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Human Rights Documentation and Advocacy: A Guide for Organizations of People Who Use Drugs

  • Date
  • February 2009
  • Author
  • Karyn Kaplan

People who use illicit drugs face daily harassment, discrimination, and abuse—incidents that often go unreported, due to fears of reprisal and other harmful physical, mental, social, or legal consequences.

Human Rights Documentation and Advocacy: A Guide for Organizations of People Who Use Drugs aims to help activists recognize human rights abuses that are systematically conducted and condoned by state and non-state actors and silently suffered by people who use drugs. The guidebook focuses on providing activists with the tools necessary to develop a human rights advocacy plan, particularly by documenting abuses against people who use drugs.

The guide includes the following topics:

  • Starting human rights documentation
  • Guidelines for documenting human rights violations
    committed against people who use drugs
  • Guidelines for conducting interviews
  • Monitoring legal systems

Human Rights Documentation and Advocacy is the first book of the Harm Reduction Field Guide Series produced by the Open Society Public Health Program.

The complete guide is available in English and Russian.

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