To kickstart Amnesty International’s annual flagship Write for Rights (W4R) campaign, Amnesty International Nepal organized a workshop for members of its Youth Networks and Groups in Vijay Development Resource Centre (VDRC), Gaindakot, Nawalparasi on 10 November.
The workshop was organized with the aim of informing its members about the cases AI will be campaigning for, brainstorming ideas on how to propel the campaign forward, and strengthening their capacity to work as a team. The program saw participation from 130 members of Youth Network and Groups associated with Amnesty Nepal from across the country.
The first session of the workshop was led by Amnesty International Nepal’s Campaigns Coordinator Ashmita Sapkota in which she introduced participants to the concept of Human Rights Defenders and the reason why Amnesty undertakes this campaign every year. This was followed by a presentation by AI Nepal’s Media and Communications Coordinator Marissa Taylor on the introduction of the W4R Campaign, its history and how members and supporters came together and mobilized themselves to generate actions for human rights change. She also spoke about the idea behind the W4R campaign and shared some success stories from previous years’ efforts.
This year, out of 10 international cases selected by the International Secretariat, AI Nepal will be campaigning for six international cases and a local case. Like the past three years, this year too, AI Nepal’s local case will be a call to the government to establish accountability in cases of custodial tortures and deaths. Focusing on the cases, a group activity was organized in which all participants had to engage with individual cases. They were put together into 7 groups and each group was given a case to go through in detail and then explain about the human rights issues of the case.
This was followed by a quick sharing-session in which Groups that were successful in gathering the highest number of letters in W4R campaign of 2022 presented briefly on what worked for them last year and the challenges they had to overcome in the process.
The final presentation of the workshop was led by Amnesty Nepal’s Human Rights Education Officer Kundan Raj Sharma in which he explained about the rights that were violated in each case. He also spoke about the different ways in which Human Rights Education is interlinked with the W4R campaign and how human rights education plays a vital role in supporter mobilization.
Following the end of the presentations, the final session of the workshop was an interactive mock session where participants were again divided into groups and given various scenarios wherein, they had to convince the public to sign a petition for a human rights defender for the W4R campaign. To take an example, a group was asked to convince a group of people to sign a petition establishing accountability for custodial tortures and deaths. The challenge for them was that some of them in the group were convinced that the use of torture and violence to extract confession from “the criminals” was normal.
The workshop ended with remarks by AI Nepal’s treasurer Roshan Bajagai followed by closing remarks of Vice-chairperson Keshab Pokharel.