Global Human Rights Week (15th – 20st October 2018)

The  Global  Human Rights  Week (GHRW) is a global networking event held in the framework of the Raising Peace Campaign and supported financially by the Council of Europe and the European Youth Foundation. This year edition started on Monday, 15 October, and ended on Saturday, 20 October.

The main objective of the event is to provide visibility to Human Rights worldwide and to the initiatives implemented by the IVS movement in the promotion of Peace. Furthermore, the GHRW intends to involve like-minded organisations, institutions, foundations, groups, communities and citizens who advocate Human Rights. Through the production and dissemination of visual contents on social media and the organisation of awareness-raising actions, the GHRW aims to reach a large number of viewers worldwide, providing them with information, resources, example and inspirations on how to address global and local issues related to Human Rights. The hashtag #OurRightsOurVoices expresses the aim of the GHRW and the RP Campaign: multiply our voice to promote Human Rights and Peace, and provide our contribution through concrete, peaceful and inspiring deeds.

The GHRW 2018 benefited from the best practices collected in the past editions, which were combined with innovative elements. Like in the past years, each day of the event was focused on a different topic but unlike the previous editions, the posting procedure was coordinated by a “leading network”, under the general supervision of the CCIVS office and the GHRW coordinator, as illustrated in the table below:

Coordination work started in August 2018, when networks and topics were appointed. Each network started producing and collecting the contributions, which were edited by a team of graphic designers (from CCIVS and Alliance). The final contents were uploaded online, to be scheduled for posting on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by the appointed network (and shared by the other network). Around 20 people (staff members, volunteers, network representatives) were included in the coordination.
During the days of the GHRW, the networks posted a considerable amount of material, but the day of 19th October was particularly reached with contents from different continents. The posts included diverse format: an opening post written by the network representatives, additional posts by members or activists, visual cards, volunteer testimonial, link to online articles, information on related projects and thematic working group, cartoons, links to campaigns.

Regarding the results and the statistical data, the evaluation process that will take place in November and December 2018 will provide more data on the reach and the impact of this year GHRW. However, according to estimations and to the feedback of the network involved, it is possible to confirm that the GHRW produced positive results:

the networks and activists involved had a chance to improve their communication skills and to learn how to use new tools;
the quantity and quality of the contents was high;
the GHRW hosted contributions from new IVS members who were not familiar with the event;
besides contents from the CCIVS network, the GHRW received and published also articles from UNESCO and posts on projects and campaigns (USA, Afghanistan, Brazil);
the fact that many networks worldwide worked for a common task consolidated the CCIVS network.

Being decentralised, this year working procedure required coordination and proved to be sometimes challenging, considering also the high amount of contents produced. The efforts of this year will be useful to improve even more some elements in the next edition, such as the implementation of more GHRW actions during the week; the streamline of the dissemination process in order to define the targets to reach with more precision; and the involvement of more networks, in order to expand the global dimension of the event.

Click here to visit the GHRW webpage!