About FACE Human Rights
The Challenge The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of
1948 sets the global standard for individual, national and
international behavior, but we are far from meeting it. As its name
suggests, the Universal Declaration is also meant to apply universally,
yet while no newscast about human rights abuses would be complete
without images of suffering children, children are both
disproportionately victimized by human rights abusers and
systematically underserved in efforts to improve human rights
conditions. While the voices of the adult survivors of war crimes,
domestic violence, religious repression, torture and the sex trade are
heard regularly in the media, and in national and international fora,
children have no voice. They are victims, objects of pity, but not
actors to raise their voices, literal or figurative, against the
violators of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This
invisibility is symptomatic of a far more widespread, deeper and more
pernicious indifference to young people in general as actors, not
objects, as citizens, not subjects in global society. To become
effective citizens, however—to be able to engage issues such as human
rights—young people must be able to inform themselves about what is
happening and educate themselves about how the system works and how to
engage it, since citizenship is about action and cannot be learned
passively. Put differently, around the world young people lack the
knowledge, skills and attitudes to be intelligently participatory local
and global citizens largely because they are not schooled to acquire
these essentials. Finally, as young people attempt to educate
themselves for their future as global citizens, they find little
available that meets their needs and their tastes. Global means the
Internet, but for now there is too much—and too little—for them there.
There are tens of thousands of sites, but none completely fulfill an
essential set of requirements: by and for young people, global in
source and scope of content, nonpartisan with expectations of high
journalistic standards but fully supportive of meaningful engagement,
fully interactive.
The Opportunity If this is the challenge, then the
opportunity is obvious: design a global, interactive human rights forum
to be operated by and for young people in such a way as to advance not
only their engagement in human rights issues, but also their engagement
as global citizens.
An international team of students and
faculty has seized the opportunity and created FACE Human Rights, an
international, interactive human rights forum through which students
can inform, educate and engage themselves in this critical issue. It
harnesses the power of the Internet to overcome geography and political
barriers to create a virtual, global ‘safe space’ in which young people
can share their personal experiences in the form of drawings,
photographs and testimonials; share information about conditions in
their own countries, developing crises and programs by NGOs; educate
each other about their rights under international laws and conventions;
and engage each other as global citizens by sharing ideas about how to
improve the quality of life for people around the world.
FACE
Human Rights is edited and managed by an international team of students
who work with an international advisory board of academics, journalists
and human rights specialists. Advisors, editors and contributors
connect via a powerful network in a virtual human rights community, but
underpinning FACE Human Rights are concerned human rights teams or ‘nodes’
all over the world. These nodes—some built around an NGO, some around a
school, some around a university journalism department, some around a
faith-based organization—are the ‘grassroots’ of FACE Human Rights. Our
global network includes nodes across the Balkans, Central Asia, the
Middle East, South Africa and the United States. If you’d like to
contribute to FACE Human Rights, please read our Editorial Guidelines.
Although virtual, FACE Human Rights has to live somewhere and that place is the Center for Global Security and Democracy (CGSD) at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
Nodes of FACE Human Rights
A "node" is a key structural unit of FACE Human Rights. Each node is
headed by a director, who is in charge of the overall organization and
management of the node. There may be multiple editorial positions
within a node with appropriate specialization of editors (academic
papers, testimonials, poetry, photography and artwork). A three-tier
system is used in each Editorial Team: Editors-in-Chief, Chairpersons
and Editors. A node may also have education and engagement components,
and experts in these areas organize and manage their activity locally
and coordinate regional efforts with the heads of the engagement and
education groups at other nodes. An outreach department in each
node recruits writers, artists, photographers and other contributors to
FACE Human Rights and maintains a regional network of contacts. Whether
to form a local marketing team and a local technical group in each node
and how to manage them depends on the specific character of each
particular region and is left to the discretion of the node director.
Each node team will enter outreach information in the main database. In
each node, submissions approved by the Editor-in-Chiefs will be saved
onto the main database as well as posted on the website.
Editorial Guidelines
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All works should be submitted by their authors. If an author is younger
than 13, he or she should send a submission through a parent, a
guardian or a teacher. Works will be accepted from third parties only
with the consent of the author.
-
All authors must provide the following information: name, age, place of
residence, brief description of the submission, type of issue
described, location of the human right issue/violation described,
contact information, reference contact. Institutional affiliation of the author is desirable but not necessary.
Submitted works should meet the following criteria:
a) Be related to the issue of human rights (human
rights in theory and practice, observance of human rights in different
parts of the world, human rights violations, achievements in the area
of human rights, etc.).
b) Be original. Plagiarized works will not be published.
c) Be of appropriate length: 2500 words for poems; 20 pages (size 12
font, double-spaced) for academic papers, testimonials and success
stories, with endnotes and bibliography not included in the above page
count; <....> for graphic files with artwork and photography. In
addition, the number of artwork and photography submissions is limited
to 25 per author. All written submissions may be accompanied by
photographs or artwork (see the guidelines for photography).
d)
Be submitted in electronic form. Occasionally, when such form of
submission is not possible, hard copies (both written and visual
pieces) should be sent by mail. In this case, only printed photographs
will be accepted. No film, please. Our postal address is:
Center for Global Security and Democracy
Department of Political Science, Hickman Hall
89 George Street
Rutgers , the State University of New Jersey
New Brunswick , NJ 08901-1411
e)
Be appropriate for all audiences in its language and content. We do
acknowledge that violence often attends human rights violations, and it
may be impossible to depict certain human rights infringements without
using harsh language. Yet, we request that you refrain from it–your
work will be read and viewed by people younger than yourself.
The Editorial Board will:
-
Post your submissions on the site or decline publication based on the
merit of the work and appropriateness of its language and content.
- Not return submissions.
- Not share submissions with third parties without the author's permission.
-
Have the right to use submitted works for projects related to CGSD and
FACE Human Rights, including but not limited to conferences, promotions
and advertisements.
NOTE: These guidelines are still in the process of development and are subject to change. |
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