The Turkish Police Academy uses videotaped prosecution of policemen for human rights violations to teach police academy candidates about the consequences of violating human rights. This tactic was used as part of a larger strategy in police academy human rights education for police candidates to incorporate the understanding, value and use of investigation and interrogation procedures that do not violate the human rights of the accused and prevent abuse of power.

The Guatemalan Anthropological Team (EAFG) coordinates its efforts to exhume the victims of genocide and investigate their deaths with the local Indigenous populations. This helps the families and communities of the victims to confront the tragedies and their own grief while learning what happened to their loved ones.

HIV/AIDS is a devastating disease that affects populations all over the world, particularly the young and productive industrial workforce in India. The cost associated with treating the disease is beyond the means of most persons living with HIV/AIDS. Tata Iron & Steel Company Ltd (TISCO), recognizing that the most inexpensive and cost-effective approach to battling the spread of HIV/AIDS is through education and prevention, developed a Corporate Sector Model to prevent the disease.

Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI) uses an informal educational model that allows Muslim women to easily identify universal human rights concepts in terms of local cultural traditions, myths, texts and local languages. This model facilitates the transmission of the human rights concepts inscribed in major international documents to grassroots populations in Muslim societies.

The Civic Democratic Initiatives Support Foundation (CDF) in Yemen created local level “shadow committees,” parallel structures to official policy-making bodies, to promote issues related to women’s rights and women’s participation in development. The capacity building process not only enhanced the ability of local women to advance their issues in their local public political sphere but also resulted in local level NGOs promoting women’s rights.

CDF carried out a number of steps to develop the local level shadow committees:

In Sweden, the Discrimination Ombudsman (DO) is a political institutional body that was created to allow citizens to assert their right to be protected against discrimination and to provide both advice and litigation power. The DO is one of four Ombudsman offices that are used to strengthen political and social protections for those victimized by discrimination.

The Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) has developed the Human Rights Compliance Assessment (HRCA), a tool that comprises a concrete and tangible list of factors which businesses should consider when assessing the impact of their operations on the people affected by it, whether as employees or as inhabitants of the local area. The aim of the HRCA is to provide companies with a tool to audit their practices, to identify areas where violations are likely so that these areas can be monitored, and to facilitate action to mitigate existing breaches and prevent future ones.

For more information on this tactic, read our in-depth case study.

Human rights groups can now use internet technology in order to help collect, organise, safeguard and disseminate information about human rights violations. The Martus Human Rights Bulletin System is a database tool that addresses the specific technological needs of the human rights community by dramatically improving their ability to manage information, document abuses and prevent the information from being confiscated or destroyed.

Florida Rural Legal Services collaborates with local library systems in four rural counties to create a convenient delivery system for legal aid and community information to low-income people. A combination of video cameras, scanners, printers and Internet connections enable an individual to consult with a legal advocate as easily as if the visit were in the lawyer’s office. The equipment can be controlled remotely by the attorney or paralegal, so the individual does not need to understand the technology. Documents can be exchanged, so both parties are viewing the same information.

At the beginning of 2005, Enfants & Developpement (E&D) in Cambodia set up a Participatory Child Protection Project with communal councils covering 126 villages. The project piloted a new initiative to intervene in child abuse and combat child trafficking issues through the establishment of Child Boards at the district level. At the time of this writing, it was too early to assess the impacts of the project, however, a high degree of success towards the goal of protecting children from being abused was anticipated due to variety of reasons. These include: