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Journalists for Human Rights (JHR)
Encyclopedia
jhr is an international media development
non-governmental organization
whose goal is "to make everyone in the world fully aware of their rights". The organization believes that "creating awareness is the first and most necessary step to ending rights abuses. By mobilizing the media to spread human rights awareness, jhr informs people about their rights, empowering marginalized communities to stand up, speak out and protect themselves".
As Canada's largest media development organization, jhr has offices in Toronto
, Canada
(Head Office); Freetown
, Sierra Leone
; Kinshasa
, Democatic Republic of the Congo; and Monrovia
, Liberia
. It also has representatives and non-profit status in the United States
and the United Kingdom
.
jhr focuses its programming and efforts on strengthening the local media in countries with some level of freedom in the press, training local journalists on human rights reporting skills. The organization coined the concept of Rights Media, defined as the “process of writing, collecting, editing, producing and distributing media that creates societal dialogue on human rights issues”.
jhr was founded by Benjamin Peterson
and Alexandra Sicotte-Levesque
in 2002. Though Sicotte-Levesque left the organization in 2005, she remains on the Advisory Board and Board of Trustees. Ben Peterson remains jhr’s Executive Director.
pioneered by jhr.
Grounded in the rights-based approach to development
, Rights Media combines professional capacity building efforts with a specific objective. More specifically, it means building the capacity of local journalists to report more effectively on human rights, social justice, and good governance issues. Rights Media provides local journalism practitioners with the skills to affect change on specific issues.
Rights Media mainstreams human rights content into everyday news stories. For instance, a newspaper could create a section specifically on children's rights, or it could encourage its sports, business or even entertainment reporters to cover the human rights angles hidden within their stories.
Rights Media bridges a sometimes contentious divide between two camps in the sector: traditional 'media development
' proponents and 'communication for development' practitioners. The former of the two focuses on developing infrastructure and professional capacity of media professionals and outlets. The latter focuses on getting particular messages into the public domain through the media. Rights Media does both — it focuses on building capacity of local media outlets to effectively get messages to the general public.
All of jhr's programming is based on its "reciprocal change" approach, a process that involves local media partnerships and development outcomes determined through participatory consultation with the editors and owners, journalists, students, and civil society within a region.
The organization currently has operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Malawi with programs that include:
The organization maintains a blog that chronicles the experiences of its media trainers and journalists working on the ground, which can be viewed at www.jhr.ca/blog
Speak is a nationally distributed student magazine covering Rights Mediaissues. Each year, a jhr university Chapter takes on the responsibility of planning, promoting, designing, editing and producing Speak. The magazine is distributed on campuses across Canada in late January.
jhr’s first Speak magazine was issued in the 2006 / 07 year. The Queen’s university chapter put together Speak Aids, an issue dedicated to talking about and breaking the stigma of HIV/AIDS. 14 contributors including students, professors and activists provided 68 bilingual pages of articles and information about the disease.
Members from the Universite du Quebec a Montreal (UQAM) produced Speak! In 2007 – 08. Looking at censorship and freedom of expression the UQAM Editorial Team collaborated with 16 contributors to put together the 52 page Speak! jhr’s second bi-lingual publication.
jhr UBC dedicated the 08 – 09 issue of Speak to Children’s Rights. Subjects such as child prostitution, glue sniffing as well as empowering stories about ngo’s working for education were covered throughout the 48 page English only, 'Children’s Right to Speak'.
No magazine was produced in 2009 – 10. jhr’s Chapter program was in flux during this period and the selected chapter did not have sufficient support from head office to create a high quality magazine.
Speak 2010 – 11 took a look at the world’s progress on the Millennium Development Goals
10 years after they were stated. This was the first issue that was partially funded by the Canadian International Development Agency
CIDA
and was used as a promoting vehicle for the CIDA's Public Engagement Fund to encourage. Leah Wong and her team along with 10 contributors produced the 48 page Speak. Its 5000 copies were distributed to university chapters in Canada and the United States of America.
