Defending Human Rights: A Resource Book for Human

advocacy through letters and meetings be more
effective
Who else is working on this issue - can we form
networks with other civil society organisations When
is the best time to do this The answers to these
questions provide the foundations of your campaign
strategy.
Campaigning can most often be characterised as
a conversation with society, persuading people to
take an unusual interest in supporting an action
that may not directly benefit them. Campaigning
aims to mobilise and motivate large numbers of
people and if used well is a good tool for creating
change. To begin any campaign there has to be
awareness building i.e. establishing and making
known that the problem exists. Secondly, there
is need to get the public and all those concerned
looking in the same direction and agreeing to what
the problem is, who suffers, who is to blame and
what possible solutions are there. Then, an appeal
or call for the general public, concerned civil society
organisations and all those concerned to join in has
to be made and this requires a commonly available
tool or mechanism before action is finally taken.
In the case of campaigning against human rights
violations, a human rights defender (HRD) first
needs to empower or ensure that the target group
(individuals or the general public) know their rights,
acknowledge that their rights have been violated
and that something has and most importantly can
be done about it.
When embarking on a campaign to stop human
rights violations, the HRD must know his/her
targeted audience and be able to ‘understand’
them. To achieve this, it is important to carry out
a “stakeholder analysis”. There are those already
‘converted’ i.e. people who already know about
the problem and want to see change. It is worth
investigating where partnerships with other groups
concerned by your topic and other networks can
be formed. Then, there exists a group of those very
difficult to reach with the information you want to
convey because they assume to know everything
on the subject matter in this case, human rights
violations. Legislators may fall in this category. Time
and energy should be spent to educate both these
groups on the facts and benefits of the campaign.
Campaign communication plan/tools
There are different tools of campaigning. It is
essential to learn how to use the right tool for the
job at hand based on the available information
and resources. One of these tools is letter writing:
letters are sent to a specific audience concerning
the violations and clearly spell out the problem and
what needs to be done to achieve change. They
are easy to write, personal and take advantage
of government bureaucracies (once delivered or
posted it directly gets to the addressee without
being told come back tomorrow) however, they
have limitations like high postage costs or low
literacy levels in some societies which can leave out
possible supporters.
Lobbying involves giving views and information to
decision-makers in order to influence them toward
the action you want. This often means contacting
officials who make laws and policies, communicating
desires and opinions, challenging the arguments of
opponents, and demonstrating wide support for an
issue.
Petitions are written formal messages submitted to
an authority requesting for an official statement or
action, along with a list of signatories to the request.
They are usually easy and cheap to organise, they
illustrate the level of public concern and are a simple
way of allowing people to express their support.
Media is often key for successful campaigning.
One of the first ways to let the media know about
you is to e-mail or send a press release telling
them about an event or action stating what is
going to happen and where. Give it an interesting
headline, be visual and create newsworthy events,
train people how to talk to the media and have a
campaign media spokesperson to avoid different
people giving different views which may hamper
the campaign. Another way of utilizing the media
is through speaking tours. These for example can
include a survivor of human rights violations or a
human rights defender giving an account of his/her
experience and challenges. Usually speaking tours
target a specified audience for example lawyers,
parliamentarians or campus students. This usually
attracts media attention which means that the
message will be spread to a wider audience. When
using this tool for campaigning, one has to consider
many factors such as which kind of audience is being
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