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INTERNET RESOURCES

Human rights on the Internet: Sites that encourage activism

C&RL News, September 1999
Vol. 60, No. 8

by Elisa Mason

Today’s human rights violations are the causes of tomorrow’s conflicts.”1 Witness the crisis in Kosovo this year that displaced over 700,000 people or the two million-plus Rwandans forcibly uprooted in 1994.2 Since the drafting of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a complex system of conventions, mechanisms, and institutions has emerged to enhance the protection of individual human rights.

The Internet constitutes a fast-growing resource in this area, not only for promoting human rights, educating the public, and conducting research, but also for encouraging a new form of activism in the battle to improve human rights conditions in countries around the world—which ultimately contributes to greater international peace and security.

Starting points
Several introductions to the concept of human rights and guides to using the Internet for human rights work and research are highlighted below.

Concise Guide to Human Rights on the Internet. This site gives first-time researchers a sense of the kind of human rights resources available on the Internet. Access: http://www.derechos.org/human-rights/manual.htm.

Getting Online for Human Rights. This site outlines steps to take for advocates interested in using the Internet as a vehicle for promoting human rights. Access: http://shr.aaas.org/online/cover.htm.

Guide to Electronic Resources for International Law: Human Rights. This site highlights a number of useful resources on the Internet that can facilitate human rights research. Access: http://www.asil.org/resource/humrts1.htm.

Human Rights Today: A United Nations Priority. This site provides a helpful introduction to the concept of universal human rights, reviews the history that led to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and describes the principal United Nations (UN) bodies that deal with human rights issues. Access: http://www.un.org/rights/HRToday.

Web directories and meta sites
Derechos. This site features links to human rights Web sites organized by country and by type of resource, an online newsletter, mailing lists, and more. Access: http://www.derechos.org.

Directory of Human Rights Resources on the Internet. This site includes hundreds of entries for human rights sites on the Internet. Visitors can browse by name, topic or geographic location, or conduct searches. Access: http://shr.aaas.org/dhr.htm.

Internet Directory: A Database of Human Rights Web Sites. This site features a searchable database housing over 500 records. Each record includes the URL, keywords, an abstract, and contact information. Access: http://www.hri.ca/coldfusion/cfidir.

University of Minnesota Human Rights Library. One of the principal human rights sites on the Internet, this resource provides access to full-text human rights instruments, UN and U.S. documents, bibliographies, an extensive list of links to related sites, and a meta search engine for searching human rights sites. The library also links to other sites in the Diana project—an online reference database for human rights law research named for a dedicated human rights librarian. The sites are maintained respectively by Yale Law School (offers human rights litigation documents including briefs, conventions, and important cases); the Bora Laskin Law Library at the University of Toronto (posts women’s human rights resources); and the University of Cincinnati College of Law (currently undergoing renovation). Access: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts.

Organizations
The international human rights community is made up of UN bodies, regional intergovernmental agencies, and numerous nongovernmental organizations, many of which operate on a grassroots level and focus on very specific rights. This listing highlights organizations with an international or regional presence and more comprehensive human rights mandates. Others can be identified through the Web directories noted in the previous section.

International/regional
Council of Europe’s Human Rights Web. The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is the principal human rights treaty governing human rights matters in Europe. The European Court of Human Rights and the European Commission on Human Rights monitor the implementation of this and other European human rights conventions by member states. This site provides access to the Web pages of both bodies as well as the relevant human rights instruments. Also available is a searchable case law database. Access: http://www.dhdirhr.coe.fr.

International Labour Organization. This specialized UN agency is responsible for developing and promoting international labor standards, which serve as a benchmark for evaluating the rights and conditions of people in the workplace. Numerous databases are available on the site from which users can access documentation, standards, national labor law, and many other resources. Access: http://www.ilo.org.

Organization for African Unity. Although the information available is limited at this point, these pages post the Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the rules of procedure for the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and link to relevant African human rights resource instruments. For more information, visit the African Human Rights Resource Center at http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/africa/index.html. Access: http://www.oau-oua.org.

Organization of American States. This site provides access to the Web pages of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (select “Human Rights”). The commission’s site includes annual and country reports as well as the texts of relevant human rights conventions, such as the American Convention on Human Rights. The court’s site posts a limited number of judgments on human rights cases brought before it. For more information, see two nonofficial sites hosted by the University of Minnesota Human Rights Library: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/cases/commissn.htm and http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/iachr/iachr.html. Access: http://www.oas.org.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The UNHCHR promotes human rights, facilitates access to human rights documentation, and supports the work of the Commission on Human Rights, the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, and the six human rights treaty monitoring bodies. This site offers an extensive collection of UN human rights documents produced by these and other UN organs, as well as international human rights instruments, news, and other publications. Access: http://www.unhchr.ch.

UN International Criminal Court. Once established, the ICC will work to ensure that the perpetrators of crimes against humanity do not escape justice. This site includes information from the Conference on Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court (e.g., the program, speeches and statements, conference documents, etc.). Other tribunals that are currently operational are the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (http://www.un.org/icty) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (http://www.ictr.org). Access: http://www.un.org/icc.

Nongovernmental (NGOs)
Amnesty International. With a million members in 162 countries, Amnesty is a truly international organization. Its site provides a wealth of full-text reports that document the human rights situations in individual countries, describe Amnesty’s campaigns, survey human rights around the world, and much more. Links are also provided to the Web pages of Amnesty’s national sections. Access: http://www.amnesty.org.

