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>View discussions about this entry Country: United Kingdom
Organization: Kurdish Human Rights Project
Focus of activity - Advocacy
Year the initative began (yyyy) - 1994
Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions
Description of initiative - What is the main focus (products, services, etc.) of your initiative and how does it contribute to ending corruption? What avenues of corruption are you primarily addressing? What activities does it involve for your organization? Who are your primary beneficiaries and target groups? The Initiative was developed in response to the growing need for an independent, non-governmental human rights organisation focusing on the rights of all persons in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and elsewhere, irrespective of race, religion, sex, political persuasion or other belief or opinion. It works towards promoting accountability and guaranteeing the rule of law by assisting in bringing perpetrators to justice through human rights advocacy and training. By strategically submitting test cases to international judicial bodies, including the European Court of Human Rights and relevant UN mechanisms, our work forces transparency from governments and corporations, and enhances the rule of law. The methods and tactics applied have been developed through numerous fact-finding and trial observation missions, research and litigation. The Initiative monitors the human rights situation in the Kurdish regions, forms bonds with regional organisations and presses for the creation of a wider democratic platform for discussion. It believes in a rights-based approach to development, wherein human rights and poverty reduction programmes are intrinsically linked in order to deliver equitable and sustainable change. In this regard, the Initiative as demonstrated through its integral involvement in the Ilisu Dam and Baku-Ceyhan (BTC) campaigns, works to promote transparency and accountability in development practise. Finally, our consistent presence in the regions for trainings enable human rights defenders and lawyers to effect change themselves and not just rely on international intervention. Our primary beneficiaries/ target groups are the victims/ survivors of human rights violations in the Kurdish regions, and in-country human rights defenders/ organisations advocating on their behalf, often themselves the targets of abuse.
Innovation - How does your approach differ from existing programs in the field? Which components of your initiative are particularly novel or unique (e.g. the products and services, the technology used, the delivery or financing mechanism)? Because of our unique commitment to working across the Kurdish regions on human rights within the established international framework - without political ambition or affiliation - the Initiative has developed into one of only a few independent non-political organisations dedicated to human rights within the Kurdish regions. Careful not to duplicate the work of other organisations, national or international,, we activate long-term strategies designed to facilitate human rights advancement within the Kurdish regions, whilst achieving tangible redress for past violations. We regularly follow up through fact-finding and trial observation missions, and these continuous missions remind beneficiaries as well as officials and armed groups that there is a spotlight on their activity, forcing a certain level of acountability over the long term. Our work includes advocacy for improved access to rights under the most relevant international legal standards, for example access to land and water. Through engagement we maintain pressure on the leaders of national governments, international financial institutions, the EU and the private sector to advocate for the prior consent of locals before moving ahead with any development projects affecting local populations right to access to land and water. Our engagement with the Ilisu Dam and BTC-Pipeline campaigns has helped to promote sustainable development practise and institute structures for consultation and complaint. As demonstrated by the case brought against the European Commission [Korkmaz v Commission (T-2/04)], through international litigation we have sought to place, not only regional but also international responsibility for the violations committed in connection with the planning of these projects, for example the violation of 135 World Bank policies.
Delivery Model - How does your initiative reach its target populations? What communications mechanism(s) do you have in place? How do you measure their impact? We have a commitment to transfer knowledge to the region to effect permanent change. The target population is reached through a variety of methods and programmes including field missions, legal assistance and cross-regional strategies training for domestic human rights lawyers and advocates. Through fact-finding and trial observation missions the Initiative maintains grassroots links with survivors of human rights abuses and regional partner organisations involved in the fight for human rights on the ground. Field missions provide a channel of communication between the Initiative and individuals and groups in the Kurdish regions; through field missions we will be made aware of cases of human rights violations from a combination of sources, including accounts from survivors of human rights abuse, their families and their advocates, and from discussions and referrals from our partner organisations. Our field missions enable people in the Kurdish regions to communicate their stories and concerns to an independent human rights organisation, just as these accounts help measure the impact of our involvement in the regions. We employ a wide range of tools in sharing information, building capacity and raising public awareness of human rights abuses and consequently in adding pressure on governments to reform. Recently, the Initiative has opened a regional office in Diyarbakir, Turkey, and many of our publications are translated into languages other than English, including Kurdish and Turkish, in order to reach the regional populations. With the opening of the new regional office in Diyarbakir we strive to increase our local translations for more appropriate local circulation. The Initiative operates an international Fellowship programme which allows for exceptional candidates from the regions to work at our headquarters in London for the duration of six months. This programme facilitates our contact with people on the ground and allows for greater mutual collaboration.
