Tactical Notebook ImageOverview

Tactical Notebooks provide first-person, detailed information on the use of a tactic and how it may be adapted to other situations.

The authors -- from diverse walks of life and human rights issue areas -- recount their personal experiences in these detailed tactical notebooks. Although their backgrounds and situations differ, all used innovative tactics to help address an urgent human rights situation. Read these notebooks to learn how a tactic was actually implemented, what factors influenced its use, and the challenges that surfaced along the way. We hope these examples of how tactics were used in sometimes dangerous, real-life situations will help you think tactically, to consider adapting these tactics to your own context, and adding these tactics to your own tactical repertoire.

Below you will find a table of all tactical notebooks currently available.  

  • Year refers to year of publication of notebook.
  • Title is the title of the notebook.
  • Region refers to the geographic region in which the tactic was implemented.
  • download files shows the various languages to which the notebook has been translated and allows you to download those notebooks from this page.

You can re-sort by clicking on the column headings(except last column).

Tactical Notebooks: In-depth case studies of successful tactics
Year of Publication Title Geographical Region Download files
2010 Art Spaces Hosting Activism: Using surplus resources to provide individual assistance and strengthen community engagement Western Europe and North America English (pdf) | Spanish (pdf)
2008 Building Child Friendly Villages: Using village strengths to combat child labour and other exploitative practices Asia English (pdf)
2008 Right to Know, Right to Live: Building a campaign for the right to information and accountability Asia English (pdf)
2007 Action Theatre: Initiating Changes Asia English (pdf) | Kyrgyz (pdf)
2006 Access to Justice: Creating local level, citizen action mediation bodies to ensure human rights Asia English (pdf) | Nepali (pdf) | Kyrgyz (pdf)
2006 Engaging Key Stakeholders: Ensuring the right to HIV/AIDS education and health care services Asia English (pdf) | French (pdf)
2006 Engaging the Media: Building support for minimum wage reform Asia English (pdf) | French (pdf)
2006 Human Rights Advocacy Utilizing Religious Perspectives and Opinion Leaders: Promoting National Human Rights Education in Indonesia Asia English (pdf) | Indonesian (pdf) | Kyrgyz (pdf)
2006 Police Training: Opening the door for professional and community-oriented policing Asia English (pdf)
2006 Research for Action: A region-wide participatory process to build participation, awareness & advocacy on trade policies Asia English (Grayscale pdf)) | English (Color pdf)
2006 Tandem©: Cross-cultural exchange between police and migrants Western Europe and North America English (pdf)
2006 Women Making Peace: Mobilizing Ourselves Against the War Latin America English (pdf) | Spanish (pdf)
2005 From Protest to Proposal: Policy Influence in Government Institutions Latin America Spanish (pdf) | English (pdf)
2005 Open Memory: Using inter-institutional cooperation to facilitate access to human rights Latin America English (pdf) | Spanish (pdf) | Bangla (pdf) | French (pdf)
2005 Popular Incentives Latin America Spanish (pdf)
2005 Reparations: Using civil lawsuits to obtain reparation for survivors of human rights abuses and to challenge the impunity of their abusers Western Europe and North America English (pdf)
2005 Taking on Our Own Defense: The Chiapas Network of Community Human Rights Defenders Latin America Spanish (pdf) | English (pdf)
2005 The Human Rights Education Program for Women in Turkey C/E Europe & Turkey English (pdf) | Russian (pdf) | Kyrgyz (pdf) | Armenian (pdf)
2005 Together We Are Stronger: Peru's National Coordinating Coalition on Human Rights Latin America English (pdf) | Spanish (pdf)
2004 A Mock Tribunal to Advance Change: The National Tribunal on Violence Against Women in Nigeria Africa English (pdf) | Bangla (pdf)
2004 Complementary Strengths: Western Psychology and Traditional Healing Africa English (pdf)
