and a vibrant international justice social network with low entry barrier SMS text messaging at its core, allowing for a truly inclusive global community that supports the rule of law in conflict resolution, and strengthens the mandate of the ICC for a world with justice, peace and security.   

Introduction
Kenya faces multiple challenges regarding human rights; insecurity and conflict like extrajudicial killings, competition for scarce land and other resources, negative ethnicity, poverty and corruption to name few. Through this project we will implement an up-to-date and comprehensive database on human rights (HR) violations, using the Ushahidi platform. Ushahidi means “testimony” in Swahili. It is an open source platform that ‘crowdsources’ crisis information; it allows anyone to submit crisis information through text messaging using mobile phones. Ushahidi won the ‘N2Y3 Challenge’ last year and implemented the tool for people who witnessed acts of violence in Kenya in the 2007 post-election period and has since seen various successful implementations.

Information access for all
The system is publicly accessible and will be promoted in mainstream, community and public media to be used as a resource. As messages come in via SMS from eyewitnesses, it can work an early alert system for some people through SMS alerts; the system will provide the following retrieval channels: SMS; a) Subscribers will be able to receive alerts of new human rights violations in their district through SMS messages; b) An on-request option will be available for any district, date and type of incident. Online: a) The Ushahidi Google Maps mash-up interface with a timeline; b) Online advanced search option.

How it works
The Kenyan public is informed on a central phone number to report human rights violations on through SMS text messages or by leaving a spoken message on a voicemail system. The reports must include the nature of the violation and circumstances, actors, date and time and exact location. In a call centre moderators process the incoming reports by reviewing, verifying, completing and finally confirming the reports. Verification of the reports will be conducted by the KNCHR through their members and networks of local journalist and informants. Confirmed reports are visualized on the map of Kenya through the Ushahidi platform implementation and any print articles, photos, video or references on internet are attached to the record.
 
The reporters
Next to the public at large we will select a limited number of human rights violations reporters from existing networks. The reporters will be chosen in strategic locations and positions, able to collect information they see or hear through non-mass media and with a high rate of accuracy. Reporters will be kept anonymous in the system for safety reasons. We aim for three reporters per district in Kenya. In this process we will ask the highly respected KNCHR to assist and advise on the selection and guidance of the reporters.
 
Comprehensive human rights violations database
In order to make a comprehensive human rights violations database in Kenya, news items captured from the major newspapers in Kenya will be added to the database. This means the database is made comprehensive with input from the traditional media as well as the records from mobile messages. To facilitate data retrieval (see below) the data stored in the database for each record will include description of incident, nature of the violation, actors, date occurred, date reported, exact location, district, reporter name, his/her location and phone number.

Reporting and follow-up
In partnership with KNCHR the project will report on violations on an on-going basis and aggregated data will be reported on a regular basis. Furthermore, KNCHR can follow-up on incidents or trends in violations in accordance with their mandate. The database will furthermore be a research tool for external reporting, trend analysis, and media analysis (e.g. mainstream reporting versus reporting by citizens).

The implementers
Presenters of this proposal are: (1) the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights;  the KNCHR is the country's leading agency and autonomous national institution established by an Act of Parliament, with the statutory mandate to protect and promote the human rights of all individuals living in Kenya (more information: www.knchr.org); (2) Media Focus on Africa Foundation is a Kenyan NGO which strengthens the capacity for democracy and human development within societies in Africa through exchange of information and facilitation of dialogue using the media. (more information: www.mediafocusonafrica.org). The partners will collaborate closely with the Ushahidi team (more information: www.ushahidi.com)

Truth and Reconciliation is an initiative of Social Tech which is aiming to form a national network of organizations and activists working towards integrating and strengthening social and human rights movement in Peru. We aim to do the following:

Mobile Advocacy:

- Promote and support efforts to achieve a more equitable national reconciliation based on access to mobile technology, peace culture and justice.

- Build awareness around human rights, peace and cultural diversity. Inspire young people to defend and support the Final Report published by The Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Mobile Technology:

- Minimizing the imbalance between the access to justice in urban and rural zones. Provide solutions based on mobile technology for interaction with government services and social organizations (Ombudsman's Office, Constitutional Court, Attorney General’s Office, Legal advice, Human Rights, NGOs).

- Provide a residential program on mobile technologies that enables local initiatives to scale their endeavors and achieve sustainability. Living and learning together, activists develop common conceptual skills and the sense of community that is essential for peer-to-peer collaboration.