Write the Wrong is jhr’s national essay writing competition. Established initially in 2009 as part of the High School Engagement Program, Write the Wrong is now open to submissions from university students. The winning article in 2011 was featured in Macleans Magazine’s website.
Rights in Review was jhr’s peer-reviewed academic journal from 2009 - 2011. Essays and articles focus on addressing human rights awareness and improving peace and security through an academic lens. Four Rights in Review journals were compiled before jhr decided to stop running the journal.
, jhr’s Train the Trainer program builds students’ capacity to produce Rights Media and organize media campaigns around pressing human rights and social justice issues.
Since 2008, jhr has hosted three regional conferences per year, attended by executives from each school chapter. At the conclusion of the conference, chapter executives return to their chapters and perform the same workshop. Each chapter member in turn gives a similar presentation within the community.
2010-2011 marked the formal end of the Train the Trainer program.
jhr has connected with high school students across Canada by delivering Rights Media workshops in classrooms, at conferences, and alongside CC UNESCO and their Associated Schools Network in Manitoba.
In operation for three years, jhr decided to end its High School Engagement Program in 2011 and instead focus its energy on post-secondary efforts.
jhr's current and past government and foundation partners include: National Endowment of Democracy, AusAID, European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR)- BBC World Service Trust, Donner Foundation, United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), Department for International Development (DFID, UK), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), US State Department; Sigrid Rausing Trust, Foreign Affairs Canada, J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, R. Howard Webster Foundation, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO.
, including from The Globe and Mail
, The Toronto Star, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
and CTV.ca This coverage has been largely focused on its work in Ghana
and on Executive Director Ben Peterson.
Media development
Many organizations engage in efforts to help the development of free and independent media in countries around the world. These efforts can take many forms, from funding the establishment of an entirely new media outlet to assisting an existing outlet in improving its professional capacity.Common...
non-governmental organization
Non-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...
whose goal is "to make everyone in the world fully aware of their rights". The organization believes that "creating awareness is the first and most necessary step to ending rights abuses. By mobilizing the media to spread human rights awareness, jhr informs people about their rights, empowering marginalized communities to stand up, speak out and protect themselves".
As Canada's largest media development organization, jhr has offices in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
(Head Office); Freetown
Freetown
Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean located in the Western Area of the country, and had a city proper population of 772,873 at the 2004 census. The city is the economic, financial, and cultural center of...
, Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
; Kinshasa
Kinshasa
Kinshasa is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The city is located on the Congo River....
, Democatic Republic of the Congo; and Monrovia
Monrovia
Monrovia is the capital city of the West African nation of Liberia. Located on the Atlantic Coast at Cape Mesurado, it lies geographically within Montserrado County, but is administered separately...
, Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
. It also has representatives and non-profit status in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
.
jhr focuses its programming and efforts on strengthening the local media in countries with some level of freedom in the press, training local journalists on human rights reporting skills. The organization coined the concept of Rights Media, defined as the “process of writing, collecting, editing, producing and distributing media that creates societal dialogue on human rights issues”.
jhr was founded by Benjamin Peterson
Benjamin Peterson
Ben Peterson is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Journalists for Human Rights, Canada’s largest international media development non-governmental organization.-Early life:...
and Alexandra Sicotte-Levesque
Alexandra Sicotte-Levesque
Alexandra Sicotte-Levesque founded Journalists for Human Rights in 2002 with Benjamin Peterson. Sicotte-Levesque has also worked as a Radio Producer for the United Nations radio in Sudan...
in 2002. Though Sicotte-Levesque left the organization in 2005, she remains on the Advisory Board and Board of Trustees. Ben Peterson remains jhr’s Executive Director.
Rights Media
Rights Media is the process of writing, collecting, editing, producing and distributing media that creates societal dialogue on human rights issues. It is a new category of media developmentMedia development
Many organizations engage in efforts to help the development of free and independent media in countries around the world. These efforts can take many forms, from funding the establishment of an entirely new media outlet to assisting an existing outlet in improving its professional capacity.Common...
pioneered by jhr.
