Finding a more effective response to the human rights crisis in Africa

The Special Programme on Africa aims to contribute to

• The growth of human rights activism in Africa, with an emphasis on making human rights work in and for rural communities;
• Innovation of Amnesty’s strategies and methods as a means of increasing their effectiveness and making a meaningful contribution to promoting, protection, respect and fulfilment of human rights.

Objectives

1. Strengthening the capacity of national human rights organisations and a broad range of local organisations to engage in human rights activities at national and local community level in a limited number of countries.
2. Promoting the use of participatory theatre in raising awareness and mobilising people for human rights.
3. Enhancing the monitoring and documentation capacity of human rights organisations.
4. Building research and campaigning capacity regarding misuse and illicit transfers of military, security and police (MSP) equipment - specifically small arms - including raising awareness and mobilising people on the issue of community safety.
5. Enhancing the capacity of organisations to raise awareness about economic, social and cultural rights and to mobilise people to lobby authorities to meet their obligations and to report non-fulfilment of economic, social and cultural rights.
6. Exploring and developing new areas of work that emerge from Amnesty’s concerns in Africa and that need an adequate response from the organisation and its allies.

SPA’s main activities to achieve these objectives

• Developing and publishing user-friendly manuals and other materials;
• Developing and facilitating training programmes;
• Encouraging and advising on strategies for change.

Most of SPA’s work will concentrate on a small number of countries or regions in order to make a real impact through comprehensive medium-long term projects. However, limited work on other countries will be possible.

SPA's approach

SPA promotes the equal participation of women in all activities.

SPA’s approach is an innovative one. It is based on wide consultation and use of participatory methods for research, raising awareness, mobilisation and evaluation.

SPA works in close partnership with likeminded (human rights) organisations in Africa and with financial support from national and international donor organisations.

Present projects – some examples

Strengthening human rights activity in specific countries

Since 1999, SPA works in partnership with the National Human Rights Centre of Liberia (NHRCL) to raise awareness about human rights in rural communities and strengthen the human rights movement. The main activities are:

• Building networks of human rights volunteers in rural communities in order to:
  • raise human rights awareness
  • mobilise people to seek justice in situations where the formal justice is almost non-operational
  • provide for basic monitoring and reporting of human rights violations;
• Providing theatre and human rights training to local amateur theatre groups;
• Encouraging networking and collaboration of human rights organisations at a national level;
• Capacity building for human rights organisations, for instance strengthening their skills to document and report human rights violations.

SPA is planning similar long-term projects in other countries.

Raising awareness and mobilising people using participatory theatre

The majority of the people in Africa, especially in rural areas, have had little or no formal education, so many cannot read or write. Popular means like radio plays, storytelling and participatory theatre are therefore the best tools to raise awareness about human rights. Human rights activists should use these means to aim at social change and mobilising people for human rights.

For this purpose, SPA has produced a theatre guide presenting seven participatory theatre methods dealing with human rights topics relevant to communities in Africa. In the next few years SPA is planning a series of training workshops to introduce the methods and the approach presented in the guide.

Monitoring and documenting human rights violations

To improve the results of monitoring, documenting and reporting human rights violations, SPA with CODESRIA in Senegal has published Ukweli (Swahili word for “finding the truth”), a series of userfriendly handbooks on monitoring and documenting human rights violations by African human rights organisations and activists. Subsequently, SPA developed a training programme.

Some twenty human rights trainers from different parts of Africa participated in two trainingcourses for trainers (one in English, one in French). They provide monitoring and documenting training for human rights monitors, usually organised by a human rights Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) or a coalition of NGOs. Courses have been organised in several countries, such as Kenya, Somalia, Burundi, Rwanda, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Liberia.

Handbook

The handbook is a series of user-friendly guides for human rights activists in Africa to monitor and document human rights violations. It has been developed in close consultation with a group of experienced human rights monitors in Africa and experts of the International Secretariat of Amnesty International. Besides the main booklet Ukweli , six companion booklets to monitor specific violations have been published. We have also published a simplified version of this material: a handbook on monitoring and reporting human rights violations for community activists.
All materials can be downloaded on the downloads-page.

Trainings
Besides the handbooks, SPA offers a training programme on monitoring and documenting human rights violations in Africa.

Other areas of work

As part of the Ukweli series, SPA published a guide for monitoring and investigating military, security and police (MSP) equipment used in human rights violations. SPA is also planning to develop a training programme and material for MSP campaigning, with a focus on community safety.

Whereas the Ukweli series is mainly dealing with civil and political rights, SPA is planning to develop a similar user-friendly handbook series on economic, social and cultural rights and subsequently a training programme.

More about SPA

You can read more about the Special Programme on Africa in the Programme Outline.