Mobile Fundraising:

-Mobile fundraising is a new and effective way to raising funds for social initiatives. Being able to make donations conveniently and securely is essential for our donors and partners and cost can be reduced by using existing mobiles services. Donors will be able to make donations by sending a SMS message, mobile operator billing or mobile banking payment schemes to support our efforts and activities.

During the work on this project we would stay in close contact with the Ombudsman's Office, Human Rights National Coordinator and other local actors to ensure that requirements are met and adapting the design if necessary.

We propose to implement the project in the regions affected by human rights violations and violence. The target groups for the proposed project are school children, school teachers, university students, professionals, community leaders, local authorities and activists. Our initiative emphasizes participation of schools and universities. Integrating human rights and peace culture messages into the curriculum could be an effective approach to improving health of future generations.

The project will be conducted in three phases: (A) pilot phase in 3 regions (6 months) (B) scale-up phase in 8 regions (12 months) and (C) replication phase (12 months) in the rest of the country. Our group has developed strong links with grassroots organizations and communities leaders we worked together in previous projects and the feasibility study. To assure the commitment of the community, they are in charge of local implementation which allow us to systematize, evaluate and disseminate the experience gained. It would be essential to undertake the scale-up phase and integrate more beneficiaries

Technology alone will fail and our project provide support with a comprehensive approach and including: technical support, change management, training, coaching and cultural sensitivity.

We will implement scaling up strategies appropriate to the regional context, conduct a comparative analysis of the impact of such strategies and systematize the lessons learned in order to derive principles and methods applicable in other zones and wider groups.

Our studies showed that there is a potential to replicate our initiative it in other regions with a history of large scale conflicts: Central America, The Balkans, Africa and the Middle East.

The goal of Face the Change is to mobilize support to tackle climate change by highlighting its social impacts. By putting a human face on global warming, we aim to elevate the current debate on science and energy policy to one that includes key human rights issues of natural disasters and forced migration. The web-based platform will primarily use video and other multimedia to document the current and future impacts and facilitate a global dialogue with the intention of shaping policy. To reach communities without widespread access to the Internet, we will run a pilot project using cell phone Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) to raise awareness, rally and gather feedback from impoverished communities whose homes and livelihoods will be directly threatened by rising seas, drought and other climate change related effects. Cell phones are the windows to the world for many in developing countries, but their potential as a medium that informs under-represented people and allows them to participate in debates is far from realized.

Focus Bangladesh – a pilot study

For our pilot study, we intend to focus on Bangladesh, a country expected to be hard-hit by climate change but where public awareness is very low. We will work with local partners - non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community groups and communication companies - to carry out a market study with surveys and focus groups to determine perception and informational gaps. This study will guide the conceptualization and production of the voice, text and video messages to ensure that they are culturally relevant for targeted audiences and compatible with the mobile devices. The key to making such a campaign a success is to produce provocative, informative and motivating messages and to include outlets for interaction: the website, reply text automation for additional information, and requests for feedback. To disseminate to the appropriate market, we will engage NGO and community groups to deliver the messages to people on their contact lists as a first wave of recipients. If packaged correctly, the message will encourage the recipients to forward them onto their friends and relatives, who will then forward them to others in their contact lists, thus creating a ‘viral’ multiplier effect.

Power of the platform

For market delivery we will engage phone companies to track receipt and forwarding on their networks. The text feedback will be transferred to the Face the Change-Bangladesh website, which will be designed to offer a national discussion platform. It is our hope that greater awareness and discussion about the issue will empower the people of Bangladesh to pressure their leaders to include them in the decision-making process and enable them to be a part of a search for solutions. Bangladeshis have developed many ways to address climate variations over the centuries and these adaptations may be useful in coping with future changes. If successful, this campaign will go a long way to giving a voice to those sections of society that are too often ignored and the ability to have a say in their own future.

VoIP technologies such as Skype have reduced the cost of communication but they offer the additional benefit of being able to aggregate call data and voicemail into a central repository through specialized application programming interfaces(APIs). As such, this project will be a third-party application that routes messages sent to a local Skype number to a database, accessible to human rights organizations worldwide.

 By initially relying upon voice, this project can sidestep issues of technical capacity and/or literacy, allowing faster deployment and easier adoption. Callers would be able to use a familiar interface indistinguishable from most voicemail systems. Because Skype offers the ability to set up a local telephone number in Mexico, anyone with a cell phone would be able to call without incurring significant cost.

