"Campaigning for Free Expression: A Handbook for Advocates" was featured at UNESCO's World Press Freedom Day conference in Dakar, Senegal on May 1, 2005.
The publication is aimed at equipping human rights activists
around the world with essential tools to campaign more effectively for
freedom of expression and press freedom. It provides best practice case
studies and showcases a variety
of campaign tools, including investigative missions,
coalition-building, legal advocacy and Internet-based actions, such as
blogging, e-mail protest letters and SMS text messaging. It also gives
activists important tools for mounting campaign strategies and doing
power analyses of their local situations.
"This handbook gives us vivid examples of how a variety of campaign
techniques have been used to persuade governments to act in less
repressive ways," says Luckson Chipare, IFEX Convenor and Regional
Director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa. "By doing skillful,
tactical and strategic campaigning, free expression advocates can
maximize their resources to become even more powerful agents of
change," he adds.
With threats to journalists, writers, Internet users and human rights
activists on the rise in many countries, the need for more concerted
campaigning on free expression issues is increasingly urgent.
"Governments and other forces are employing more sophisticated methods
to restrict freedom of expression," says Chipare.