Key Operational Partnerships - What key partnerships have you established to make your model possible or more efficient? Who are your partners (business, social, government, other) and what are their roles? How central are these partnerships for your initiative. As an Initiative responding to needs, all activities are devised in collaboration with related organisations and advocates at the local, regional, national and international levels. The Initiative has formed working partnerships with a number of locally based and international human rights organisations and enjoys regular collaboration and effective information sharing with a network of diverse NGOs, governments and human rights groups, in the regions and internationally. We retain legitimacy by trying to identifying the political and non political affiliations of partner organisations, while maintaining overall responsibility for project implementation and by not engaging in any formal financial relationship with them. We recently partnered with the European Parlaiment to study the increase of suicide amongst Kurdish women. The team members included members of the KHRP staff, partner organisations working on women’s advocacy and members of the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales. The close collaboration further enables domestic advocates to gain the knowledge-and from that-the confidence required, to prepare them to take the lead in bringing cases to the ECtHR or submitting complaints to relevant UN mechanisms whilst affording international advocates the opportunity to understand the effectiveness and availability of domestic remedies. This iniative relies on the expertise of all its partners, including legal, social service, labour, local government and media organisations.
Financial Model - Which mechanisms do you have in place to ensure that your beneficiaries can afford your products or services? Do you have financial schemes or arrangements for low-income and marginalized populations? The initiatives of KHRP are of a pro-bono nature and as such are available to all beneficiaries, regardless of economic or social status. Judgments from the European Court of Human Rights do pay some of the expenses of local lawyers, but most of our work relies of the voluntary contribution of renowned and dedicated specialists in the fields of law, economic development, archaeology, forensic, medical, & social scientists, psychologists and other medical doctors, as well as journalists, artists and others from relevant fields.
Effectiveness - What has been the concrete impact of your project to date? How many people have benefited from your program in total? What policies, communities, or institutions have been influenced to make fundamental changes because of your work? Over the past 15 years there have been whole-scale changes in how complaints are dealt with in the regions. The case of the Kurds has been put on the international agenda through the Initiative’s use of international litigation, and social, economic, cultural and environmental issues have become issues for UN Special Rapporteurs and the European Union. Through the Initiative’s coherent and strategic programme of litigation and advocacy, precedents have been established, not only influencing legislation and policy in the regions, but throughout all 46 Council of Europe member states. Our body of recommendations and rule-based protocols covers virtually every area of good governance. This is not just generic but related to the region and to specific events. We have assisted in taking cases to the ECtHR on behalf of more than 500 applicants from Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and in over 90 per cent of these cases that have reached judgment, the ECtHR has held that the Governments in question had breached the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).Our work has influenced new dimensions of international law,, and the cases we have assisted are frequently referenced in international law books and by the Council of Europe, European Parliament, the UN and the US State Department. Our involvement with the Ilisu Dam and the BTC-Pipeline campaigns has placed regional environmental issues on the international agenda. Our work with the Ilisu Dam campaign resulted in the adoption by the UK Export Credit Guarantee Department of mandatory environmental and development standards, just as our objections motivated the Trade and Select Committee of the Commons, to note the ‘deplorable and counter-productive lack of transparency’ surrounding the preparation of the funding of the Ilisu Dam project. In relation to the damaging effects of the BTC-Pipeline we have brought litigation before the European Court of Justice [Korkmaz v Commission (T-2/04)]