Grounded in the rights-based approach to development
Rights-based approach to development
Rights-based approach to development is a strategy used by non-governmental organizations to reduce local communities' dependency on aid by improving government capacity. This practice blurs the distinction between human rights and development...
, Rights Media combines professional capacity building efforts with a specific objective. More specifically, it means building the capacity of local journalists to report more effectively on human rights, social justice, and good governance issues. Rights Media provides local journalism practitioners with the skills to affect change on specific issues.
Rights Media mainstreams human rights content into everyday news stories. For instance, a newspaper could create a section specifically on children's rights, or it could encourage its sports, business or even entertainment reporters to cover the human rights angles hidden within their stories.
Rights Media bridges a sometimes contentious divide between two camps in the sector: traditional 'media development
Media development
Many organizations engage in efforts to help the development of free and independent media in countries around the world. These efforts can take many forms, from funding the establishment of an entirely new media outlet to assisting an existing outlet in improving its professional capacity.Common...
' proponents and 'communication for development' practitioners. The former of the two focuses on developing infrastructure and professional capacity of media professionals and outlets. The latter focuses on getting particular messages into the public domain through the media. Rights Media does both — it focuses on building capacity of local media outlets to effectively get messages to the general public.
jhr International
jhr has operated international programs within 17 African countries, training over 5000 local journalists, and helping to produce over 4000 stories on a number of human rights issues. In partnership with local media houses in print, radio and television, the organization's programming is estimated to reach 20 million Africans a week with human rights information they may not have received otherwise.All of jhr's programming is based on its "reciprocal change" approach, a process that involves local media partnerships and development outcomes determined through participatory consultation with the editors and owners, journalists, students, and civil society within a region.
The organization currently has operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Malawi with programs that include:
- Formal workshops
- Student workshops
- Daily on the job training
- Informal workshops
- Train the trainer program
- Journalism fellowships
- Editors and owners workshops
- Human Rights Reporting Network
- Human Rights Reporting Awards
- Short-term trainer programs with high profile journalism trainers (including Toronto Star Editor-in-Chief Michael Cooke)
The organization maintains a blog that chronicles the experiences of its media trainers and journalists working on the ground, which can be viewed at www.jhr.ca/blog
jhr in North America
Along with its work overseas, jhr has a school chapter program in North America aimed at raising awareness about human rights issues both at home and abroad. This initiative is designed to educate students on basic human rights reporting skills as well as to empower them to raise awareness in their communities through the creation of their own media, the hosting of awareness raising events, and by participating in jhr’s international internships.jhr University Chapter Program
The jhr University Chapter Program provides programming to students across Canada with a number of opportunities to get involved in the journalism sector.Media Creation
jhr offers publishing opportunities to jhr chapter members, including Speak Magazine, Write the Wrong and formerly Rights in Review.Speak is a nationally distributed student magazine covering Rights Mediaissues. Each year, a jhr university Chapter takes on the responsibility of planning, promoting, designing, editing and producing Speak. The magazine is distributed on campuses across Canada in late January.
jhr’s first Speak magazine was issued in the 2006 / 07 year. The Queen’s university chapter put together Speak Aids, an issue dedicated to talking about and breaking the stigma of HIV/AIDS. 14 contributors including students, professors and activists provided 68 bilingual pages of articles and information about the disease.
Members from the Universite du Quebec a Montreal (UQAM) produced Speak! In 2007 – 08. Looking at censorship and freedom of expression the UQAM Editorial Team collaborated with 16 contributors to put together the 52 page Speak! jhr’s second bi-lingual publication.
jhr UBC dedicated the 08 – 09 issue of Speak to Children’s Rights. Subjects such as child prostitution, glue sniffing as well as empowering stories about ngo’s working for education were covered throughout the 48 page English only, 'Children’s Right to Speak'.
