New technologies and Human Rights - NGOs at the UN

Every year, the International Service for Human Rights, an international NGO based in Geneva and with consultative status in the UN organises a two-weeks training on how to use human rights mechanisms during the Human Rights Council.

This year the 15 participants came from countries such as Burundi, Togo, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Rwanda, Benin or Democratic Republic of Congo. All these organisations have in common the fact that they document human rights violations and advocate for change. Some of them already have websites such as Forum pour le renforcement de la société civile in Burundi or Voix des sans Voix in Democratic Republic of Congo and use Internet in their daily work. For others, these tools can seem difficult to access.

The objective of this session: explain how NGOs can use the new Information and Communication Technologies to improve their visibility, fundraise, communicate, find volunteers, etc. To explain this, the team of Fundación iWith.org organized an interactice session in collaboration with Arigatou International. This Foundation that has an office in Geneva is one of iWith.org beneficiairies. Last November, it launched a new campaign on ethics education that uses Internet tools. Arigatou shared its valuable experiene with the participants and why and how it decided to use Internet for this campaign.