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Posted 22 March, 2013 by Susannah Vila

What Strategic Thinking Resources are Available to Human Rights Defenders?

Words to the wise, from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Tactics in Human Rights is building up its collection of strategic-thinking resources and tools for human rights defenders to help in the selection and application of successful tactics. In doing so, they have started curating existing tools and resources in order to share them on their site. Here’s their initial list, organized by topic. This was created by Kristin Antin, New Tactics in Human Rights Online Community Builder.

Identify the problem

Cutting the Issue exercise by Change Agency
Problem Tree Analysis by Change Agency

Create a Vision

Vision Gallery Process Guideby the Change Agency
Theory of Change trainingfrom NOI
How to tell the story of your visionfrom NOI

Map the Terrain

Tactical Mapping New Tactics
Power Mapping by the Change Agency

Find your Allies

Spectrum of Allies, an exercise by Training for Change
Team up w/ experts (but don’t become an expert) from Beautiful Trouble

Choose your Target

Choose your Targets Wisely from Beautiful Trouble
Spectrum of Allies, an exercise by Training for Change

Identify Goals

Critical Path Analysis (to identify SMART objectives/goals) by Change Agency
SMART Objective Writing by Change Agency

Exploring tactics

Online collection of 200+ innovative tactics from New Tactics
50 tactical case studies from New Tactics
10 Tactics for Turning Information into Action from Tactical Tech
Beautiful Trouble
Global Nonviolent Action database
Waging Nonviolence

Select your tactics

Tactics and Timing a training from NOI
Tactic analysis by Change Agency
Tactics Rely helps participants think critically and creatively about potential tactics, by Change Agency
Rules of Power Tactics by Change Agency
Choose Tactics that Support your Strategy from Beautiful Trouble
Shift your Spectrum of Allies from Beautiful Trouble
Action Storming, an exercise by Training for Change

Implement your tactics

Tactical Timeline by Change Agency
Building Teams from NOI
Consider your Audience from Beautiful Trouble

Train your team

Maintain nonviolent discipline from Beautiful Trouble

Assess the impact

Measurement & Human Rights: Tracking Progress, Assessing Impact, A Carr Center for Human Rights Policy Project Report

Self-care and security

Take Risks but Take Care from Beautiful Trouble
An online manual on how to facilitate an integrated security training for human rights defenders by Jane Barry

What other resources are out there that could help human rights defenders apply strategy and tactics to their work? In what languages are they available? What have you used (or borrowed from another discipline) that has worked well? What hasn’t worked so well? What resources are missing? Share comments below or on the New Tactics site. 

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