2004 Expanding Access to Justice: The Instituto Pro Bono in São Paulo Latin America English (pdf) | Russian (pdf) | Bangla (pdf)
2004 Familiar Tools, Emerging Issues: Adapting traditional human rights monitoring to emerging issues Western Europe and North America Russian (pdf) | Polish (pdf) | Ukrainian (pdf) | Kyrgyz (pdf) | English (pdf)
2004 Human Rights and the Corporation: The development of the Human Rights Compliance Assessment Western Europe and North America English (pdf) | Kyrgyz (pdf)
2004 I'll Walk Beside You: Providing emotional support for testifiers at the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission Africa English (pdf) | Bangla (pdf)
2004 International Monitoring Bodies: Powerful tools for leveraging local change Western Europe and North America English (pdf) | Russian (pdf) | Bangla (pdf)
2004 Leveraging the Money: Enforcing human rights by influencing financial institutions Western Europe and North America English (pdf) | Russian (pdf)
2004 Powerful Persuasion: Combating traditional practices that violate human rights Africa French (pdf) | Kyrgyz (pdf) | Bangla (pdf) | English (pdf)
2004 Promoting Human Rights Professionalism in the Liberian Police Force Africa English (pdf) | Spanish (pdf) | Russian (pdf)
2004 Public Audiences: Creating Space to Recognize Victims of Internal Conflict in Peru Latin America English (pdf) | Spanish (pdf)
2004 Rebuilding Communities: Training trauma survivors to help communities heal after atrocities Africa English (pdf) | French (pdf)
2004 Recipe for Dialogue: Corporate training for building relationships with Indigenous communities Western Europe and North America English (pdf)
2004 Sending Out an SMS: A rapid-response mobile phone network engages a youth constituency to stop torture fast Western Europe and North America English (pdf)
2004 Side by Side: Protecting and encouraging threatened activists with unarmed international accompaniment Western Europe and North America English (pdf)
2004 Society as Mediator for Conflict Resolution: Elkarri’s Peace Conference Western Europe and North America English (pdf)
2004 The Dilemma Demonstration: Using nonviolent civil disobedience to put the government between a rock and a hard place Western Europe and North America Russian (pdf) | English (pdf)
2004 The Power of Place: How historic sites can engage citizens in human rights issues Western Europe and North America English | Russian | Spanish
2004 Uncovering the Evidence: The forensic sciences in human rights Latin America Russian (pdf) | English (pdf)
2004 Using Government Budgets as a Monitoring Tool Africa English (pdf) | Russian (pdf)
2004 Using Popular Theater to Break the Silence Around Violence Against Women Africa English (pdf) | French (pdf)
2003 A Call to End Corruption: One Minute of Darkness for Constant Light C/E Europe & Turkey Turkish (pdf) | Bangla (pdf) | Russian (pdf) | English (pdf)
2003 Breaking the Silence: Using popular culture to engage young people in human rights reporting C/E Europe & Turkey English (pdf) | Georgian (pdf) | Turkish (pdf)
2003 Educating the Next Generation: Incorporating Human Rights Education in the Public School System C/E Europe & Turkey English (pdf) | Turkish (pdf) | Bengali (pdf)
2003 Making Allies: Engaging Government Officials to Advance Human Rights C/E Europe & Turkey English (pdf) | Cantonese (pdf) | French (pdf) | Bangla (pdf) | Spanish (pdf)
2003 Making Sense of the Information Wilderness: Library and Information Services for the Improvement of Human Rights Work C/E Europe & Turkey English (pdf) | Bangla (pdf) | Turkish (pdf)
2003 Making the Global Local: Applying Global Agreements to Local Enforcement of Human Rights Laws C/E Europe & Turkey Bangla (pdf) | Russian (pdf) | English (pdf)
2003 Making the State Pay: Mobilizing Public Resources for Victims of Human Rights Violations C/E Europe & Turkey English (pdf) | Russian (pdf) | Bangla (pdf)
2003 Plan B: Using Secondary Protests to Undermine Repression C/E Europe & Turkey English (pdf) | Turkish (pdf)
2003 Testing for Discrimination: Identifying and Prosecuting Human Rights Abuses C/E Europe & Turkey English (pdf) | Georgian (pdf) | Polish (pdf) | Russian (pdf) | Ukrainian (pdf) | Bangla (pdf) | Albanian (pdf) | Macedonian (pdf) | Serbian (pdf)