In 1999, the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) worked with a group of beneficiaries of a nutritional social program, the Garden Program, to successfully prevent its elimination. In order to pressure the Argentine government to reinstate the needed money to ensure the survival of the program CELS made a presentation to the World Bank Inspection Panel requesting that the undisbursed tranches of a Structural Adjustment loan be withheld until the problem was solved. Less than a month after we made this presentation the Argentinean Government doubled the budget of the program allotting it an additional 4 million pesos.

Tactic Information

Intervention type: 

Intervention Tactics - Persuasion

Objective: 

Using the World Bank Inspection Panel to pressure the government to releace social program funds and strengthen human rights

Sector initiating tactic: 

Civil society

Sector intended to affect: 

Government

The Women's Institute for Leadership Development for Human Rights used the United Nations Convention to End Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to advocate for human rights at the local level.  Although CEDAW has not been ratified by the United States and thus cannot be invoked, WILD for Human Rights decided to apply it at the local level, in San Francisco, as a tool to combat issues such as discrimination and domestic violence.  They implemented CEDAW as a legislated municipal law with the exact wording of CEDAW; thus making it binding legally.  An open meeting was held where community members could publicly record personal testimony, statements, and pledges to uphold these rights.  The public meeting served to help connect the language to the community in a way that people would hold themselves to the standards expressed in CEDAW.  This local legislation presents a unique example of taking international human rights treaty terms and applying them at the local level to community issues.

The Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), a federation of 17 national Fair Trade initiatives, is an umbrella organization for the Fair Trade movement.  It sets criteria and standards for labeling and certification such as price minimums, pre-paid requirements and other guidelines.  In addition, it manages a registry of producers committed to Fair Trade principles that includes small farmers and cooperatives that sell products directly to manufacturers and distributors. The FLO manages the criteria for approval and coordinates monitoring activities.

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) uses their position as shareholders to file shareholder resolutions and to meet with top management to press corporations to adopt socially and environmentally responsible policies and practices, including the adoption of comprehensive, transparent, verifiable human rights policies based on international human rights standards.

Tactic Information

Intervention type: 

Intervention Tactics - Persuasion

Objective: 

Leveraging shareholder power to press corporations to adopt socially and environmentally responsible policies and practices

Sector initiating tactic: 

Civil society

Sector intended to affect: 

Business

The Netherlands-based Clean Clothes Campaign, a consortium of European trade unions and human rights and development organizations, drafted a code of conduct regarding labor rights specifically related to the garment industry that it is promoting to the business community.

Social Accountability International (SAI) has developed a set of voluntary corporate social responsibility standards called SA 8000.  SA 8000 includes a code of conduct for labor conditions, based on established international standards, and a verification system to ensure compliance.  In order for a company to receive SA 8000 certification, it must pass monitoring inspections by SAI-certified auditors.  The auditors closely monitor the companies before and after certification to ensure their capability to comply with the standards and to require their collaboration with local experts.  After certification, the auditors conduct a surveillance audit every six months and then a full audit every three years.  Accredited auditing bodies also undergo semi-annual surveillance by SAI.

The Independent Monitoring Group in El Salvador (IMGES) was able to organize independent local human rights groups to monitor working conditions and labor rights violations in one of The Gap’s maquiladora factories.  Members of IMGES include the Human Rights Institute of the University of Central America, Tutela Legal (Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of San Salvador), and the Labour Studies Centre (CENTRA).

Adapting the method used by US organizations on housing discrimination, the Legal Defense Bureau for National and Ethnic Minorities (NEKI) uses a method of testing to collect evidence when there is an allegation of discrimination in order to challenge it in court.   Once the Bureau receives a complaint of discrimination, testers are sent out to the alleged place of discrimination. Testing typically involves sending out a Roma and a non-Roma person with similar characteristics and qualifications, with the only major difference between the individuals is ethnicity. The testers record their experiences on assignment forms immediately after the test, offering details of their experiences. The test coordinator (either the organization or the attorney) can then evaluate whether or not differential treatment has taken place.   The results of these tests are then used as evidence in discrimination court cases.

Tactic Information

Intervention type: 

Intervention Tactics - Incentive

Objective: 

Testing for discrimination

Sector initiating tactic: 

Legal community

Sector intended to affect: 

Civil society

ICAR Foundation in Romania mobilized public resources for the victims of human rights violations in order to get the State to take full responsibility for its actions by acknowledging and treating former political prisoners justly and humanely. Over nearly a decade, ICAR succeeded in getting the State to use public resources to assist in providing first the physical premises for torture treatment centers, and then the right to free medicines and insurance coverage for the specialized care and services that torture survivors required.

Citizens' Watch in Russia builds collaborative relationships with influential bureaucrats within the Russian administration, taking government officials and bureaucrats out of the role of opponent and turning them into partners in advancing human rights. These relationships encourage the development of a democratic and participatory connection between the state and its citizens, one in which human rights are respected and the government functions to serve the people, rather than to rule over it.  Citizens' Watch encourages administration officials to become advocates for human rights by providing them opportunities to travel to seminars, conferences and meetings with international colleagues and providing them with the resources and support to make change within their departments.