New Tactics in Human Rights

The goal of the project is to help human rights practitioners be more effective in advancing human rights. The organisers believe that by connecting innovative practitioners and sharing new approaches and skills involved in tactical thinking, the human rights community will have greater tactical flexibility and ultimately be more effective in human rights work. The project has been developed to support the work of human rights practitioners such as members of women's groups, peace and solidarity organisations and environmental groups, as well as business leaders and government officials.

The New Tactics in Human Rights project works to share information and build networks in three ways:

1. Tools for Action - aim to provide practical "tools" for use be human rights practitioners, including the New Tactics Workbook, a searchable tactical database, tactical notebooks written by people actively engaged with human rights issues, and an online discussion forum.
2. Training in Practice - brings small groups of people together to cross-train each other in the use and implementation of successful tactics, with the idea that workshop participants will form the basis for an ever-widening community of tactically trained human rights practitioners. In 2004, a World Symposium provided people from around the world an opportunity to network and share tactics.
3. Tactical Mapping - is a strategic planning tool that helps identify potential points of intervention in countries and regions with human rights issues. Once points of intervention have been identified, appropriate strategies and tactics can be applied to protect human rights.

Rights.

According to the project website, a tactic is a specific action taken to try to address a situation as it relates to a specific plan (strategy). Tactics consist of how to make a change, while strategy is deciding what change to make. While great advances have been made in human rights advocacy over the past 50 years, human rights abuses remain widespread and persistent. From a tactical perspective, the international human rights community has largely responded in two ways: setting human rights standards (conventions and treaties) and monitoring standards for compliance.

Such tactics have set the stage for global human rights advocacy. But as understanding of human rights issues deepen, so does the need to rethink strategy. Human rights abuses tend to occur in highly complex contexts, which in turn require thoughtful, complex solutions. Having knowledge of a range of tactics and thinking strategically - and choosing the most appropriate tactics to fit within a strategy - is the challenge that the project hopes to support.