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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

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Issue 4, January 2003

News From AP Partners:

• AP launches program of IT training for Roma activists in seven East European countries
• AP advises Roma women activists on networking in Europe
• AP information specialist to spend six months working with the Afghan Women’s Network
• AP to support the advocacy of new Srebrenica NGO network. AP posts new illustrated campaign web page on civil society and Srebrenica
• Palestinian Territories, Georgia and Colombia are the focus for new research by AP into the use of IT by civil society in war. Focus on the Palestinian territories

News from The Advocacy Project:

• AP and Georgetown University sponsor events by human rights activists
• AP engages new Outreach Coordinator

News from AP Partners

Training of Roma eRiders Begins in Kosovo

The Advocacy Project has undertaken an ambitious program to train Roma community-based information technology specialists (‘eRiders’) who can service the information and IT needs of Roma activists in seven East European countries. The first training session took place in Kosovo in November 2002 under the direction of AP’s Technical Director Teresa Crawford.

The Roma Information Project (RIP) began with an initial six-month feasibility study in January 2002, with funding from the Information Program of the Open Society Institute (OSI). Two pilot projects were launched in this first phase. In Macedonia, eRider Enisa Eminova used email to connect an informal network of Roma women who were campaigning against sexual taboos. eRider Guyla Vamosi, in Hungary, worked with five Roma community centers.

Based on the feasibility study, OSI decided to expand the program. Seven Roma eRiders attended the November 2002 training session, together with another ten eRiders who are working on OSI funded projects in Eastern Europe and CIS countries. The training contained 16 separate training modules, and was conducted by Ms. Crawford, Tom Battin from CompassPoint Marek Tuszynski from OSI and Bill Lester from NinthBridge.

The training in Kosovo marked the first international training of Roma in the province since the ends of the 1999 war. Roma, Ashkaeli, and Egyptians are among the most vulnerable minorities in the predominantly Albanian-speaking population of Kosovo.

The benefits from the training are already being felt. As a first step, the seven Roma eRiders (who have all received laptops) all produced country strategies. Some have gone further and started to advise campaigns:

• eRider Guyla Vamosi, in Hungary, is training and advising Roma parents in the town of Pecs, who are trying to end the ‘hidden segregation’ which channels Roma children into the lowest levels and prevents them from applying to university. After failing repeatedly to reach local government officials, the parents used their new email connection to contact the Prime Minister and were rewarded with a reply. Guyla reports that this contact has given the parents confidence, and that they are now insisting on regular meetings with government ‘education advisers’ who will focus on the Roma education issue. Hungary is one of ten ‘accession’ countries, whose application to join the European Union could hinge on improving its treatment of the Roma.

• eRider Gabi Hrabanova, in the Czech Republic, has worked with the Ministry of Education to administer a program of grants for Roma NGOs working on education – and been rewarded with a flattering profile in her university newspaper. She is now working to develop a program of IT training and support for 84 Roma women activists based in five towns throughout the country. These young women are part of the Roma led women’s organization, Manushe.

• eRider Maria Metodieva, in Bulgaria, is advising five Roma women’s organizations. One is developing a series of new web pages on Roma women. She is seeking to identify Roma university students with IT skills, who could serve as community volunteers with local NGOs.

• For photos from the Kosovo training, and Roma portraits, see our photo archive.

AP Advises on Creation of a European Roma Women's Network

The Advocacy Project has been assisting European agencies to develop an informal network of Roma women activists who can lobby for an improvement in the social conditions of Roma women in East Europe.

Iain Guest (AP Coordinator) gave a presentation on networking at a 2-day meeting for Roma women in November, organised by the High Commissioner for National Minorities of the OSCE, the European Monitoring Center on Racism, and the Council of Europe. The meeting brought together women from 19 European countries, including five accession countries that have applied for membership of the European Union. The goal was to review the first draft of an OSCE paper on the health of Roma women, which is due to be discussed at a Ministerial meeting in March.

The OSCE report is expected to show that Roma women across Europe face many common obstacles to health. At the same time the November meeting dispelled many negative stereotypes about Roma, particularly Roma women. Several participants have launched highly effective campaigns, and even taken legal action against their governments.

AP Launches Program to Support Afghan Women Advocates

An experienced information consultant left on January 20 for a six-month mission to work with the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), a network of 25 women’s groups and 900 individuals that lobbies for women’s rights on both sides of the Afghan/Pakistan border.

The consultant, Mary Moore, worked for ten years on the Los Angeles Times, and recently graduated with a Master's in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government. She has been engaged The Advocacy Project and Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children to help AWN develop its information and advocacy.

The situation of Afghan women remains precarious in both countries. Pakistan is host to 1.8 million Afghan refugees, mostly women and children, who have become increasingly vulnerable as international agencies scale down their protection work in Pakistan. According to the Women’s Commission, their number has been swelled by a ‘reverse flow’ of Afghan families who are returning to Pakistan after failing to find housing or work in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan itself, women continue to confront tremendous social problems. Many families are reported to be so poor that they are selling their children. Women’s advocates are also struggling to maintain early gains in education and political representation, which are now being eroded.

All this underscores the importance of supporting women’s advocacy groups like AWN. Ms Moore’s first assignment will be to assist AWN post a new website and upgrade AWN’s newsletter. Starting next month, her reports will be disseminated by AP and the Women’s Commission and posted on both websites.

Funding for this project comes from the Central Eurasia Project of the Open Society Institute, and from East-West Management.

• Read about the growth of Afghan women’s organizations at the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children's website.
  

