A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

The Advocacy Project's Website is Now Open for Visitors, January 11, 2001

January 11, 2001, Washington DC and Geneva (Switzerland): The Advocacy Project announces the opening today of its new website, aimed at supporting advocates who are working on the frontlines for peace and human rights.

The site has been designed by AeroNet Communications under the supervision of Teresa Crawford, technical director of The Advocacy Project.

The Advocacy Project (AP) is a virtual organization that was created in June of 1998 to provide email coverage of the Rome conference on the creation of an international criminal court. Since then it has evolved into a more general effort to help advocates get their message out and to lobby on their behalf with donors. As the website notes: ‘advocates are an excellent investment - they make a huge impact on tiny budgets.’

AP has worked with eleven major grassroots campaigns since 1998. Three are profiled on the new website:

• The coalition of activists who have come together in Nigeria to stop the trafficking of Nigerian women to Europe;
• The campaign by the Guatemalan Indigenous community of Rio Negro to claim compensation for massacres that destroyed the community in 1982;
• The struggle by civil society in Kosovo to make its voice heard during Serbian repression, war, and the 1999 invasion by humanitarian aid agencies.

Among its features, the website carries back issues of AP's email newsletter 'On the Record,' which is distributed free of charge to thousands of subscribers. Thirteen volumes have been produced since 1998. Visitors will also find a photo archive and background material linked to the individual campaigns.

As part of its goal of helping advocates, AP has started to branch out into technical and other forms of support. Last year, AP put together an ‘advocacy package’ for the Women's Consortium of Nigeria (WOCON). The AP technical director has also worked with the US Institute of Peace to link community leaders in Kosovo up to the Internet. More details about the services on offer are available on the new site.

AP only works at the express invitation of advocates, and in partnership with nongovernmental organizations. It has received funding from a variety of foundations, NGOs and governments.

AP is currently reviewing over twenty projects for 2001, which have been suggested by partners. These include invitations to cover the proceedings of the special session of the UN General Assembly on children; to profile the work of Palestinian groups that are responding to the current violence; and to support indigenous communities in Ecuador that have been affected by oil exploration.

For more information, visit the website or contact us.