Amnesty International Australia

Read about past recipients of Amnesty International's Human Rights Innovation Fund, and use their projects to inspire your own ideas and activism for human rights.

2011

Mallee Family Care Incorporated

The Mildura Human Rights Festival - a range of activities in and near Mildura including film screenings and workshops, a civic reception and a human rights media campaign, all designed to increase awareness and knowledge of human rights in the community. On International Human Rights Day, 10th December, there will be an outdoor film and arts festival involving dancing, story-telling, poetry, music, visual arts and cooking!

Reconciliation South Australia

Funding to assist with the development of resources for an Adelaide and regional seminar series, part of the 90%+ Campaign. The seminars are designed to build conversations in the community about the importance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander recognition within the Australian Constitution and the repeal of discriminatory clauses within it.

Hobart College Students Against Racism

Production of a DVD version of a proven successful student workshop on why people leave their homelands, the journey that brought them to Australia and settling in a new country. Additional resource materials and ideas for activities providing a teacher/student resource for Australian high schools.

Burma Campaign Australia

This project will raise awareness of the human rights crisis in Eastern Burma via street stalls in five capital cities, culminating in a photo petition to the Australian Government.

East Turkistan Australian Association

Support for an exhibition at the Migration Museum in South Australia about Uighur culture, history, the community’s contribution to Australia’s multicultural society and the human rights issues facing the Uighur.

Billard Learning Centre

Funding to assist this innovative learning facility near Beagle Bay in WA to prepare a life-affirming mural generated by participants in indigenous suicide-prevention summits.

2010

All Together Now Inc.

Reducing Racism in Australian Families and Communities - a social media package to promote the rights and responsibilities of individuals as members of a tolerant, inclusive society. Will engage with young people and empower them to speak out about racism in a positive and courageous way.

Peace Brigades International – Australia

Human Rights Defenders at Risk - three high-profile public events specifically to build the membership of the Political Support Network, which provides crucial and highly organised advocacy and influence to enhance the protection of human rights defenders in PBI’s project countries – Colombia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Mexico and Nepal.

ActNow Theatre for Social Change

Safe and Free - development of script/performance and three pilot presentations to school students on bullying, using homophobia as a case study.

Central Land Council, the Urapuntja Aboriginal Corporation, Utoptia outstation residents and North East Arnhem Land homelands.

More Than Bricks and Mortar - The issue of shelter and housing is a significant priority for Aboriginal peple in the NT, and this project will bring together two strong Aboriginal groups and leaders to meet, share and exchange their experiences and knowlege on housing and human rights issues.

Jagath Dheerasekara

Manuwangku: Our Country is Our Spirit - a mobile photo exhibition produced by Jagath Dheerasekara, documentary photographer and human rights defender, to engage the Australian public in support of the Aboriginal community of Muckaty (Manuwangkyu) to defend their country from radioactive waste dumping. The photo exhibition will give the Aboriginal communities' affected a collective voice against the proposed waste dump. It will be toured by the Beyond Nuclear Initiative over three years.

Deaths in Custody Watch Committee of WA Inc.

Build Communities Not Prisons: Justice Reinvestment - education and consultative forums and the formation of a WA Human Rights Community Justice Coalition to lobby government and other stakeholders on justice reinvestment. An approach to reduce prison and corrections spending and reinvest savings in strategies that can decrease crime and strengthen communities.

Australians for native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR)

Success Stories: Aboriginal Communities in Control - publication of case studies of Indigenous community-led initiatives in the Northern Territory and other materials targeting policy and decision-makers, demonstrating the benefits of more evidence and human rights-based approaches rather than the predominant top-down interventions.

Australian Corporate Accountability Network, VIC

Launch of Australia’s first multi-disciplinary network of civil society organisations who will work collaboratively on projects that encourage greater corporate accountability for human rights abuses.

2009

Larrakia National Aboriginal Corporation, NT

Human Rights Flavoured Citizen Journalism - training 15 Indigenous young people to use creative digital media in order to foster a community of interest in human rights in the Top End.

Voice of Women Organisation (Australia) Association, SA

National speaking tour - A national speaking tour by Suraya Pakzad, a globally-recognised human rights activist who founded the Voice of Women Organsation NGO in the then Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in 1998.

Glow Worm Productions, VIC

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea - a documentary film providing a visceral insight into the terrible and frightening journey of an asylum seeker from detention in Indonesia to Australia.

