The Human Rights Guide is a project that aims to educate and inform people about their rights by developing a universal, focused and simple online human rights self-help and education platform - the Human Rights Guide - targeted at broader sections of society. It combines human-centred content and visual learning elements to enhance perception and learning.
During 2023, the Human Rights Guide was expanded and updated with new content both in Latvia and in partner countries. It is very important to highlight that 4 new partners joined the Human Rights Guide community during 2023. Hence, the Guide is available in France, Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova.
New themes on "Civic Participation", "Health" and "Human Rights Restrictions" were developed and added to the Latvian Guide, as those are particularly relevant in the aftermath of the pandemic. New themes on "Migration and Asylum" and "Human Rights Institutions - European Court of Justice" were also developed and published online. More in-depth sections were developed for several topics, including new topics adapted and translated, and new summaries of European Court of Human Rights judgments.
The Guide's online platform has been up and running since 2016. In 2023, we started to work towards developing a new platform and content management system, migrating and testing all Guide themes and other content. The new platform is available in the partner countries as of November 2023, but in the Baltic States including Latvia it will be launched in the first half of 2024.
The Guide is increasingly being integrated into training programmes in formal and non-formal education, e.g. included as a teaching resource in the curricula of the University of Latvia and used in scientific publications and research by students and researchers in various countries around the world. It has been included and referred to in the materials of the National Centre for Education of the Republic of Latvia for secondary schools, educational materials of other ministries and educational institutions, reports of international organisations on Latvia and human rights in general, etc.
To coordinate the development of the Human Rights Guide and to train experts, 2 workshops were organised in 2023 - in Tbilisi, Georgia and Zagreb, Croatia - with the participation of representatives of all Guide partner countries.
During 2023, the content of the Guide website, the number of participating partner countries and users increased significantly and the website underwent major functional and visual improvements to ensure the proper functioning of the platform.
In 2023, the Guide's publicity and visibility activities continued to be implemented and expanded. The Guide's social media platforms are being actively used to reach more of the public! These platforms - Instagram and Facebook - have been regularly distributing the Guide's content since September 2022.
As a result of the expansion and publicity activities, the number of visitors and users of the Human Rights Guide has increased during 2023. Comparing all country platforms, the Latvian page saw the highest number of visitors.
The Human Rights Guide is produced by the non-governmental organisation Baltic Human Rights Society in cooperation with partner organisations. It is financially supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers' Nordplus Education Programme, the European Union's Erasmus+ Programme, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia and the Active Citizens Foundation. The Guide's patrons are the Ombudsmen of the Republic of Latvia, the Republic of France and the Republic of Moldova, as well as the Latvian National Commission for UNESCO.