Instituting Accountability - Models for anti-corruption and increased transparency
The Initiative was developed in response to the growing need for an independent, non-governmental human rights organisation focusing on the rights of all persons in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and elsewhere, irrespective of race, religion, sex, political persuasion or other belief or opinion. It works towards promoting accountability and guaranteeing the rule of law by assisting in bringing perpetrators to justice through human rights advocacy and training. By strategically submitting test cases to international judicial bodies, including the European Court of Human Rights and relevant UN mechanisms, our work forces transparency from governments and corporations, and enhances the rule of law. The methods and tactics applied have been developed through numerous fact-finding and trial observation missions, research and litigation. The Initiative monitors the human rights situation in the Kurdish regions, forms bonds with regional organisations and presses for the creation of a wider democratic platform for discussion. It believes in a rights-based approach to development, wherein human rights and poverty reduction programmes are intrinsically linked in order to deliver equitable and sustainable change. In this regard, the Initiative as demonstrated through its integral involvement in the Ilisu Dam and Baku-Ceyhan (BTC) campaigns, works to promote transparency and accountability in development practise. Finally, our consistent presence in the regions for trainings enable human rights defenders and lawyers to effect change themselves and not just rely on international intervention. Our primary beneficiaries/ target groups are the victims/ survivors of human rights violations in the Kurdish regions, and in-country human rights defenders/ organisations advocating on their behalf, often themselves the targets of abuse.
About You
Location
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Your idea
Focus of activity
Advocacy
Year the initative began (yyyy)
1994
Positioning of your initiative on the mosaic diagram,
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Absence of Rule of Law
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Shift Power Outside the Corrupt System
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic:
EC Photo WinnerWe find it slightly difficult to choose one over the other. I would say our primary focus has 2 components, which includes absence of Rule of Law and Lack of accountability and transparency. We respond with a multi-disciplinary approach, with each part weaker as a stand-alone. It's only the sum of all efforts that makes us effective and innovative.
Name Your Project
Instituting Accountability - Models for anti-corruption and increased transparency
Describe Your Idea
The Initiative was developed in response to the growing need for an independent, non-governmental human rights organisation focusing on the rights of all persons in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and elsewhere, irrespective of race, religion, sex, political persuasion or other belief or opinion. It works towards promoting accountability and guaranteeing the rule of law by assisting in bringing perpetrators to justice through human rights advocacy and training. By strategically submitting test cases to international judicial bodies, including the European Court of Human Rights and relevant UN mechanisms, our work forces transparency from governments and corporations, and enhances the rule of law. The methods and tactics applied have been developed through numerous fact-finding and trial observation missions, research and litigation. The Initiative monitors the human rights situation in the Kurdish regions, forms bonds with regional organisations and presses for the creation of a wider democratic platform for discussion. It believes in a rights-based approach to development, wherein human rights and poverty reduction programmes are intrinsically linked in order to deliver equitable and sustainable change. In this regard, the Initiative as demonstrated through its integral involvement in the Ilisu Dam and Baku-Ceyhan (BTC) campaigns, works to promote transparency and accountability in development practise. Finally, our consistent presence in the regions for trainings enable human rights defenders and lawyers to effect change themselves and not just rely on international intervention. Our primary beneficiaries/ target groups are the victims/ survivors of human rights violations in the Kurdish regions, and in-country human rights defenders/ organisations advocating on their behalf, often themselves the targets of abuse.
