The Otpor! student movement in Serbia built a broad constituency of support by continuously innovating and combining tactics to ensure the safety of their volunteers and break down the fear of its people to speak out against the government. The content of the notebook focuses on “Plan B,” one tactic they used to do this. When Serb authorities began arresting demonstrators, Otpor!’s support base could have disintegrated due to fear.

The ICAR Foundation mobilized public resources for a socially marginalized group – victims of torture. The Foundation recognized that many citizens had suffered torture during the communist regime, and created an organization to provide treatment and care to the thousands of torture survivors.

The League of Human Rights Advocates in Slovakia (LHRA) helps to bridge the gap between the locus of abuse and policies, laws and treaties that have been created to prevent or stop a violation. Often the discussion of these abuses and the laws or policies to prevent them exists only in high-level political and diplomatic forums.

Citizens’ Watch, a Russian nongovernmental organization, uses a collaborative tactic to engage governmental officials, who in many cases are seen as the adversary and not considered as partners. Citizens’ Watch recognized the potential for engaging bureaucrats who illustrated a level of interest in significantly advancing human rights. The author describes the unique uses of this tactic and highlights examples of cross-sectoral cooperation between a nongovernmental organization and the Russian government to advance human rights. 

The Human Rights Centre at the University of Sarajevo used their resources efficiently to more effectively advance human rights work.  They built a strong information system and created a central role for an information specialist or librarian. The utilization of this information system and specialist allowed other staff to better, and more productively, focus on their core programmatic missions.

The Albanian Center for Human Rights (ACHR) successfully collaborated with the Albanian Ministry of Education to bring human rights education into all public schools in the country. They took advantage of the post-communist transition period, negotiating with the new democratic government officials to launch a long-term process in which they would prepare Albanian citizens to participate fully in a democracy.  They focused on teaching the next generation about human rights.

Nigdy Wiêcej (Never Again) uses a number of tactics to carry out its work in Poland. Two of the tactics explained in this case study are the use of cultural resources in the community to recruit activists and the organization of activists into an information-gathering network.

Government corruption in Turkey had been an open secret. Yet, the public felt apathetic about their ability to change the situation. The Campaign of Darkness for Light gave people an easy and no-risk action everyone could take – simply turning off their lights at the same time each evening – and thus show their displeasure with the system. Such a simple action – a flick of the switch – and yet when people saw that their neighbors had turned off their lights, too, they felt the power of their collective voices.  30 million people turned off and on their lights to demand that the government act against corruption, soon they began to invent their own ways to speak out by gathering on the streets, marching and banging pots and pans.

The Southeast Asian Council for Food Security and Fair Trade (SEACON), based in Malaysia, utilized a participatory research process in Southeast Asia not only to document and understand how free trade was affecting small scale food producers in Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Burma, Cambodia and Laos but also as an effective means to inform and engage producers themselves in the process and issue. Finally, the participatory research process provided informed and concrete evidence to back their policy advocacy on trade policies in the ASEAN region.

Forum Asia worked with the Royal Thai Police to promote community-oriented and human rights friendly policing in Thailand and other countries in Asia. They utilized the introduction of a unique, computer based police training education program to engage and enlist the support of key leadership of the Royal Thai Police to champion the training tool. The computer-based police training program was a valuable tactic within their strategy serving to build mutual trust, acknowledgement and support while also helping police to more effectively address their immediate day-to-day policing challenges making the police better aware of human rights as well as more professional.