No magazine was produced in 2009 – 10. jhr’s Chapter program was in flux during this period and the selected chapter did not have sufficient support from head office to create a high quality magazine.
Speak 2010 – 11 took a look at the world’s progress on the Millennium Development Goals
Millennium Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals are eight international development goals that all 193 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015...
10 years after they were stated. This was the first issue that was partially funded by the Canadian International Development Agency
Canadian International Development Agency
The Canadian International Development Agency was formed in 1968 by the Canadian government. CIDA administers foreign aid programs in developing countries, and operates in partnership with other Canadian organizations in the public and private sectors as well as other international organizations...
CIDA
CIDA
Things known by the initialism CIDA include:* Canadian International Development Agency* Centro de Investigaciones de Astronomia, Venezuelan institute of astronomical investigation* CIDA City Campus* Council for Interior Design Accreditation...
and was used as a promoting vehicle for the CIDA's Public Engagement Fund to encourage. Leah Wong and her team along with 10 contributors produced the 48 page Speak. Its 5000 copies were distributed to university chapters in Canada and the United States of America.
Write the Wrong is jhr’s national essay writing competition. Established initially in 2009 as part of the High School Engagement Program, Write the Wrong is now open to submissions from university students. The winning article in 2011 was featured in Macleans Magazine’s website.
Rights in Review was jhr’s peer-reviewed academic journal from 2009 - 2011. Essays and articles focus on addressing human rights awareness and improving peace and security through an academic lens. Four Rights in Review journals were compiled before jhr decided to stop running the journal.
Student Training
Funded by Canadian Heritage and CC UNESCOUNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
, jhr’s Train the Trainer program builds students’ capacity to produce Rights Media and organize media campaigns around pressing human rights and social justice issues.
Since 2008, jhr has hosted three regional conferences per year, attended by executives from each school chapter. At the conclusion of the conference, chapter executives return to their chapters and perform the same workshop. Each chapter member in turn gives a similar presentation within the community.
2010-2011 marked the formal end of the Train the Trainer program.
Cross-Cultural Education
In September 2008, jhr launched its Overseas Internship Program for jhr university chapter members as supported by CIDA. The initiative, open exclusively to senior chapter members, sends students to Ghana for a three-month placement at a local community radio station. The purpose of the program is to develop participants’ cross-cultural knowledge and understanding of the journalism sector.jhr High School Program
In September 2008, jhr launched its High School Engagement Program designed to empower students to use the media as a means of making the world more aware of their rights. The program started as a pilot project of five schools across Canada and has since expanded into a fifteen school project.jhr has connected with high school students across Canada by delivering Rights Media workshops in classrooms, at conferences, and alongside CC UNESCO and their Associated Schools Network in Manitoba.
In operation for three years, jhr decided to end its High School Engagement Program in 2011 and instead focus its energy on post-secondary efforts.
Toronto Outreach
jhr’s largest fundraiser occurs annually at an event called Night for Rights. Originally hosted at the Steam Whistle Brewery, it has in recent years moved to the Berkeley Church and 99 Sudury. It has garnered the attention of many local media outlets and thousands of attendees, including many notable figures in the Canadian journalism sector.Funding
In 2008 jhr had annual revenues of $1,305,045 CDN. jhr is funded by government grants (76.4%), foundation grnts (15.2%), donations and contributions (7.4%), as well as donated goods and services (3.2%).jhr's current and past government and foundation partners include: National Endowment of Democracy, AusAID, European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR)- BBC World Service Trust, Donner Foundation, United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), Department for International Development (DFID, UK), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), US State Department; Sigrid Rausing Trust, Foreign Affairs Canada, J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, R. Howard Webster Foundation, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO.
Media coverage
jhr has received media attention in CanadaCanada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, including from The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
, The Toronto Star, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
and CTV.ca This coverage has been largely focused on its work in Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
and on Executive Director Ben Peterson.