Innovation
Description of initiative
The Initiative was developed in response to the growing need for an independent, non-governmental human rights organisation focusing on the rights of all persons in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and elsewhere, irrespective of race, religion, sex, political persuasion or other belief or opinion. It works towards promoting accountability and guaranteeing the rule of law by assisting in bringing perpetrators to justice through human rights advocacy and training. By strategically submitting test cases to international judicial bodies, including the European Court of Human Rights and relevant UN mechanisms, our work forces transparency from governments and corporations, and enhances the rule of law. The methods and tactics applied have been developed through numerous fact-finding and trial observation missions, research and litigation. The Initiative monitors the human rights situation in the Kurdish regions, forms bonds with regional organisations and presses for the creation of a wider democratic platform for discussion. It believes in a rights-based approach to development, wherein human rights and poverty reduction programmes are intrinsically linked in order to deliver equitable and sustainable change. In this regard, the Initiative as demonstrated through its integral involvement in the Ilisu Dam and Baku-Ceyhan (BTC) campaigns, works to promote transparency and accountability in development practise. Finally, our consistent presence in the regions for trainings enable human rights defenders and lawyers to effect change themselves and not just rely on international intervention. Our primary beneficiaries/ target groups are the victims/ survivors of human rights violations in the Kurdish regions, and in-country human rights defenders/ organisations advocating on their behalf, often themselves the targets of abuse.
Innovation
Because of our unique commitment to working across the Kurdish regions on human rights within the established international framework - without political ambition or affiliation - the Initiative has developed into one of only a few independent non-political organisations dedicated to human rights within the Kurdish regions. Careful not to duplicate the work of other organisations, national or international,, we activate long-term strategies designed to facilitate human rights advancement within the Kurdish regions, whilst achieving tangible redress for past violations. We regularly follow up through fact-finding and trial observation missions, and these continuous missions remind beneficiaries as well as officials and armed groups that there is a spotlight on their activity, forcing a certain level of acountability over the long term. Our work includes advocacy for improved access to rights under the most relevant international legal standards, for example access to land and water. Through engagement we maintain pressure on the leaders of national governments, international financial institutions, the EU and the private sector to advocate for the prior consent of locals before moving ahead with any development projects affecting local populations right to access to land and water. Our engagement with the Ilisu Dam and BTC-Pipeline campaigns has helped to promote sustainable development practise and institute structures for consultation and complaint. As demonstrated by the case brought against the European Commission [Korkmaz v Commission (T-2/04)], through international litigation we have sought to place, not only regional but also international responsibility for the violations committed in connection with the planning of these projects, for example the violation of 135 World Bank policies.
Delivery Model
We have a commitment to transfer knowledge to the region to effect permanent change. The target population is reached through a variety of methods and programmes including field missions, legal assistance and cross-regional strategies training for domestic human rights lawyers and advocates. Through fact-finding and trial observation missions the Initiative maintains grassroots links with survivors of human rights abuses and regional partner organisations involved in the fight for human rights on the ground. Field missions provide a channel of communication between the Initiative and individuals and groups in the Kurdish regions; through field missions we will be made aware of cases of human rights violations from a combination of sources, including accounts from survivors of human rights abuse, their families and their advocates, and from discussions and referrals from our partner organisations. Our field missions enable people in the Kurdish regions to communicate their stories and concerns to an independent human rights organisation, just as these accounts help measure the impact of our involvement in the regions. We employ a wide range of tools in sharing information, building capacity and raising public awareness of human rights abuses and consequently in adding pressure on governments to reform. Recently, the Initiative has opened a regional office in Diyarbakir, Turkey, and many of our publications are translated into languages other than English, including Kurdish and Turkish, in order to reach the regional populations. With the opening of the new regional office in Diyarbakir we strive to increase our local translations for more appropriate local circulation. The Initiative operates an international Fellowship programme which allows for exceptional candidates from the regions to work at our headquarters in London for the duration of six months. This programme facilitates our contact with people on the ground and allows for greater mutual collaboration.
