The Human Rights Ripple Effect
Victories provide lessons, strategies, connections and inspiration to others struggling with similar problems, and video can help maximize these positive ripple effects.
Human rights successes are hard-won, require the coordinated efforts of many people working in solidarity — often across backgrounds, sectors, and even international borders—and are often overlooked by mainstream media, which focuses on the disastrous here, now, and clickable. But N-Map sees successes all the time. And we use video and other media not just as a means of winning some of the toughest cases and campaigns within the human rights movement, but as a way to amplify those successes in order to create a ripple effect. How? By working in the grassroots.
You’ve heard about how bad the global climate is for human rights. You’ve heard of the UN, sure. But have you heard of Gabino Vicente? The man who helped stop a hydroelectric dam? No? Read on.
Back in 2015, N-Map had the privilege of documenting a human rights victory in which ordinary citizens from Oaxaca, Mexico worked together with their elected officials, allies at Mexican NGOs and international human rights lawyers to protect their land and water rights. In 2011, a hydroelectric plant threatened to contaminate the only locally available source of clean water for several rural villages. Residents feared the hydroelectric plant would devastate the social and economic fabric of their lives. After identifying who was financing the hydroelectric plant, local citizens and their advocates went directly to the U.S. financial institution backing the project, and filed an official complaint to have their voices heard. The complaint led to a negotiation, and ultimately the cancellation of the project, which was a resounding victory for the communities.
We became involved in the case when Accountability Counsel—the human rights lawyers who supported the communities in their research, complaint, and negotiation process—asked N-Map to produce a video explaining how this innovative approach to justice enabled a historic success. Gabino was one of the Oaxaca community leaders who participated in the effort, and in working with him it became clear that they also wanted to share their story with their neighbors in the region and beyond, in order to warn their fellow citizens of potential vulnerability to similar projects.
Gabino hoped that sharing his community’s story would educate their neighbors about their rights to information and decision-making in development projects that directly impact them. He also hoped that sharing his community’s success would inspire others by demonstrating the power of collective action and solidarity.
We agreed that although a community video was not part of our original plan, producing an additional video accompanied by a multi-faceted distribution strategy could help these communities achieve their goals. We filmed additional interviews and created a video crafted around the community’s key messages to their local target audiences. Gabino wanted to take the video directly to other communities, so we created a DVD that he could use to organize public screenings in rural communities, as well as a distribution strategy that targeted local media outlets, public officials, and potential NGO allies. We also helped Gabino create a Facebook page to serve as an information hub on this issue and help consolidate support for this victory. (Facebook, the community advised, was how most people receive news and information).
Gabino worked with FUNDAR and several other Mexican NGOs to host a screening of the video at a community center in Santa Ursula, Oaxaca, Mexico. Five hundred community members, local politicians, and N-Map’s Mexico City-based project manager Jesus Robles Maloof attended the screening, which was designed to educate community members about the ongoing struggle to maintain control over their resources.
Gabino described the audience’s reaction as positive, saying “people were very surprised because although they know their own reality, seeing it in a documentary, you see how spectacular it is.”
The screening received local and national press coverage, with articles in at least eight publications and 5,000 views of the video through social media about the event. To Gabino, the event was successful in showcasing the importance of the community’s efforts. He hopes that the video and press coverage from the screening will inspire other communities to protect their resources and livelihoods. “To see it finished I was very happy and convinced once again that the fight is strong and worthy,” he said.
At N-Map, we continue to be excited about the positive ripple effects of using video to share stories and lessons across communities affected by human rights abuses. This belief underpins our approach to fighting abuses by mining companies, where we have created a series of videos that feature stories from communities around the world who have defended their rights in the face of such destructive projects. We then take those videos into rural communities where mining is slated to begin as a way to share lessons from community to community.
As we continue to add more community-facing videos to our portfolio, we have Gabino and others in Oaxaca to thank for showing us, and the world, that video can go a long way when it comes to educating and empowering citizens to effectively fight even the biggest of giants: transnational corporations.
In doing so, Gabino has also helped to show that the human rights movement isn’t comprised of seemingly elite officials in UN conference rooms or international courts. The movement is Gabino, it’s you and your neighbors and your scrappy neighborhood NGO. The movement is created by the ripple effect that you start.