The goal would be to connect activists under threat with human rights organizations able to provide support through intervention or investigation. Voicemail sent to this database will automatically be tagged with date, time and receiving number(where available, and users should be given option to remain anonymous). Accessible by representatives of human rights groups, voicemail could be augmented with keywords, notes, location data and follow up information. Any of this additional information has the potential to be useful in an investigation or building a case to bring to authorities.

 A typical usage might proceed as follows:

• Activist has received threats in the past for her activities.
• Activist notices an unfamiliar vehicle parked across the street from her workplace. Inside are three men wearing uniforms who are watching her. One even smiles.
• She calls the local number for this system and leaves a message describing the men, the vehicle, the scene and requests that somebody calls her back.
• This message arrives in the database; subscribed users are alerted.
• A member of an international NGO working in the area listens to the message, tags it with license plate number, street name and other information within the message. She places a call back to the activist, advising her to proceed to their local office.
• A member of a different NGO is browsing the database and notices a match on the license plate, which had been reported a year before in a nearby town where an activist had disappeared. He suspects that the same people are involved and links them together.
• Six months later, a petition is filed with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In the petition, attorneys use these voicemails as evidence suggesting a widespread pattern of harassment, claiming also that government vehicles were involved in a number of cases.

Lack of action or complicity by local, regional or federal authorities makes cases of harassment and disappearance such as these a human rights issue, rather than simply a criminal or civil complaint. As a signatory to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights and the Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons - among other instruments - Mexico has legally binding treaty obligations to prevent the types of violations described above. Failure to prevent these types of violations constitute a breach of an individual's right to freely associate, communicate and live free from arbitrary detention or arrest. Further, as a breach of international law they present a liability for the Mexican state.

By providing the tools necesary to collect and disseminate evidence among interested parties, this tool will allow local activists, international human rights groups and state officials to harmonize their interests by intervening and investigating claims.

 This project is not meant to single out Mexico - which has made considerable strides in its protection of human rights in recent years - but to provide a test case and proof of concept which could later be replicated in other areas and for different populations. Because this project relies on lightweight and widely available mobile technologies such as voice it has the ability to scale easily to cover a variety of situations worldwide. Choosing to limit the project's initial scope will allow for rapid testing and quicker feedback by all users.

 Additional Notes For Future Versions:

• Harassment of activists often begins with phone calls or text message; future versions may allow such calls to be automatically routed to the database as a "honeypot" feature.
• While the scope of this project deals only with voice information, there is no reason why the system could not be adapted to handle images, video, text or GPS data.
• Given adequate locational data, alerts could be rebroadcast to individuals in the immediate area, who could "flashmob" the area and collect more information.
• As noted below, privacy issues will need to be addressed at every step of the program. Safety of callers is paramount and it is critical that this tool in no way jeopardizes that safety.

Amnesty Lifeline is a mobile action network making it possible for individuals to participate in urgent actions simply by sending a text message.

The purpose of the network is to mobilise people to act on human right offences happening worldwide. The set-up enables us to respond immediately in cases of crisis and measure the excact response rates on individual actions.

In Denmark we distribute a variety of urgent actions and campaign messages approx. once a week to the network. Right now there are approx. 12.000 participants in the network.

We also distribute good news and other relevant info. 

How does it work - Amnesty Lifeline step by step:
1. Amnesty decides to act on an urgent action or campaign.
2. Coordinator writes: web text, sms text and appeal letter
3. Web site is updated
4. Coordinator imports new participants (from web module and mails) to server
5. Sms message is sent from server and within 24 hours responses are retrieved from server.
6. Number of participants is highlighted in appeal letter and the letter is faxed or sent to responsible authorities by mail and/or post.
7. If applicable, good news on the case is sent to participants.

We hope to be able to mobilise 50.000 individuals for the network before 2010 and expect that this will increase the impact we have for human rights.

 In Nigeria, despite changes in the political situation from years of military rule to democratic rule, there are still huge problems in prison conditions, the general protection of human rights, liberty and system of administration of criminal justice. Criminal suspects and in most cases innocent ones, are arrested by the police, detained for days at the police station,  then charged to court and remanded in prison custody for years without trial  and without information about their detention  getting to lawyers or family members.  This is made possible in part as a result of the absence of quick  ways of accessing  information and news on  criminal suspects arrested by the police as well as the absence of quick legal aid services for indigent criminal suspectsMy proposed project is a legal aid intervention strategy which will employ the use of  mobile telephone text messages and calls by a network of  para legals to connect lawyers  to provide free legal services to indigent criminal defendants in their communities in Nigeria. The project teams will be provided with mobile telephone handsets and  will visit the police stations, courts and prisons on a daily basis.  While in those places their attention will be drawn to any criminal suspect brought to those places and information relating to his or her offence and circumstances of arrest will be taken from the suspect and immediately transmitted through telephone and SMS to legal aid lawyers working under the project, who would in turn quickly arrive to offer legal aid to the suspect. The project therefore aims at using digital media to put in place, a sustainable early legal aid strategy  that will improve  the way news and information about criminal defendants are transmitted to families and legal aid lawyers to prevent unlawful detention and long prison detention

What is your Project about?