Key Operational Partnerships
As an Initiative responding to needs, all activities are devised in collaboration with related organisations and advocates at the local, regional, national and international levels. The Initiative has formed working partnerships with a number of locally based and international human rights organisations and enjoys regular collaboration and effective information sharing with a network of diverse NGOs, governments and human rights groups, in the regions and internationally. We retain legitimacy by trying to identifying the political and non political affiliations of partner organisations, while maintaining overall responsibility for project implementation and by not engaging in any formal financial relationship with them. We recently partnered with the European Parlaiment to study the increase of suicide amongst Kurdish women. The team members included members of the KHRP staff, partner organisations working on women’s advocacy and members of the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales. The close collaboration further enables domestic advocates to gain the knowledge-and from that-the confidence required, to prepare them to take the lead in bringing cases to the ECtHR or submitting complaints to relevant UN mechanisms whilst affording international advocates the opportunity to understand the effectiveness and availability of domestic remedies. This iniative relies on the expertise of all its partners, including legal, social service, labour, local government and media organisations.
Impact
Financial Model
The initiatives of KHRP are of a pro-bono nature and as such are available to all beneficiaries, regardless of economic or social status. Judgments from the European Court of Human Rights do pay some of the expenses of local lawyers, but most of our work relies of the voluntary contribution of renowned and dedicated specialists in the fields of law, economic development, archaeology, forensic, medical, & social scientists, psychologists and other medical doctors, as well as journalists, artists and others from relevant fields.
What percentage, if any, of the total operating costs does earned income (from products, services, or other fees) represent?
10.5
How is the initiative financed? Is it financially self-sustainable or profitable? How much do beneficiaries contribute?
t is predominantly financed through grant income from major long-term donors, comprising governments, trusts and private foundations/ institutions, who provide regular funding for one or more years at a time.
As a not-for-profit, needs-based initiative, the work targets local NGO/ CSO networks to build in-country capacity and sustainability. Expenses related to casework are reimbursed to local lawyers by the European Court, but their time as well as the international team’s time is not reimbursed, and therefore funding subsidies will continue to be needed.
Despite some legislative reform, the continued urgency of this initiative is underlined by the increasing criminalisation of in-country advocates and the considerable personal risks they face. Therefore, although local partners’ staff, volunteers and International Fellows serve as co-implementers of the initiative, they are also themselves targets of human rights abuse and are thus direct beneficiaries of this work. The nature and extent of collaboration varies between partners, from providing expert up-to-date advice/ information on national law/ domestic remedies, to helping determine the types of trainings/ missions most needed.
It is financially sustainable because all of the work undertaken is pro-bono. An established Legal Team of 60 European and regionally-based lawyers, plus Advisory Board and Patrons, contribute their time and wide-ranging expertise. It is further able to rely on an extensive contribution from volunteers and interns internationally. This allows the initiative to impact far reaching change, relative to its small UK-base. Further, the initiative seeks to retain legitimacy by trying to: identify and work with non-political partners; maintain overall responsibility for project implementation; not engage in any formal financial relationship with partners and not accept any funding, from governmental or non-governmental sources, in the Kurdish regions.
Effectiveness
Over the past 15 years there have been whole-scale changes in how complaints are dealt with in the regions. The case of the Kurds has been put on the international agenda through the Initiative’s use of international litigation, and social, economic, cultural and environmental issues have become issues for UN Special Rapporteurs and the European Union. Through the Initiative’s coherent and strategic programme of litigation and advocacy, precedents have been established, not only influencing legislation and policy in the regions, but throughout all 46 Council of Europe member states. Our body of recommendations and rule-based protocols covers virtually every area of good governance. This is not just generic but related to the region and to specific events. We have assisted in taking cases to the ECtHR on behalf of more than 500 applicants from Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and in over 90 per cent of these cases that have reached judgment, the ECtHR has held that the Governments in question had breached the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).Our work has influenced new dimensions of international law,, and the cases we have assisted are frequently referenced in international law books and by the Council of Europe, European Parliament, the UN and the US State Department. Our involvement with the Ilisu Dam and the BTC-Pipeline campaigns has placed regional environmental issues on the international agenda. Our work with the Ilisu Dam campaign resulted in the adoption by the UK Export Credit Guarantee Department of mandatory environmental and development standards, just as our objections motivated the Trade and Select Committee of the Commons, to note the ‘deplorable and counter-productive lack of transparency’ surrounding the preparation of the funding of the Ilisu Dam project. In relation to the damaging effects of the BTC-Pipeline we have brought litigation before the European Court of Justice [Korkmaz v Commission (T-2/04)]
Which element of the program proved itself most effective?