Banksia Gardens Community Centre, VIC

Stand Up and Be Counted: Youth Educate for Hume'N'Rights in Schools - a pilot program introducing human rights education into Victorian secondary schools.

Humanitarian Crisis Hub, VIC

Communities with Power - A project which aimed to increase and improve the capacity of community-based groups, to collaborate and campaign on human rights protection in international humanitarian emergencies.

Friends of ‘Comfort Women’ in Australia, VIC

Our fund gave an opportunity for the group to invite a 'Comfort Women' survivor from Korea to Australia, to speak to Australian MPs in support of the passage of a parliamentary motion on this issue.

2008

ACTNow Theatre for Social Change, SA

Right Act - Five political theatre workshops to empower and engage young people, enabling them to develop and utilise theatre for social change.

Banksia Gardens Community Centre, VIC

Stand Up and Be Counted - A series of human rights workshops, a story competition and publication, which uses human rights awareness to empower the community to take ownership of the challenges they face, helping them enact positive change.

Darfur Australia Network, VIC

Far to Here - A photographic exhibition by the Darfur community which shed light on how refugees from Darfur bridge the divide between memories of conflict and loss, knowledge of ongoing violence in their homeland, and beginning a new life in Australia.

Youth Arts Team, Youth Action Network Amnesty International, WA

ARTillery Youth Arts Festival - A creative celebration of human rights and the arts in honour of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which included workshops, actions and performances.

Featured projects

Giving Racism The Finger

All Together Now: Give Racism The Finger

In 2011, All Together Now – a young not-for-profit organisation established to promote the prevention of racism in Australia – used an Amnesty International Human Rights Innovation Fund grant to create a racism prevention campaign. The campaign, called Give Racism The Finger, was created in partnership with The Body Shop and Shift Communications.

Customers in all 83 of The Body Shop stores were asked to dip their finger in ink, and stamp their fingerprint on a canvas in the store to pledge their willingness to speak up whenever they witness racism.

All Together Now's Managing Director, Priscilla Brice-Weller, believes that bystander action can help to create positive social norms. "When people speak up, they feel better knowing that they've taken a stand. Whoever made the remark may then think twice about expressing racist attitudes in the future, and the person on the receiving end will feel supported and hopefully less disturbed by the abuse."

During the four-week campaign, The Body Shop collected 50,706 fingerprints and had 150,000 constructive conversations with customers about racism. The number of fingerprints collected was 254% higher than anticipated.

Employees at The Body Shop also reported an increase in their knowledge about racism and confidence about speaking up.

More information about All Together Now

Building communities, not prisons

"If we are going to be serious about eliminating preventable deaths in custody, reducing the Indigenous youth suicide rate, and closing the gap in life expectancy – then we need to be serious about changing the system that generates disadvantage, inequality and poverty. It is the same system that results in disproportionate Aboriginal incarceration rates and over-representation in our corrections systems."

Graeme Innes AM, former Race and Disability Discrimination Commissioner

It's been 20 years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Fewer Aboriginal people are dying in lock-ups and prisons, but more are in jail. And the situation for the next generation is dire – more than half the kids in juvenile detention are Indigenous.

The WA Deaths in Custody Watch Committee has identified a bold, creative and pragmatic response to the policy inertia that has characterised government approaches to Aboriginal incarceration. Their program, Build Communities Not Prisons, is based on a strategy known as Justice Reinvestment – breaking the cycle of crime and escalating imprisonment rates by redirecting money, usually spent on building and running prisons, to programs that tackle the underlying causes of crime in local communities where re-offending rates are high. It is a strategy that has been tested and found to work in both the US and the UK.

It is an evidence based approach and measures performance outcomes such as the amount of imprisonment money saved; reduction in imprisonment; reduction in recidivism; and indicators of community well-being and capacity.

With the assistance of a grant from Amnesty International's Human Rights Innovation Fund, the Watch Committee has consulted with Aboriginal people in metropolitan local government areas of Stirling and Swan in WA to identify what kinds of things might help in their community to keep people out of jail. They have produced materials, held information forums, and gained support from a wide range of community and not-for-profit organisations, churches, unions and local police.

A strong consensus on pressuring government to address the systemic causes of offending behavior and recidivism within a human rights framework, led to the establishment of the Community Justice Coalition in March 2011, and more recently, the formation of Justice Reinvestment WA. Ultimately, the Watch Committee wants a bipartisan commitment from all governments to trial a Justice Reinvestment model.

