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Program
The CI is a partnership of 18 development organisations (e.g., Ford
Foundation, UNICEF, USAID, Panos, Soul City, Rockefeller Foundation) seeking to
support advances in the effectiveness and scale of communication interventions
for positive development. The focus is across all major development issues,
including human rights, and the people and organisations involved in the full l
range of communication activities and strategies related to those issues - from
communication
for social change to media relations, from personal contact to advocacy, and
from mass entertainment to community radio.
Programme Experiences
Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR) - United States
Summary
The Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR) was launched in 2000 with the goal of
stopping abuse against Mexican immigrants on the United States-Mexico border and
demanding justice, equality, and human rights for these immigrants once they
have moved to the United States. Immigrants who have been trained to act as
local organisers take action in their communities to pursue human rights-based
awareness-building, networking, advocacy, and communication.
Main Communication Strategies
While BNHR does work to monitor law enforcement and to lobby for changes in
anti-immigration policies, the emphasis from its inception has been on
organising immigrant communities themselves so that they are aware of - and
empowered to exercise - their rights. BNHR began its work by offering meetings
to educate people about their human rights, but found that immigrants - fearful
of persecution for their legal status - would attend only one meeting and never
come back. The organisation thus moved beyond simple talks and began to prepare
people to become their own human rights promoters.
In order to build the capacity to carry out community-based human rights work,
BNHR offered training sessions. The training model and methodologies were
conceived of and tested within Latino communities (Mexicans, Centro Americans,
and South Americans); all materials are in Spanish. This training was designed
to provide the promoters not only with the educational values to internalise
rights and to educate their communities (collective dynamics to understand and
apply the United States Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration in its
local and practical reality), but offered them organisational values and
principles to build a highly participatory process to defend these rights
(internal democracy, accountability, consultation, etc).
Once trained, these promoters created self-sustaining Human Rights Community
Based Committees that, through time, created BNHR. The committees gather in
communities to read the Bill of Rights and to learn about universal human
rights. In addition, a youth group made up of teenagers from these communities
meets to learn about the Bill of Rights and talk about their own needs. In 2004,
they organised a summer camp where they painted a banner to communicate BNHR's
commitments, met farm workers from the region, and wrote and performed skits
about the constitutional amendments. Paola Rodríguez, a sophomore in high
school, explains, "In school they teach you about the Bill of Rights and you
never learn them...But at the Border Network summer camp, we learned about our
rights by acting them out."
However, the BNRH philosophy is not that rights come from the Constitution or
the United Nations; rather, rights are understood to arise from communities
themselves. During the first activity promoters use to sensitise their
communities, they ask participants to imagine that they are establishing a new
community. In response to the question, "What are the human needs that we need
to fulfill to have a dignified life?", they draw these needs on paper. As a part
of the activity, the promoters then take away their drawings, rip them up, and
throw them away. "Do you think those were your rights?" they ask the stunned
participants. "No. Those drawings represented your needs but they are not your
rights." This activity reflects the BNHR's conviction that a right is that which
is understood and defended, within a community.
BNHR, which is housed in an old abandoned factory in El Paso, Texas, is founded
on full participation of its members and promoters. All decisions are made in
assembly, by unanimous agreement of all the members. During the 2002 assembly,
committees collected their communities' perspectives to formulate 13 points of
struggle: permanent residency, constitutional rights, labour rights, dignified
housing, education, health, nutrition, public services, culture and language,
political participation, human mobility, dignity and respect, and peace and
justice. In 2003, approximately 800 people from 250 families in diverse
communities on the border in East El Paso and Southern New Mexico were
registered in the Network.
Members carry out various communication initiatives to raise awareness about
their rights and to mobilise community members to defend and protect those
rights. In October 2004, more than 200 men, women, and children marched in El
Paso, Texas, holding coloured flags painted with their 13 points of struggle.
The march was organised by BNHR who, along with ex braceros from the Farm
Workers Union and displaced workers from the Border Workers Association, "took
back" so-called "Columbus Day" and renamed it the "National Day of Immigrants,"
with a public forum in the morning, a march at midday, and a cultural festival
in the afternoon. During the morning forum, the immigrants met in the office of
the Farm Workers Union and one by one spoke out about the living conditions in
their communities. They addressed a panel made up of a representative from the
Mexican consulate, a civil rights lawyer, representatives from local dioceses, a
representative of a local congressman, and two social workers. This panel was
not present to speak, but, rather, to listen to the immigrants.