The Initiative’s strategic litigation unit has proven to be highly successful in influencing international law. In 1997, in a seminal judgment by ECtHR, in a case assisted by the Initiative [Aydin v Turkey, 23178/94, [1997] ECHR 75], it was ruled that the rape and physical ill treatment of women while in police custody constituted torture in violation of Article 3 of the ECHR. In a judgment in another assisted case [Aksoy v Turkey, 21987/93 [1996] ECHR 68], the ECtHR reduced the maximum lengths of time that a person may be held in police custody. Another successful Initiative programme has been the arrangement of trainings aimed at building the capacity of in-country advocates to utilise ECHR and UN mechanisms. KHRP has organised trainings in the regions, including in Diyarbakir (Bar Association) and Van, Turkey, and in Yerevan, Armenia. In this regard the introduction of cross-regional strategies training has proven to be hugely successful. These trainings underline the efforts of our initiative to develop a more sophisticated curriculum suited to both new and repeat trainees. The sessions are designed to foster reciprocal learning among former trainees who already have some advanced technical experience or knowledge base.
Number of clients in the last year?
Due to the nature of the work, it is difficult to quantify the exact number of clients, since local lawyers, themselves targets of rights violations, are likely to have participated in trainings, been the recipients of publications, and also to have brought legal cases on their own behalf. However, based on what is to follow, last year this initiative will have assisted approximately 1,051 individuals.
The project’s strategic litigation sought redress for victims/ survivors of torture; and violations of the right to life, to a fair trial, freedom of expression and of association, denial of access to domestic remedies; and the internal displacement of Kurdish minorities in Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Through its five submitted cases, based on substantive violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, 21 new applicants were represented before the European Court of Human Rights. A further 15 victims/ survivors were represented in judgments obtained in six cases. Approximately 90 victims/ survivors were represented in 48 ongoing cases at various stages of the proceedings at the European Court. Meanwhile, well over 100 potential applicants, lawyers, and NGOs within London and the regions were further provided with expert advice/ testimony in legal cases.
Elsewhere, through its bedrock capacity-building seminars, 125 in-country advocates were trained. Of these 7 benefited from the initiative’s first ever, and hugely successful, cross-regional training in London. Meanwhile, responding to the pattern/ nature of reported rights violations, the initiative devised a further four seminars to build the capacity of in-country advocates to utilise ECHR and UN mechanisms, including two trainings on women’s rights. Finally, 17 fact-finding and trial observation mission and other research reports were published and disseminated among 700 local human rights advocates/ trainers for public awareness and to serve as education resources.[
What is the potential demand?
The potential demand is unquantifiable. There are over 30 million Kurds in the Kurdish regions, and millions more in the Diaspora. Also, several bar associations from around the world invite our organisation to conduct trainings on how to use international mechanisms. Our scope and remit is far-reaching, and though limited to the Kurdish regions, is not exclusive in nature.
Scaling up Strategy
Our priority for the next 3 years is to use all tactics, from engagement & training to litigation to talk about the fundamental problem in the Kurdish regions: Discrimination against an entire ethnic/cultural group. Without addressing this problem head on, our work cannot progress further. In order to acheive this, we will look to bring a test case to the European Court of Human Rights to examine Article 14 (non discrimination); we will educate our partners on how to make this claim locally; in Kurdistan, Iraq, we will support the growth of civil society through trainings and skills transfer and promote the positive developments of democractic engagement and criticism. Furthermore, we will focus on making the link between violations and oppression visible to international community so that it can exert pressure to stop this. We intend to do this by carrying out trainings for Diaspora organisations in Europe on effective engagement with policy makers and by discussing the issue of self-determination in a new framework, as a right, but devoid of the talk of separatism, looking at how autonomy and self-determination are already possible, and helping to create public spaces in the European Parlaiment, and in Kurdistan, Iraq to discuss positive social discussion of these issues. Finally, we plan to further integrate our gender lens into all avenues of work, ensuring that both genders and sexes have meaningful roles and participation in the growth of our work.