Fédération Internationale des Ligues de Droits de l’Homme. The first international NGO to promote human rights, FIDH is made up of over 100 organizations in 86 countries. Its site is available in French, English, and Spanish and offers abstracts from its monthly La Lettre de la FIDH as well as selected country reports in full-text. Access: http://www.fidh.imaginet.fr.

Human Rights Internet. Based in Canada, HRI promotes information exchange within the human rights community. Its extensive site includes full-text articles from the Human Rights Tribune, a human rights Internet directory, conference information, UN documents, international treaties, and more. Access: http://www.hri.ca.

Human Rights Watch. Dedicated to promoting the human rights of people around the world, HRW posts news, information on its ongoing campaigns, and publications’ lists on its site. It recently began offering its annual world report and individual country reports in full-text. Access: http://www.hrw.org.

HURIDOCS. The Human Rights Information and Documentation System works to enhance the information-handling capabilities of organizations in the developing world. The site provides information on training courses in this area, articles from the HURIDOCS newsletter, and the texts of several important tools, including Standard Formats for the Recording and Exchange of Bibliographic Information Concerning Human Rights and HURIDOCS Standard Formats: A Tool for Documenting Human Rights Violations. Access: http://homepage.iprolink.ch/~huridocs.

International Committee of the Red Cross. ICRC is a unique, private organization that acts as the custodian of the Geneva conventions and works to protect and provide assistance to victims of international armed conflicts and internal violence. A wealth of resources resides on its site, including articles from the International Review of the Red Cross, a humanitarian law database with texts of relevant treaties, and information on ICRC’s country operations. Access: http://www.icrc.org.

International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights. Comprised of 39 national Helsinki Committees that work to protect human rights throughout Europe, North America and the Central Asian Republics, the Vienna-based IHF monitors compliance with the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Final Act. The site provides information on IHF’s projects, lists the individual committees and links to those with Web pages, and offers a number of full-text reports. Access: http://www.ihf-hr.org.

Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. LCHR focuses on “building the legal institutions and structures that will guarantee human rights in the long term.” Its site describes its activities, including its work on behalf of persecuted lawyers and judges, its program for refugees and asylum-seekers, and its promotion of the International Criminal Court. Selected publications are available in full-text, such as Human Rights Committee: A Guide for NGOs. Access: http://www.lchr.org.

Minority Rights Group International. MRG works to protect the rights of ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities. The organi-zation’s programs and activities are described on its site, and summaries of its publications and profiles are provided. Access: http://www.minorityrights.org.

Early warning
One of the goals of monitoring human rights conditions is to be able to predict when crises may erupt, and, acting on that knowledge, attempt to prevent them through appropriate international action. Several organizations that engage in or promote “early warning” activities are described below.

Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. The commission was established to identify new approaches for addressing intergroup violence. This site includes a series of online publications that discuss the causes of conflict and means for preventing it. Access: http://www.ccpdc.org.

FEWER: Forum for Early Warning and Early Response. The objective of this NGO partnership is to “develop a system of early warning and early response to help prevent, resolve or mitigate violent conflicts and civil wars.” To that end, FEWER has compiled a number of tools, including a thesaurus and an early warning manual. Both are available on the site with links to FEWER members, case studies, and other publications. Access: http://www.fewer.org.

Minorities at Risk Project. This project monitors politically active groups around the world. Profiles of these groups can be accessed by region or group type. Each profile gives a description of the group, a chronology of its activities, and a risk assessment. Access: http://www.bsos.umd.edu/cidcm/mar.

Annual surveys
These resources report annually on human rights violations worldwide.

Amnesty International, Annual Reports. Access: http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport/index.html.

Committee to Protect Journalists, Attacks on the Press in 1998. Access: http://www.cpj.org/attacks/attacks_index.html.

Freedom House, The Most Repressive Regimes of 1998. Access: http://freedomhouse.org/worst98.

Human Rights Internet, For the Record: The UN Human Rights System. Access: http://www.hri.ca/fortherecord.shtml.

Human Rights Watch, World Report 1999. Access: http://www.hrw.org/worldreport99.

Humanitarian Law Project/International Educational Development and Parliamentary Human Rights Group, Armed Conflict in the World Today: A Country by Country Review (1999). Access: http://www2.hri.ca/doccentre/armedconflict/armedconflict.shtml.

International Coalition for Religious Freedom, World Report. Access: http://www.religiousfreedom.com/wrpt/rptindex.htm. International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, Annual Reports. Access: http://www.ihf-hr.org/publicat.htm (scroll down for relevant titles).

U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Access: http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/hrp_reports_mainhp.html.

World Organisation Against Torture and Fédération Internationale des Ligues de Droits de l’Homme, Annual Report of the Observatory for Human Rights Defenders. Access: http://www.omct.org/obs/98report.html.

Lists
Human Rights Mailing Lists. Derechos coordinates several mailing lists to promote discussion, advocacy, and information exchange. This page also links to other available lists. Access: http://www.derechos.org/human-rights/lists.

Law Lists. This is a great resource even for nonlawyers. A search on “rights” yields over 100 references to discussion groups and lists that distribute news, information, tables of contents, action alerts, etc. Access: http://www-user.lib.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/law-lists.

Notes
1. Quoted on the homepage of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, http://www.unhchr.ch.

2. Statistics available from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, http://www.unhcr.ch.

About the author
Elisa Mason is an information specialist currently undertaking independent research projects in the field of refugee and forced migration studies, e-mail: elisamason@ibm.net.