More information about Justice Reinvestment

A Better Way: Success stories in Aboriginal community control in the Northern Territory

A Better Way: Success stories booklet

Amnesty International Australia’s Human Rights Innovation Fund enables AI Australia to partner with a diversity of Australian organisations and individuals.

In April this year, a grant was made to Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR), whose focus is on changing the attitudes and behaviours of non-Indigenous Australians, so that the rights and cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are respected and affirmed across all sections of society.

Amnesty’s grant, enabled the production and publication of a booklet, A Better Way: Success Stories, which was launched at the Supreme Court in Darwin on 28 October 2010

The booklet of stories showcases 13 successful Aboriginal community-controlled organisations in the Northern Territory that are working across a diverse range of sectors, to achieve sustainable outcomes for communities in culturally appropriate ways and with full community control and participation.

Individually, these organisations are tackling petrol sniffing, delivering health care, ensuring access to healthy foods, building self-reliance in times of financial crisis, supporting people to budget and eat well and delivering banking services to remote areas.

Together, they offer an alternative response to the challenges facing Aboriginal communities based on community participation and leadership.

Aboriginal communities in the NT have recently had to adjust to seismic policy shifts, including but not limited to the Northern Territory Emergency Response. Elements of the new policy environment have created additional barriers to self-determination for Aboriginal people and organisations.

Additional materials generated by the project will include a 'policy-maker's companion', demonstrating the benefits of more evidence and human rights-based approaches rather than the predominant top-down interventions.

You can view the Success Stories booklet online on the ANTaR web site

Suraya Pakzad - Voice of Women Organisation Afghanistan

Written by Jillian Schedneck and Christine Gates, members of Voice of Women (Australia)

Suraya Pakzad addresses a crowd in Australia earlier this year

Through her recent Australian speaking tour, Suraya Pakzad has once again demonstrated her renowned capacity to passionately advocate for the human rights of women and children in Afghanistan.

Funded by Amnesty International Australia’s Human Rights Innovation Fund, Suraya’s national tour included public lectures in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Adelaide. Through her insightful messages and compelling style, Suraya gained many Australian supporters for her grass roots projects offering Afghani women and children safety, health, legal and economic opportunities.

Key messages from her talks focused on the extraordinary obstacles Suraya and other prominent Afghan women like herself face on a daily basis in order to continue their work, and how the position of Afghani women has not significantly progressed since foreign intervention in 2001.

She also suggested ways in which the international community can engage on a more equitable and effective level with the people of Afghanistan. She expressed sympathy and regret to the families of the Australian soldiers who have lost their lives in Afghanistan, but emphasised that strategic Australian involvement was still needed to establish critical and globally beneficial peace in Afghanistan.

Suraya first became a human rights activist in 1998, when she established a clandestine girls’ school in the living room of her home. This resistance against Taliban rule marked the beginnings of her organisation, Voice of Women Organisation (VWO). Twelve years later, this brave and tireless campaigner for women’s human rights, routinely faces threats of sabotage and death - from relatives of the at-risk women she helps and from local conservative and extremist factions.

Suraya explains, "People who are against women's rights are not happy with what I do. The warlords, the commanders and the people who have guns are powerful. They don't like our services".

Despite these obstacles, VWO now offers a wide range of services, including access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation (in a country of open sewers), projects on income generation and food sustainability, and education and job training for women and girls. VWO provides a safehouse in Herat city for at-risk women and girls, victims of violence and women escaping abuse, who need immediate protection.

The organisation also runs a Family Conflict Resolution Centre, providing psycho-social counselling, legal aid and vocational training. It runs programs to prevent self-immolation and programs that assist women who are in prison, many of whom are behind bars because they are victims of rape or domestic violence.

In recognition of these incredible humanitarian efforts, Suraya received the Clinton Global Citizen Award in September this year, as well as the USA Women of Courage award and the National Medal (Malali Medal) in Afghanistan in 2008. She was named among Time Magazine’s ‘100 most influential people of 2009’.

In addition to her extensive activism, Suraya has also produced some outstanding work in Persian poetry. Below is the translation of one of her poems that she wrote for her youngest daughter:

• We shall prepare the path for you and your children
• We shall fight now so that you shall survive
• We shall die now so that you shall live

To find out more about the work of Suraya and her team, go to the Voices of Women Organisation website.

This article is written by a guest writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Amnesty International Australia.

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Learn more about Amnesty International's Human Rights Innovation Fund. There are four funding rounds each year - the next closes 30 November 2011.