Stage of the initiative
1
Expansion plan
Our plan comes out a 2004-05 feasibility study that includes expanding and institutionalising our work with the Kurdish Diaspora; growing our Regional office and developing our public awareness work through our new Feeney Centre for Research & Dialogue. We will work to make more explicit our work on collective rights for minority groups, and encourage deeper participation of regional partners. Currently, in process, our centre is being made virtual so that academics, researchers, policy makers and journalists can access our internal documents and working papers.
Origin of the Initiative
In 1992 Kerim Yildiz, a Kurdish former Amnesty Prisoner of Conscience & human rights postgraduate, and Michael Feeney, Cardinal Hume's advisor on refugees & Director of the Westminster Diocese Refugee Service, formed a network of leading lawyers to undertake pro bono casework to the European Court of Human Rights in response to the abysmal treatment of Kurdish populations, and the international community’s failure to effectively call Turkey,Iraq, Iran, Syria to account for it. They sent urgent action appeals and made submissions to the European Commission on Human Rights, OSCE and several UN mechanisms. In 1994, realising that the burden of proof lay with them, they developed a highly critical approach so that the violations would be accepted as fact internationally & sent international missions to document which resulted in indisputable and damning evidence for historical record.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
Main Obstacles to Scaling Up
The political situation in the regions makes it difficult for the Initiative to scale up its innovation. Though largely successful at striking the right balance between independent and tribal and political structures, it is not an easy plane to navigate. Furthermore, the fact that most international judicial bodies operate in English or in nation-state languages, makes the language barrier an issue. Often local advocates cannot use international mechanisms because of this barrier. Also, most of our financial support comes in the form of restricted donations through rigid grant-making bodies. This can make it difficult to plan/ modify our work, and definitely makes it difficult to establish an institution that is here for the foreseeable future.
Main Financial Challenges
Committed to maintaining our political independence, we do not accept any funding from the Kurdish regions, be it from governmental/ non-governmental sources, which would be the greatest potential source of unrestricted funding. We feel this is vital so as not to in any way comprise our integrity. Meanwhile, the availability of multi-year funding is still extremely limited, with many trusts, foundations and statutory funders only grants for one year at a time. Hence the two main obstacles are the difficulties in securing unrestricted and multi-year funding. Yet both are vital to giving us greater flexibility to expand the breadth/ reach of our core work to ultimately develop newer innovations and make long-term plans. We are interested in expanding existing streams, comprising foundations, governments and trusts funding & also continue to look for new ways to diversify our donor base and unrestricted funding through: social investors; individual donors (encouraging more tax-effective giving through payroll giving); events fundraising; a publications ’distribution strategy, book launches and speaker tours. Ideally, we would have a large gift of 'start-up' funds eg £500K to invest.
Main Partnership Challenges
In order to effectuate change over the long-term, non-partisanship is central to this initiative and the project’s ability to engage in effective dialogue with groups across the political spectrum. Therefore, one of the main partnership challenges is finding in-country NGOs and CSOs that operate free from political affiliation. On one hand, underdeveloped civil society across the regions and lack of rights awareness impedes understanding of the importance of political independence. On the other, with regional NGOs and CSOs often faced with intimidation and censorship from the authorities, the ability of the many organisations that want to operate freely and without fear of retribution, is severely hampered. Hence the politically charged nature of the ongoing conflict tends to hamper the development of independent NGOs.
How did you hear about this contest and what is your main incentive to participate?
Ashoka emailed us about the competition. We believe that it is important to promote transparency and the rule of law, and it is our organisational goal to lead by example. We hope that this competition will help spread awareness of our Initiative.
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