Scaling up Strategy - What is your priority for the next 3 years and please describe why. Our priority for the next 3 years is to use all tactics, from engagement & training to litigation to talk about the fundamental problem in the Kurdish regions: Discrimination against an entire ethnic/cultural group. Without addressing this problem head on, our work cannot progress further. In order to acheive this, we will look to bring a test case to the European Court of Human Rights to examine Article 14 (non discrimination); we will educate our partners on how to make this claim locally; in Kurdistan, Iraq, we will support the growth of civil society through trainings and skills transfer and promote the positive developments of democractic engagement and criticism. Furthermore, we will focus on making the link between violations and oppression visible to international community so that it can exert pressure to stop this. We intend to do this by carrying out trainings for Diaspora organisations in Europe on effective engagement with policy makers and by discussing the issue of self-determination in a new framework, as a right, but devoid of the talk of separatism, looking at how autonomy and self-determination are already possible, and helping to create public spaces in the European Parlaiment, and in Kurdistan, Iraq to discuss positive social discussion of these issues. Finally, we plan to further integrate our gender lens into all avenues of work, ensuring that both genders and sexes have meaningful roles and participation in the growth of our work.
Origin of the Initiative - Tell the personal story that will help people connect to your work. How did the initiative start? Was there a particular individual or event driving the idea? Tell the reader the story behind the innovation. In 1992 Kerim Yildiz, a Kurdish former Amnesty Prisoner of Conscience & human rights postgraduate, and Michael Feeney, Cardinal Hume's advisor on refugees & Director of the Westminster Diocese Refugee Service, formed a network of leading lawyers to undertake pro bono casework to the European Court of Human Rights in response to the abysmal treatment of Kurdish populations, and the international community’s failure to effectively call Turkey,Iraq, Iran, Syria to account for it. They sent urgent action appeals and made submissions to the European Commission on Human Rights, OSCE and several UN mechanisms. In 1994, realising that the burden of proof lay with them, they developed a highly critical approach so that the violations would be accepted as fact internationally & sent international missions to document which resulted in indisputable and damning evidence for historical record.
Main Obstacles to Scaling Up - List the two (2) main obstacles to scale up your innovation (policy, legal, organizational, people, financial, etc.)? The political situation in the regions makes it difficult for the Initiative to scale up its innovation. Though largely successful at striking the right balance between independent and tribal and political structures, it is not an easy plane to navigate. Furthermore, the fact that most international judicial bodies operate in English or in nation-state languages, makes the language barrier an issue. Often local advocates cannot use international mechanisms because of this barrier. Also, most of our financial support comes in the form of restricted donations through rigid grant-making bodies. This can make it difficult to plan/ modify our work, and definitely makes it difficult to establish an institution that is here for the foreseeable future.
Main Partnership Challenges - What are your major challenges with partnerships? (E.g., identification of partners, implementation of partnerships, relationship management, etc.) In order to effectuate change over the long-term, non-partisanship is central to this initiative and the project’s ability to engage in effective dialogue with groups across the political spectrum. Therefore, one of the main partnership challenges is finding in-country NGOs and CSOs that operate free from political affiliation. On one hand, underdeveloped civil society across the regions and lack of rights awareness impedes understanding of the importance of political independence. On the other, with regional NGOs and CSOs often faced with intimidation and censorship from the authorities, the ability of the many organisations that want to operate freely and without fear of retribution, is severely hampered. Hence the politically charged nature of the ongoing conflict tends to hamper the development of independent NGOs.
Contact Information:
Pranjali Acharya
Development Kurdish Human Rights Project (NGO) khrp@khrp.org 11 Guilford St United Kingdom Tel: 0044 207 405 3835 Fax: 0044 207 404 9088 Website: www.khrp.org Discussions about this entry
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Instituting Accountability - Models for anti-corruption and increased transparency
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