A Methodology for HDHRC Thematic Rapporteurs

Submitted by Joseph Schechla, HIC-HLRN

The human rights lessons, strategies and tools presented, shared and developed at WSF VII will be valuable for further building the human rights movement and the relations necessary for its maintenance. Therefore, the HDHRC has proposed to engage a rapporteur for each of the broad themes. Each of the rapporteurs will report back in writing to the community of participants about the proceedings of her/his the HDHRC at WSF. The subsequent reports also will include the lists of participants—in the strategically oriented activities—and an inventory of guides and tools presented and/or developed at the Caucus. The participants—and others—can use these products in their further struggles.

Thanks to the service of the thematic rapporteurs, the HDHRC in WSF initiative will have an afterlife and an added value toward achieving the purpose of instrumentalizing the practical human rights solutions arising from the World Social Forum. Based on the thematic rapporteurs reports, the HDHRC organizers and willing participants would be able to form a follow-up functions (a committee?) to assess and incorporate the lessons of HDHRC in WSF in the future human rights planning and programming of WSF events.

By this HDHRC initiative the process is developing more deliberate, strategic and sustainable outcomes. The WSF originated as just a “space” at which to air and exchange views, but with no structured products, no common position, not WSF statement. While that method provided for much freedom and diversity of outcomes, it also left much to chance. Mindful of the tremendous investment of resources and time, a trend within WSF seeks more assurances that the experience leads to some measurable result. The “Methodological Guidelines for WSF” provide for the fourth full WSF day to be reflective, whereby participants assess the challenges, available strategies and alliances to carry the movement forward. This is arguably desirable especially as WSF will take on new forms and intervals, meeting once biennially, instead of annually.

During the WSF 2007, partners decided to establish the rapporteur mechanism explicitly to the follow-up process (by committee or otherwise) to act on the lessons and outcomes arising from the rapporteurs’ reports and assessments to evaluate the thematic and “local struggle” events in the following aspects:

Organization and logistics,
Pedagogical method and value,
Quantity and quality of new ideas and strategies,
Potential for new public and relationships arising from the events.

While this appears to be a case of “simultaneous development” whereby two similar innovations arose independently at the same time, the HDRC process differed in three ways from the general WSF call to reflect on Day 4: (1) the HDHRC initiative deliberately aims to go a step further than the “Methodological Guidelines” to seek an monitor the practical learning value of our self-organized events, (2) the rapporteur method makes the assessment and data collection process coincide with the events, so as not to require everyone to stop networking in order to draw lesions from the process and, therefore, (3) the rapporteur method makes it less of a mass participatory assessment and strategy-documenting process. Now the whole WSF will stop expounding and start reflecting on Day 4 for a mass review of challenges, strategies and Alliances; however, to date the methodology of that WSF-organized process has yet to emerge.

The centrally organized Day 4 gives rise to questions for the HDHRC approach, including a wonder if the rapporteur process and the generalized reflection process would be redundant. While it remains unclear how the WSF organizers will orchestrate the Day 4 reflection, it is doubtless that some kind of responsible person or coordinating function for that process will be inevitable. It the HDHRC scenario, the rapporteurs will be assigned well in advance and prepared with guiding observations already before Day 4 arrives. In that sense, the envisaged HDHRC rapporteur method should fit well in the general WSF methodological plan and ensure the best possible results for those engaged in HDHRC events, already categorized in themes that are more coherent than the rambling titles identifying the nine “terrains,” now termed as “objectives for action.”

At the 22–23 October 2006 HDHRC meeting at Nairobi, the participants decided, by acclamation, the following recommendations and actions:

Not to leave the snowball process to chance [SO]
Develop a tool to relate/integrate those six principles/themes in the WSF thematic program
Determine outreach (HDHRC ambassadors) to other themes
HDHRC needs to approach themes and others events in WSF recognizing the limitations of human rights
Sponsors of self-organized HDHRC events with “transversal” themes should inform the Secretariat under which theme to consider the activity, so as to ensure that the respective rapporteurs
Mainstream gender equity issues [SO]
HDRC theme organizers will promote the aggregation of events with human rights content within the HDHRC
Rapporteur and/or sponsoring organization should cull from the HDHRC program an inventory of activities in the HDHRC related to that theme
Rapporteur and/or sponsoring organization should cull another list from all WSF activities related to their theme, but not explicitly billed as human rights struggles
Sponsoring organization will prepare a final one-page problem statement to accompany the two thematic HDHRC lists
Video reporting will take place in HDHRC, like that done at Mumbai’s WSF IV, thus, making it possible to distribute a record [perhaps with annexed rapporteurs’ reports]
Need ToR and format for lists and reporting for rapporteurs on each theme [JS].

With these thoughts in mind, I offer the following guidelines (ToR) for the rapporteur functions.

Qualities and qualifications

The HDHRC rapporteur is best characterized as a function, rather than an individual person. One very energetic person might be able to cover both the thematic seminar and all related self-organized events in the Caucus, but the likelihood remains that several related events will be simultaneous and impossible for a lone person to follow. Nonetheless, the actual rapporteur should be an individual who holds the personable duty to ensure that the necessary information is collected, processed and analyzed before, during and after the WSF.

