#WikiForHumanRights: Help us document Human Rights and Youth standing up for them!

Leer este artículo en español.

In August, the Wikimedia Foundation announced a partnership with UN Human Rights to improve coverage of human rights related topics on Wikimedia projects. We are excited to announce our first activity for the partnership: A campaign called #WikiForHumanRights that will run from November 15-January 30! We’re inviting affiliates, individual volunteers, and anyone that might be interested to join us in the campaign to improve and add knowledge about human rights on Wikipedia across languages.  

What is the campaign? 

To pilot the collaboration with UN Human Rights, Wikimedia Argentina hosted an editathon in Buenos Aires with UN officials in July, building off their fantastic work with the WikiDerechosHumanos project. Now, we’re looking to expand that pilot into a global campaign. The campaign is focused on two key topics – expanding and adding articles about the UN Declaration of Human Rights and “youth standing up for human rights”.  

From November 15 to January 30, we’re asking volunteers, affiliates, and anyone else who might be interested to organize both on and off-wiki activities focused on improving and adding articles about these topics.

The Youth topic speaks to how human rights are relevant to current events. With 1.2 billion youth aged 15-24 years globally, accounting for one out of every six people worldwide, there are more adolescents and young people alive today than at any time in human history, and many of them are in the poorest countries or in contexts highly exposed. In the last few years, youth have frequently been major drivers of political, economic and social change.

Let’s make sure that these youth advocates are visible around the world on Wikipedia! Help us cover the major internationally visible youth involved human rights, like Greta Thunberg and the School Strike for the Climate, to less well known youth making a difference in different parts of the world. 

How can you get involved?

1. Help us build the list! 
   • We need your help identifying more topics related to youth involved in human rights for the list. We would like to represent many different languages and regions of the world.  To propose topics for the list, see instructions at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiForHumanRights/List#Adding_a_topic_to_the_Youth_Lists 
2. Organize an online or offline event: The core of every campaign in the Wikimedia movement is local Wikimedia organizers helping us spread the world and coordinate local events! We need your help now letting us know if you can:
   • Host an online campaign on your language Wikipedia! To learn more about hosting a local topical campaign see the kit here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiForHumanRights/Organize#Campaign 
   • Hold an in person editathon with local human rights organizations or other partners! To learn more, check out the kit here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiForHumanRights/Organize#Editathon
3. Promote the campaign starting Dec. 10: Help us amplify your efforts around the campaign and publicize it to wide audiences. We’ll be sharing a communications toolkit (including graphics) soon with suggestions on reaching out to folks about the campaign.
   • Reach out to local media and supporters: Journalists and the public can help add momentum to the campaign through storytelling and spreading the word.
   • Promote the campaign on social media: We’ll be using #WikiForHumanRights to promote the campaign on social media, once it launches on Dec. 10.

If you want to help in other ways or have questions, let us know on the open thread in Discuss Space or by emailing Alex Stinson <astinson@wikimedia.org> and Luisina Ferrante <educacion@wikimedia.org.ar>

If your community or affiliate is already running an activity (like an editing campaign, editathon, partnership or other activity) during the campaign and would like to include it in the campaign: please do! Contact us if you want to workshop your project in light of the theme! 

Stay tuned for other communications materials to help amplify the campaign on International Human Rights Day this 10th of December. 

Looking forward to having you involved! 

Have questions?

If you have questions, we are going to be hosting an office hour tomorrow (Tuesday). If you are interested in having another, or if you have general comments or questions, you can post them on the thread started in Discuss Space.