AP Launches Partnership With Srebrenica NGOs

The Advocacy Project has formed a partnership with a network of NGOs from the town of Srebrenica, Bosnia, where 7,000 Muslim males were murdered in the notorious 1995 massacre.

The goal of the project is to help the NGOs lobby for the town’s reconstruction and for the return of refugees. AP has told the story of  the NGO struggle in the newsletter On the Record, and in an illustrated website on Srebrenica.

Srebrenica was spurned by the international community until 2000, when small numbers of courageous former inhabitants acted on their own initiative to return to villages surrounding the town. Several hundred Bosniaks (Muslims) have since returned to the municipality, but reconstruction has been painstakingly slow. Those responsible for the 1995 massacre have yet to be punished.

The network of NGOs, known as the Forum, is growing steadily. AP’s field project manager Peter Lippman spent last fall helping them to design a comprehensive, year-long information program. AP has engaged the Tuzla-based Center for Information Technology to construct a website for the Forum, and to train Forum members in maintaining and updating the site.

AP is also preparing a program of support for the prominent women’s organization Bosfam, which is composed of women survivors of Srebrenica. Bosfam’s members make exquisite kilims (flat-weave rugs), knitted sweaters, and fashion wear.

However, Bosfam lacks marketing outlets. As part of its support, AP will help Bosfam research marketing techniques and contact possible buyers in Europe and North America. Meanwhile, a shipment of ten kilims is on its way to The Advocacy Project’s Washington DC office, to be exhibited in the United States.

AP has received an initial contribution of $20,000 from the Dutch Stichting Vluchtelung (Foundation for Refugees) for this project.

New AP Research Finds Innovation and Enthusiasm for Information Technology in the Palestinian Territories

AP has begun a year-long program of research into the use of information and communications technology (ICT) by peace groups in Colombia, Georgia and the Palestinian territories. The research has already found that ICT is widely used by Palestinian civil society to overcome the many physical constraints thrown up by the Israeli siege.

The goal of the research is to promote the use of ICT as a tool of
community peace-making and to encourage civil society to learn from the innovation of others. The research will make recommendations to donors about how to provide better support for ICTs in conflict.

The research is being carried out by Iain Guest, who visited the territories and Georgia in December, and Adam Isacson, who visited Colombia in November. The two missions were aimed at establishing a methodology and preparing for further research in the spring. A group of prominent ICT specialists has agreed to serve as an advisory board, under the coordination of AP’s Technical Director, Teresa Crawford.

Of the three regions visited, ICTs have been embraced with fervour and enthusiasm in the Palestinain territories. Part of this is due to the physical obstacles imposed on Palestinians by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which have cordoned off all of the main towns on the West Bank and respond ferociously against civilians following a terrorist attack.

Trapped in their homes, Palestinians have turned to email and the Internet to communicate with each other and with the outside world. This has produced scores of innovative websites and many innovative uses of ICT. In one pioneering example of distance learning, Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah, has created a web portal (‘ritaj’) that helps its 5,500 students participate in courses when they are prevented from attending university.

As the job market shrinks, educated young Palestinians increasingly see ICT as an outlet for their skills. The private technology sector in the territories also remains surprisingly innovative.

In fact, to the extent that the empowerment of Palestinian civil society contributes to peace, then IT is playing an indispensable role. This may explain why the Israeli army ransacked the offices of so many NGOs and stole hard drives from NGO computers during its incursion into Ramallah last April (Operation Defensive Shield).

Whether or not ICT can contribute to conventional peace initiatives is less clear. Palestinians are fiercely critical of ‘people to people’ initiatives, which seek to forge links between individual Israelis and Palestinians, because they imply an equality between the two sides and even offer an excuse to avoid addressing the deeper political obstacles to peace. Several of these cross-border initiatives exploit ICT, and will be examined in greater depth by the next round of research. Regular updates of the research will be posted on the AP site.

Funding for this research comes from the US Institute of Peace (Washington DC).

• On January 13, Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint confiscated a substantial number of documents from an AP partner, the Democracy and Workers Rights Centre, in Ramallah. The DWRC was one of eight Palestinian civic groups that were profiled by The Advocacy Project, in partnership with Grassroots International in 2001.

• The confiscated material included five DWRC reports on economic and social rights, and postcards depicting violations by the Israeli army. The material was to have been distributed at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, between January 23 and 28, 2003. It is publicly available on the DWRC website.

News from The Advocacy Project

Partnership with Georgetown University Offers Speaking Forum for Human Rights Advocates

AP joined up with the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University to sponsor six human rights events during the fall semester. The events covered: landlessness and poverty in Guatemala; trafficking of women in East Europe; the destabilising impact of human rights on the Irish peace process; the demolition of Palestinian homes; the rehabilitation of child soldiers in Sierra Leone; and the human rights record of the World Bank.

• Reports on the meetings are posted on the ISIM website.

New AP Outreach Coordinator Will Liaise With AP Partners

AP has recruited Ms. Kelly Kliebhan to serve as Outreach Coordinator at AP. Ms. Kliebhan’s job will be to keep in regular contact with AP’s partners, past and present, disseminate their information through the AP website and newsletter, and broaden their contacts by networking. Ms. Kliebhan is in the second year of a Master's program at Georgetown University, Washington DC, where she is studying for a degree in Communications, Culture and Technology. For more information, please contact Kelly.

Will Covey is joining The Advocacy Project as Executive Assistant. Mr. Covey is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. He has served as an intern at the International Energy Agency and has a special interest in expanding community participation in elections.

• Contact Will

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