Speak Up, Speak Out: A Toolkit for Reporting on Human Rights Issues

"When rights are violated, media can play a vital role in putting a stop to the abuses. Whatever the platform, media raise awareness about violations, inform people about their rights and encourage discussions about the role of governments, legal codes, and international mechanisms to safeguard those rights."

This toolkit from Internews is both a human rights reference guide and a workbook for journalists and civic activists - especially those working in situations of war or conflict, or in post-conflict areas where human rights violations continue to occur - who want to improve their ability to report on human rights issues in a fair, accurate, and sensitive way.

It grew out of the Internews Global Human Rights Program, which aims to provide journalists in developing countries with the skills, knowledge, and tools to report responsibly on human rights issues and generate innovative coverage of these topics. Through this programme, professional journalists and citizen reporters in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Kenya, South Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic, Zimbabwe, and Egypt participated in two- to three-week-long training courses where they learned journalistic, thematic, technical, and online skills necessary for their work in communicating with citizens in these countries (and many others where Internews works) about human rights abuses.

This toolkit follows Internews' training methodology, which is hands-on, practical and links content knowledge to journalism skills and technical tools in a specific environment. At the end of each training, trainees produce media for the platform of their choice - a print piece, a radio programme, a documentary, an online multimedia piece, etc. "To be effective, the information and exercises should be contextualized with up-to-date examples appropriate to the local context."

The toolkit's primary audience are journalists who have some experience working with human rights and media, and who want to improve their information-gathering and reporting skills. They may use it in formal trainings or download it and work through it independently. The toolkit is both a human rights reference guide and a workbook. It draws on a variety of research, training, and experience - especially that of the United Nations (UN) and the International Centre for War and Peace Reporting. (For a list of useful resources and references, please refer to page 163). During training sessions, trainees may build lists of contacts, find new resources, develop story ideas, and draft outlines.

Specifically, the toolkit includes:

• Section 1: Human rights knowledge - Introduces human rights, the UN System, and the international justice system.
• Section 2: Journalism understandings, skills, and tools needed to tackle human rights issues.
• Section 3: Guide for practical application - A step-by-step guide to producing a good human rights story.
• Section 4: Appendices - Summaries of the 9 main human rights conventions as well as lists of countries that have not signed them, a calendar of days devoted to human rights issues that can be used as news hooks, and a variety of useful resources for human rights reporters.