[huridocs-tech] Resources presented at the European Coordination Committee for Human Rights Documentation (8-9 June 2006)

Dear friends and colleagues,

The 29th meeting of the European Coordination Committee for Human Rights
Documentation (ECCHRD) took place from 8 to 9 June, in London.

This annual meeting brings together information and documentation
specialists who work for human rights organizations based in Europe. The
primary objective is to keep each other informed about new projects, new
tools, and relevant new experiences gained during the year. The meeting
was attended by ca. 45 participants from various parts of Europe.

For more details please visit the ECCHRD website where the detailed
minutes will be put up in the next weeks:
http://www2.law.uu.nl/english/sim/library/ecchrd/ecchrd.html

The main highlights of the meeting:

Oxfam's experience with Plone

Plone is an open source (and therefore free) web content management
system, which makes it easier to update your website by automating most of
the technical aspects. Romilly Gregory, from Oxfam, presented a special
version of Plone which Oxfam has developed and is now using on its
websites. This will be useful for organizations that have to manage
multiple websites (for smaller organizations with only one website, she
recommends to start with the standard version of Plone). Oxfam plans to
make their version available to others. More information here:
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/ploneability
http://plone.org/

Human Rights Impact Resource Centre

John Lannon (University of Limerick) and Jan de Vries (Humanist Committee
on Human Rights) presented a new website which groups together the best
resources on measuring impact of human rights work. These resources are
organized around an eight-step process, with relevant tools given for each
step of the process: http://www.humanrightsimpact.org/hria-approach/

This very useful analytical methodology can be used not only for impact
assessment, but also for developing an effective strategy for your
interventions.

This website is very new and not all the content is online yet - they
expect to finish it by end July. So keep on visiting over the coming weeks
and you should find what you are looking for.

HuriSearch

The HURIDOCS team presented the new version of HuriSearch, which
incorporates some new features which make it an essential tool for human
rights researchers. HuriSearch has now indexed more than 3000 human rights
websites: http://www.hurisearch.org/

In the left column of the main page you will find options which allow you
to refine your search by homing in on information published in a specific
country, in a specific language, and by a specific organization. The
search results are listed in such a way that information from smaller
local organizations is very visible and often shows up near the top.
HuriSearch also automatically analyses the results and detects human
rights keywords, which you can then also use to refine your search even
more.

Statewatch

Ben Hayes presented Statewatch, a web-based service which monitors civil
liberties in the European Union and its member states, to make sure that
information on policy and decisions is made available to the public. Below
you will find the main Statewatch websites: http://www.statewatch.org/
http://www.statewatch.org/news/index.html
http://database.statewatch.org/search.asp

OSCE website on tolerance and non-discrimination

Hanne Stemann, who works for ODIHR's Tolerance and Non-Discrimination
programme, provided an update about the website they are working on. Among
other things, it will have country pages providing one-point access to
country initiatives (including best practices), legislation, national
specialized bodies, and statistics. It is expected to come online in
September 2006. Hanne and Piotr Stepien also demonstrated their new MySQL
contacts database, the design of which can be used by other organizations
if they find it useful. http://www.osce.org/odihr/16431.html

Next ECCHRD meeting

The next meeting of the ECCHRD will take place in spring/summer 2007. It
will be hosted by the Raoul Wallenberg Insitute of Human Rights and
Humanitarian Law in Lund, Sweden. The Secretariat for the meeting will
again be provided by will be held by Amnesty International for one more
year. So if you are interested in participating, or would already like to
make suggestions for the agenda, please contact Fiona Bolt and Iris
Reiss-Golumbeck by email at ECCHRD-Secretariat@amnesty.org

Best regards,

Fiona Bolt and Iris Reiss-Golumbeck (Amnesty International/ECCHRD
Secretariat) 
Daniel D'Esposito and Bert Verstappen (HURIDOCS)

 

 

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