Project will deal with exposing war crimes and other human rights violation for both entities in B&H equally by using SMS and e-mail communication. Primary, secondary and university students will receive SMS and email inviting them to join B&H Youth forums page and Facebook group dedicated to discussion of issues such as human rights, war crimes, peace, justice and social reconstruction in post conflict zones. Main problem solved with this project is communication between students from whole B&H without necessity to meet in one place and free from all types of prejudices, since these are their main problems in B&H. They will discuss and invite their friends to debate about these issues. This is the first time in B&H that students will have virtual formal discussion and practice “culture of written world”. At the beginning of project Facebook group will open for this use as well as special section on CCD’s webpage. Conclusions from both sites will be send to the authorities as simple document created by the youth with their comments and desires.

Who?

This project will be implemented by Centre of Cultivating Dialogue and at least one student from the school network. Schools are coming from different parts of B&H. Target population is youth in B&H and Facebook and e-mail as mass communication will reach not only large number of youth in B&H, but also in other countries and communities.

What?

Project is reasonable, achievable and not too complex for implementation. It will include activities for documenting mass violence and attitudes toward peace, justice and social reconstruction in post conflict zones including neighboring communities, that were on opposite sides during the war. Special attention will be given to inclusion of participants from rural areas to this project since these are remote areas without much possibility to use internet forums for stating their opinions. Also,  these areas are most influenced by current politics.This project needs very low cost and it is easy to implement. This is completely new idea and it is impossible to judge on interest from other IT companies to participate but it is sure that few other NGOs such as Youth Information Agency and Women To Women in B&H and also other Debating Centers in Region.

 When?

Complete project will last for 4 months, starting on date of money transfer to CCD. I month

Collecting phone numbers from schools for sending SMS invitations

Collecting e-mails from participants for sending invitations

Creating Facebook group

Creating forums at CCD web page

II month

Sending massage through SMS and e-mail

Starting communication

III month

Communication and debate between students and other youth

IV month

Summarizing results

Sending results in form of the letter to the relevant authorities

Where?

60 schools are from following cities in B&H: Banja Luka, Bihać, Bijeljina, Brčko, Breza, Čelić, Doboj Istok, Donji Vakuf, Foča, Fojnica, Gacko, Goražde, Gračanica, Gradiška, Ilijaš, Istočno Sarajevo, Jablanica, Kalesija, Kladanj, Konjic, Ljubuški, Lukavac, Mostar, Novi Grad, Pale, Prijedor, Prnjavor, Sapna, Sarajevo, Srbac, Srebrenik, Stolac, Teočak, Tuzla, Višegrad, Visoko, Zenica.

Why?

Human rights are defined as the basic human rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled. In B&H rights such as right to life and liberty were jeopardized for the long time and other rights such as freedom of expression, right to participate, right to education, right to work are still jeopardized in most of communities in B&H. These among other human rights will be advocated trough this project and trough use of SMS and e-mail massaging. Other even bigger problem is that country is completely divided and that students from one entity are taught that „other“ and „different“ are completely unacceptable and that they can not be good in any way.

What is the expected impact of Project?

Project has potential to make significant contribution in B&H in area of human rights. This is first try to make project like this in B&H and according to youth which proposed this idea is very possible to have huge success in B&H. Project will have success in including students form both Entities equally in discussion and without prejudices toward each other. The most important influence is establishment of “Culture of Written Word” that is neglected in B&H media, but also among youth.

Mettre sur pied un programme de défense des droits des citoyens opprimés de mon pays par l'usage des téléphones portables pour prendre des photos discrètes, faire des vidéos, recencer leurs témoignages puis les envoyer à des militants des droits de l'homme, à des décideurs, à la presse et à de simples citoyens pour susciter une réaction rapide.Créer un" arbre téléphonique" et organiser des conférences téléphoniques pour faire connaître les violations des droits de l'homme en Côte d'Ivoire après la guerre civile.