Why is HRD Important?

• The village people will bein charge of their own information. This will be important source of power for them
• The reporting of human rights abuses will not depend on the presence of outside documentalists, whomay not always be around when abuses occur. Should the Thai/Burma border be closed in the near future, human rights abuses within the country can still be documentated and reported to the outside world
• Village people will feel less like victims, but rather as human beings capable of fighting back
• Villae people wil not only know when their rights are being abused, but they will also understand the political and economic mechanisms which encourage and multiply these abuses

1. A detailed file on individual cases for future reconiciliation processes such as the South African PEace and Reconciliation hearings. This would ensure that victims of abuse would not be forgotten and that useful information would be on file to help them tell their story and seek understanding.
2. BI wanted a detailed human rights abuses so that we could do some analysis, predict trends and help villagers become pro-active in working for protection of their rights

Aims

Objectives

1. Train human rights documentalists who can provide human rights training to grassroots villagers in creative forms which they can easily understand and apply
   The grassroots people already have a basic understanding of human rights, based on their worn experiences under oppression, but htis understanding can be improved by giving information about international laws and human rights organisations, and by sharing with them how others have used human rights as a form of power to fight for dignity and justice. Trainigs also are based on the idea that village people can and must take responsibility for their own struggle to achieve full human rights.
2. Human rights documentalists research about human rights issues that villagers in the front line areas want and need to konw about
   While visiting displaced villagers to provide basic human rights training and/or collect stories of the abuses they have suffered, the human rights documentlists should also survey village people to identify their definition of human rights. This has already been done some in the past four years during visits to displaced villages along the frontline, but these experiences need to be futher build up.
3. Documentalists develop grassroots-orientated human rights training materials based on this research
   They will creatively prepare human rights information in a way that is appropriate to the experiences of the people with who they are working. This information will be based on the above survey, oin experiences gained while providing human rights documentation to the people and on internaitonal human rights documents, which can help them link thier suffering to the international standards set for human rights. This material should also aim at helping people see the root causes of their suffering and encourage work on developing creative resistance methods which can help bring human rights abuse to an end.
   
   This draft plan calls several times for the production of training materials for both human rights documentatilists and village level human rights documentalists. These materials are meant to simply be guidelines for these documentalists, not complete education kits. Popular education requires that the documentalist develop their education materials from the villagers' particluar experience and questions. We cannot produce these education materials ahead of time.
4. Provide general human rights training in the front line areas and identify potential village human rights documentalists from villagers in teh target areas
   A training program will be prepared to train potential village-level human rights documentalists who can do both training and documentation with their own village in the most appropriate and effective way.
   
   Villagers should be trainide to use the human rights forms. The trainer must create a creative system for explaining the forms to village people, with ealiy understood examples and descriptions, as the forms can be bery confusing if not properly explained. Even though the human rights forms are a bit complex, they provide a system wthat village people can use to provide the detail need for international action in support of human rights in Burma. Village people, even those with poor education, can learn how to use these forms with proper training. During the training, a rapid and efficient communications system must be created ofr getting informationf rom and to the village. A system must be developed for how to send forms to the border.
   
   
5. Provide effective follow-up work with these village documentalists, and more advance training when necessary
   Do all the necessary follow-up to make certain that the village human rights documentalists can carry out their work effectively and to hlep meet any needs when might arise for them.
   
   
6. The project office site will collect and organise all human rights reports (from all available sources) into a computer database file for analysis and development of proactive human rights work
   
   
7. By entering details of each reported abuse into a computer database, we can predict trends or even the locations of possible abuses before they happen
   This could make it possible to organise proactive campaigns to prevent human rights abuse rather than just report on it after the people have already suffered.
   
   
8. Develop a "feedback" system so that village people providing human rights information can see how their work is being used and what affect itis having on the struggle in Burma
   Village people suffering under military oppression can be further oppressed by human rights workers if proper care is not taken to involve villagers as much as possible in documentation and planning. People even those suffering serve human rights abuses, so not want to be further victimized by documentalists who take information from them and never share how the information is being used or what affect it may have had on the struggle for justice.