Sex Worker Rights Advocates’ Community of Learning
Welcome! Here you can learn Advocacy Tactics used successfully by advocates for sex workers’ rights, get Documentation Tools you can use in your campaigns, and get to know Member Organizations active in the field to learn more about their victories and challenges in human rights advocacy projects.
This community is supported by the Open Society Public Health Program.
Why Document Human Rights Violations?
There are many reasons why people document human rights violations. In rare cases, documenting violations and exposing them to the public can on its own put an end to abusive practices. More often, however, documentation is only part of a larger effort to end abuses. In addition, it may take years and a combination of efforts to put a stop to an abuse altogether. Advocacy efforts based on the evidence gathered through documentation should therefore identify interim goals that are realistic to achieve and that contribute in a meaningful way to creating the conditions necessary to eventually put a stop to abuse.
It is therefore important for people who document violations to be clear about what specific changes they seek, and to be realistic about what they are capable of changing. The specific changes that result from documentation are referred to as outcomes. Outcomes should be designed to respond to particular problems that documentation seeks to solve and should be targeted at particular actors. Once these problems and outcomes are identified, the documentation process typically involves the following steps:
• Designing the documentation methodology
(this differs according to the advocacy and intended audience)
• Collecting data
• Data analysis and report-writing
• Targeted advocacy