Canvasopedia

People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) worked with a coalition of civic organizations to survey the South Korea population in order to identify criteria meant to eliminate politicians and make them ineligible for election.  Corruption in Korea was so serious that it was the foremost obstacle hindering the progress of Korean society.  Korean political parties have remained unchanged and politicians do not represent the people’s interests. Instead, they exclusively pursue their own interests: power monopolized by politicians only.

The National Latino Alliance for the Elimination of Domestic Violence (Alianza) organizes annual marches across the country in memory of Gladys Ricart, a Dominican woman who was murdered in New Jersey by an ex boyfriend on her wedding day.  The Domestic Violence Bride's March seeks to attract media attention and raise community awareness of domestic violence.

On September 26, 1999, Augustin Garcia shot Gladys Ricart as she was being photographed with her wedding party.  Garcia was a respected leader in the New York’s Dominican community. 

WATCH has developed a highly effective court monitoring method involving citizen volunteers as a means of creating legal and policy system change and improving the administration of justice for victims of abuse. WATCH volunteers first entered a courtroom in Hennepin County, Minnesota (USA) in March 1993. Since that time WATCH trains 50 volunteers each year who, along with staff, monitor more than 4,500 court hearings regarding sexual assault, child abuse, and domestic violence cases. They are immediately recognized by the red clipboards they carry. These highly visible red clipboards serve to alert judges and court staff that they are being observed and monitored.

IPT provides an opportunity for India’s poor and vulnerable who otherwise do not have access to the regular courts and face the harshness of local authorities to voice their grievances.  IPT organizes tribunals either to stop existing violations, to highlight harmful legislations and to prevent further atrocities from taking place. The IPT’s objectives are to 1) promote alternative visions for the judiciary and the public 2) investigate cases of gross human rights violation and environmental degradation 3) highlight the plight of the oppressed.  The tribunals also bring legitimacy to the experiences of victims, and encourage communities to defend their rights.

The city government in Seoul, South Korea, created an online database to increase government transparency. Online Procedures Enhancement for Civil Applications (OPEN) was initiated and managed by the Seoul City Government to allow city residents to monitor civil applications through an online database. OPEN currently provides details on the status of applications made regarding 70 municipal government tasks identified as most prone to corruption, including housing and construction projects, environmental regulation and urban planning.

In the mid-1990s the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude publicly exposed the use of child domestic help by government officials in order to highlight the widespread problem of child servitude in India.

The use of children as laborers continues on a large scale in India, in spite of provisions in the Indian constitution upholding the rights of children and a number of acts that have been passed dealing with child labor. One common type of illegal child labor is as domestic help. Many government officials kept children as domestic help, despite rules forbidding the practice.

African Public Radio used its power as a media entity to influence individuals and groups who could help fix the situation in the Burundi’s hospitals, where poor people were being held against their will because they could not pay their bills. Eventually, in partnership with local NGOs, APR successfully pressured the government to order the people’s release.

In war-stricken Burundi, many cannot afford needed medical care. Adding to the problem, a general system breakdown in the 1990s reduced the state’s capacity to support the health system. Facing a budget crisis and growing debt, hospitals began to detain people who could not pay their bills. Because the hospitals felt they were being wronged by those who would not pay, they did not see this as a human rights issue.

Citizen Initiative for Constant Light mobilized 30 million people in Turkey to turn off and on their lights to demand that the government act against corruption. The action resulted from public outrage after a car crash openly revealed connections between government, police and the mob.

Turkey is a secular nation with a tradition of democracy. But it also has a tradition of human rights abuse. The influence of corruption extends throughout society through local patronage systems undeterred by any investigative reporting from a mass media industry, which is itself complicit in the corruption. As a result, the corruption issue has historically sparked only apathy and hopelessness in Turkish civil society.