Building Central Asian Human Rights Protection & Education through the Media

Project Duration Period: 2008 – 2011

Project Goal: This project directly supports human rights defenders in all five Central Asian states by helping them develop efficient media and public outreach strategies to improve awareness and support and ensure human rights norms are respected and observed upon a daily basis across the region. The project delivers sustainable partnerships between media outlets and practitioners and the community of human rights’ defenders.

Description of the Project

The Project includes three major components:

• Training component will enable participants to design effective media engagement strategies, initiate public debate on pressing concerns, and improve orientation in media reporting on human rights and journalism issues.
• Reporting component will enhance rights groups’ potential for engaging media as an instrument of change, as well as local media capacity for qualified human rights reporting, with outputs including news analysis and alert stories, special reports and features, published and disseminated in Russian as well as select national languages in diverse formats, online, RSS/email subscription and in print, through local partner media, and media-tools of participating rights NGOs – newsletters, bulletins, blogs and websites.
• Public dialogue component aimed at strengthening linkages among various groups engaged in project and increasing public outreach across Central Asia, will include a series of thematic roundtable/conference events, public lectures and presentations by leading human rights practitioners, researchers and media/civil society activists.

Expected Outcomes

• Human rights activists with human rights backgrounds and journalists/media activists take an active part in training and reporting events, significantly improving their ability to gather information, produce reports/stories, and raise public awareness of key human rights and related issues in the region. Local human rights NGOs and local media organizations benefit from project activities through strengthened capacity to report on and disseminate information/reports/stories on human rights, justice and rule of law, democratic governance, etc.;
• National and regional workshops, public roundtable discussions organized and held, focusing on key human rights and related issues;
• Investigative in-depth reports produced by journalists, in collaboration with NGOs, and published in English, Russian, as well as local languages, and disseminated for use by local and regional print, radio and electronic media. Partner news reports by participating media on human rights issues and defender activities.
• A quarterly newsletter produced and distributed in Russian, English, as well as local languages, including personal accounts, interviews, analyses of key human rights issues and actions taken by the project.