HURIDOCS

HURIDOCS has been crucial in strengthening the capacities of Global Human Rights Defence in many aspects of our work. Their manuals and vocabularies on human rights documentation has guided us in the development of our frameworks and methods for fact-finding & documentation, and guided our local human rights observers in their work.

HURIDOCS provided us with their WinEvsys and OpenEvsys (online) databases, and we worked with them to localize these for use in Cambodia. We’ve trained trade unions, human rights NGOs and activists on using them. Working with HURIDOCS, we are revolutionizing the way human rights violations are monitored and documented in Cambodia, and instilling a collaborative approach to promoting and protecting human rights. Thank you HURIDOCS!

The training by HURIDOCS on OpenEvsys was instrumental in providing a practical platform for LRF to begin a process of managing its old and new information in a manner that is comprehensive, consistent and builds institutional sustainability. This training was delivered to both the staff and mutual partners of LRF who mainly consist of paralegals who are the core facilitators in information collection and collation. This training will build in the Research and Development Programme which is key in monitoring, reporting and e-learning for both programmatic and policy development proposals.

Very soon into the training at HURIDOCS in September this year, I was making a mental list of all the NGOs and colleagues I have here in India who could benefit from the HURIDOCS approach to human rights violations documentation. It’s so simple, yet it allows for so much detail and complexity to be included. Moreover, working with the database allowed me to see how it can be modified to suit the specific cultural and social context I am working in. I know of a number of groups in India working on human rights issues but each one has its own system of recording and organizing data, it would really be useful to have the kind of uniform and precise database that HURIDOCS has developed.

Sova has long installed the HURIDOCS document management system on its website, and we use this system to search documents. Now, with the participation HURIDOCS work has begun on the restructuring of our web site. As a result, it should soon become more functional for both readers and for ourselves.

For the past 8 months, the Reporting Unit of the Human Rights and Justice Division of the UN’s integrated mission to Burundi (BINUB) has drawn on the expertise of HURIDOCS in its efforts to prepare material and create the design needed for a human rights database. We woud like to express our appreciation for HURIDOCs expertise, ready generosity in sharing it – even during the proposal writing and fundraising phase – and in particular the suppleness of the solutions HURIDOCS is able to provide.