Predictably, the findings of each aspect (organization, pedagogy, strategies and alliances) also will require some delegation of tasks. Therefore, the organization(s) assuming responsibility for the thematic seminar and, consequently also, the corresponding thematic rapporteur, will have to make the management choice of how to delegate any tasks beyond the capacity of one person. Naturally, each theme will pose different circumstances, owing to the number and type of self-organized events in that theme. Some related events may coincide in time more under one theme than another. More or fewer events might have compatible themes and purposes, thus, lending themselves to pre-WSP aggregation, or an unanticipated convergence with another event, cancellations, or even an act of God (as potentially arising from the “faith (belief) and cultural diversity” themed events).

The rapporteur as a function, therefore, would have to bring together a variety of essential traits. The ultimately responsible party(ies) should be:

Recognized as competent and knowledgeable in the subject of the human rights theme
Understanding of the global/comparative dimension of the theme
Familiar with social movements and the WSF process
Proven competent to analyze and conceptualize well
Strategic minded
Skilled in verbal (written and oral) communication
A clear, correct and succinct writer of an international language
Aptitude for applying strategic planning criteria
Able to meet production deadlines
Otherwise free of other constraining WSF responsibilities and conflicting time commitments

Desirable traits, although not absolutely necessary, would include:

Previous strategic planning experience
Being conversant in more than one language
Punctuality
Already-secured travel funding
Availability for consultation in the follow-up.

Activities:

The rapporteur relates closely to the thematic seminar coordinators’ role at several points. While the theme organizers recruit participation under their respective HDHRC theme, they also will take inventory of the human rights-based events in the Forum. That inventory will guide the theme organizers to (1) promote aggregation of compatible self-organized HDHRC-related events, (2) to appreciate the emerging subthemes emerging in a particular HDHRC theme and (3) foresee the general WSF events, including those posing opportunities to introduce useful and constructive human rights tools and arguments.

From the theme organizers’ programming process, the rapporteur will prepare two final lists for WSF participants. The first list will summarize the events under that HDHRC theme as a guide for those interested. The other will be a list of the WSF events outside HDHRC under that particular theme as a guide for human rights “ambassadors” in WSF. The HDHRC Secretariat may be able to assist, but certainly to corroborate the information going onto the HDHRC-themed list. The second list likely will be producible only in the final days (moments?) before the Forum.

The rapporteurs will participate and briefly appear in their particular thematic seminar as an introduction to the participants, but also to speak about some early observations about the program, emerging strategies and/or alliances related to that HDHRC theme. S/he would announce also the Day 4 process, where participants will review those issues.

The rapporteur will attend and observe in all the events self-organized under her/his particular HDHRC theme. Ideally, the rapporteurs likewise would follow the other WSF events related to that theme outside HDHRC. That function is important especially in proffering ideas, opportunities and tools for future alliance building, as well as assessing challenges and assessing the relative pedagogical qualities in WSF 2007. It will be essential for the rapporteur to note strategic lines and collect any lists of recommendations and/or conclusions from the self-organized events. List of participants, with emails, would be essential to ensure the tools for follow-up are incorporated into the rapporteurs’ report.

The documented outcome of a single event may involve collecting e-mail lists, tracking working groups spontaneously formed within a workshop, and may have several specific networking results for a single theme. (For example, thematic and local struggles related to land may result in a new or expanded network of pastoralists and their supporters. Likewise, migration struggles may generate a global axis of individual and groups concerned with the abuse of refugees.) These would require some commitment to make sure that the potential social capital is developed and that some responsible party take responsibility for maintaining those connections.

The Outcomes

After attending and observing, the rapporteurs’ function turns into a process with an end product. On Day 4, the rapporteur will have to attend the participatory reflection on the challenges, strategies and alliances. The rapporteur will add and, if necessary, reconcile those expressions with her/his findings over the three previous days. Some theme organizers may design the Day 4 process to involve the rapporteurs to differing degrees. At a minimum, however, the rapporteurs should deliver concluding observations about the organization, pedagogy, strategies and alliances manifesting under the particular HDHRC theme at WSF 2007.

With some deviations of order and emphasis, the rapporteur reports all would share a common format, or common elements. They would assess the lessons learned from the common four criteria of:

Organization and logistics,
Pedagogical method and value,
Quantity and quality of new ideas and strategies,
Potential for new public and relationships arising from the events.

The third listed criterion related to strategies should be understood such that the rapporteurs assess as much as possible the articulated or latent challenges with their constituent threats and opportunities. That suggestion not only satisfies the WSF 2007’s Day 4 methodology, it also promotes strategic-planning criteria necessary for a SWOT analysis.

The rapporteur will submit a timely report memorializing the activities under the particular theme and analyzing the four classifications of lessons learnt. The reports should be of a similar and manageable length, not exceeding 20 pages. The temporary HDHRC Secretariat function will conclude by receiving and distributing, publicizing and/or web mounting the rapporteurs’ final reports.

Follow-upIn general, the follow-up should involve a committee or small group of committed individuals and/or organizations, basing their efforts on the rapporteurs’ reports. Their work would not duplicate the function or substance rapporteurs’ work, but rather ensure that the practical lessons and social capital accumulated in 2007 serve to build the WSF HDHRC activities at WSF VIII, as well as benefit rights-based struggles throughout the intervening biennium.