To cite another example, in December of each year, promoters apply what they
learned in the human rights training and then work within their own communities
to document cases of abuse. (BNHR saw that the common method of documenting
abuses - that is, waiting for people to go to our offices to report cases - was
not very effective, given the climate of fear and intimidation experienced by
members of border communities). Promoters put up tables in public places like
churches, schools and supermarkets; they also go door-to-door to collect
testimonies. These campaigns have been covered by local TV news stations, and
the results of the campaigns have been published in national newspapers such as
The Washington Times (USA) and La Jornada (Mexico City). A full report of the
campaigns was sent to several law enforcement agencies, local congressional
offices, and the United Nations.
Dialogue and advocacy work with those in positions of power is another programme
strategy. BNHR representatives travel regularly to dialogue with legislators in
Washington, DC (USA) and Mexico City (Mexico), asking members of congress in
both countries to promote more humane immigration policies. BNHR has also
engaged the immigrant community in dialogue with the Border Patrol as part of
its yearly human rights documentation campaign. As Martina Morales, regional
coordinator of BNHR in Southern New Mexico, explains, raids in her region were
greatly reduced after December 5 2003, when BNHR organised a community forum in
Anthony, New Mexico, for people to speak directly with Border Patrol authorities
and report violations of their human rights. Morales also recalls the first BNHR
assembly in 2001. Beforehand, members spoke with the local office of immigration
to announce that several buses full of human rights promoters (many of them
undocumented) would be arriving at the assembly, and they hoped no one would be
detained. Apparently, the buses arrived without problems.
Development Issues
Human Rights.
Key Points
The most frequent abuse reported by BNHR communities is that local police demand
papers when they detain people for speeding or some other traffic violation,
even when they are not authorised to do so. But the reports go beyond abuse by
police and immigration agents. A promoter indicates that "Many young people do
not go to high school because of discrimination and gangs. They get
disillusioned because they say they will never go to college." One young BNHR
member would seem to agree: "Today, the only thing we can do is work in
agriculture and other jobs where we would be paid minimum wage." Some young
children have been denied entry into public elementary schools, reports a member
whose 6-year-old nephew was kept out of school for a year because he did not
have papers. BNHR reports that access to health services is also a problem, not
only because of non-existent medical insurance for undocumented people but also
because of the conditions in which these often impoverished people live and
work.
Fernando García, BNHR's Director, explains that other social organisations
existing in the late 1990s in the El Paso region only fulfilled immediate needs
without trying to detain abuse, change practices, or educate the immigrant
community. "Our organizing tool is not based on solving every one of our
problems," he says. "The main tool is education about human rights and the
rights included in the U.S. Constitution." When García arrived in El Paso in
1998, he worked with the American Friends Service Committee's Immigration Law
Enforcement Monitoring Project. There, he realised that lack of knowledge of
immigrants' own rights was a key problem. For example, immigrants would run when
they saw a Border Patrol, an action which legally justified their detention, and
they did not know that they could remain silent when asked questions by an
immigration agent. "What we are fighting is a history of oppression, racism and
abuse that has created a culture of fear and violence."
Reflecting on several years of work, BNHR admits that immigration policy still
remains to be changed, but suggests that BNHR members no longer are so afraid:
"Now no one runs [from the Border Patrol]," claims García. Further, he says,
instead of paralysing people, the anti-immigrant policies imposed after
September 11 2001 moved immigrants to action: "Many social spaces fell apart at
that time, but that is when the Border Network grew most." BNHR documentation
indicates that illegal entries by immigration agents into homes of immigrants
have been reduced by 70% in communities where BNHR committees exist. In 2004,
BNHR carried out a brief survey through the Human Rights Committee of Vado, NM,
on the status of illegal entries and checkpoints for the area of Vado, Berino,
and El Cerro NM. Community members and BNHR organisers reported that during 2003
the checkpoints within these communities were discontinued and that the number
of reports on illegal entries dropped sharply in 2003-2004
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