Report on the fulfillment of the project "Creation and maintenance of the Internet site ‘Human rights in Ukraine’"

The project was financed by the international foundation ‘Vidrodjennia’ and fulfilled by the Kharkov Group for human rights protection (KhG, in what follows).

1. The goal of the project

The goal of the project is the creation and permanent maintenance of the Internet site ‘Human rights in Ukraine’, which could be a powerful information source in the sphere of human rights and the history of human rights protection in Ukraine.

The project in intended for Internet users:

common Ukrainian citizens, who want to get answers about human rights;

members of human rights protection and other non-government organizations, lawyers, historians, etc. – for them the site will serve as an information source and library;

International organizations and embassies -- for them the site will be the source of information on the situation with human rights in Ukraine.

2. Assessment of short-term and long-term results of the project

The work on the site creation was started in the middle of March 2000, the first version was located in the Internet on 6 August 2000, and the announcement about the appearance of the site was published on 6 September. During September-December the site was updated weekly, sometimes mote often: 2-3 times a week. At the same time the site users were informed about the latest additions: we created three address lists for the distribution of summaries in Ukrainian, English and Russian. These summaries were sent by e-mail simultaneously with the additions. The address lists were compiled on the basis of polling of the KhG partners in Ukraine and abroad, as well on the basis of the correspondence with the site visitors. Moreover, the site and its separate components – periodicals ‘Prava ludyny’ and ‘Civil education’ – were registered at several search engines.

Thus, the short-term result of the project is the creation and regular updating of the first version of the information source, which includes the web-site ‘Human rights in Ukraine’ in Ukrainian and English, as well as the distribution service for sending the summaries of the additions to the site and for sending the electronic editions by the KhG via e-mail to all willing.

The total number of web-pages (files) – 1075 (data on 1 January 2001)

The size of the Internet resource – 20 MB (data on 1 January 2001)

The Ukrainian version consists of 11 sections, which are divided into 20 rubrics:

ORGANIZATIONS

CAMPAIGNS

The freedom of speech protection

The protection against torture and cruel treatment

Advertisements

RECOMMENDATIONS

CLAIMS TO THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS

FINANCING

KhG

PERIODICALS

The information and analytical bulletin ‘PRAVA LUDYNY’

The monthly bulletin ‘HUMAN RIGHTS. CIVIL EDUCATION’

The special issues of the bulletin ‘PRAVA LUDYNY’

The quarterly bulletin ‘FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND PRIVACY’ (FS&P)

The electronic edition ‘FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN UKRAINE’

EDITIONS

Editions by the Kharkov Group for human rights protection

DOCUMENTS

STUDIES

What is human rights protection?

Preventing torture and cruel treatment

Monitoring the freedom of speech and privacy in Ukraine

Security services under the constitutional democracies

Complex study of the situation with human rights in Ukraine

History of dissent in Ukraine

CIVIL EDUCATION

WE, THE PEOPLE… A CITIZEN AND THE CONSTITUTION (American textbook: 40 lessons on civil education)

METHODICAL NOTES BY UKRAINIAN TEACHERS

DISCUSSION OF THE PROJECTS OF CIVIL EDUCATION CONCEPTS



The English version consists of 4 sections, which are divided into 10 rubrics:

About Our Group

Campaign

Protection of the freedom of expression

Protection from torture and cruel treatment

Periodic Editions

PRAVA LUDYNY

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN UKRAINE

Research

What is Human Rights Protection?

Prevention of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment

Monitoring of the Freedom of Expression and Privacy in Ukraine

Security Services in a Constitutional Democracy

Analysis of status of Human Rights in Ukraine

History of dissent in Ukraine (1954-1988)

Electronic periodicals of the KhG are regularly places on the site:

Table 1

All the issues of the bulletin ‘Prava ludyny’ in Ukrainian and English for 2000, all issues of FS&P and ‘Civil education’ for 1999-2000, archived ‘Prava ludyny’ in Ukrainian for 1999 and all issues of ‘Prava ludyny’ in English are placed on the site.

It should be mentioned that additionally to the project, given to the ‘Vidrodjennia’ competition, two big sections were formed on the site: ‘Studies’ and ‘Civil education’. Five more sections are being developed now: ‘Organizations’, ‘Campaigns’, ‘Recommendations’ ‘Financing’ and ‘Documents’, which will be essentially complemented and widened during the second stage of the project fulfillment. We plan also to create the sections ‘Discussions’ and ‘Guide’, as well as the section ‘Public reception office’, in which the lawyers will answer the questions asked by the site users and other questions, which have interest for the public, appearing in the practical work of the KhG and similar organizations, which have interest for the public.

The long-term results of the project are: the creation of the site structure opened for further development and enriching, creation of the system for informing Ukrainian-, English- and Russian-language users about the changes on the site and forming the group of habitual site users that includes both old KhG partners and new organization and individuals; the group is widening all the time and, certainly, will wide further. To illustrate these statements it is necessary to consider the qualitative indicators of the site work.

By the data of the independent statistical counter (‘SPYLOG’), during the period from 11 September 2000 to 1 January 2001 (134 days) 1224 visits to the site were registered. Among them during the last month 312 new visitors appeared.

The following rubrics are visited most often:

- The site news or the pages mentioned in the news;

- The electronic edition of the information and analytical bulletin ‘Prava ludyny’

- The part ‘History of dissent in Ukraine’.

According to the statistical data of the same counter, the geographic allocation of the site visitors is such:

Ukraine — 65,8% ; the USA — 8,26%; Russia — 4,44% ; Germany — 3,82% ; European — 4,16% ; the Great Britain — 2,39% ; Canada — 2,32% ; France — 1,02% ; Poland — 1,23% ; Israel — 1,16%.

The number of persons, to whom the information is sent by e-mail, is shown in Table 2

Table 2

3. Describe in which way the fulfillment of the project improved the image of your organization, the creation of the network and separate parts within it, the increase in communications and cooperation with other national and international organizations (please comment this, having in view the goal of the project)

Owing to the fulfillment of this project, our organization managed to increase its communicative potential, to find new partners within Ukraine and abroad, to raise the run of our periodic editions approximately by 20%, the reason being that some readers prefer to read our editions in the Internet or to receive them by e-mail instead of snail-mail. That enabled us to include in our mailing lists new readers, who have no access to e-mail (the number of those willing to receive our publications always exceeded our financial potential).



4. Which difficulties and obstacles you have come across, if any, in the course of realizing the project? Was it needed to rearrange the stages of your project? If so, in which way you have found the way out?

First of all, processing the information, gathered by the KhG during 12 years of its existing, for placing on the site appeared to be more complicated than we expected, since the size was tremendous and we had difficulties in its structuring and transferring to the electronic form. By today we have managed to process not more than 30% of all information we have within the KhG. But here another problem has appeared: the site size has already achieved the planned 20 Mb, although all files exceeding 100 Kb are stored in zip-format. We can predict with assurance that in 6 months the site size will exceed 40 Mb, and the problems of payment for its placing will appear.

Secondly, it turned out that creating the section ‘Discussions’ is a technically complicated task, since the realization of the planned dialogue with our readers would require the design of special software. Therefore the creation of the section was realized on the second stage of the project.

Thirdly, most of our partners did not send the information about their activities for placing on the site in the section ‘Organizations’. That is why now the section reflects inadequately the human rights protection movement in Ukraine. So this section has to be extended on the second stage of the project at the account of own resources the KhG. We ask our colleagues to fill in the questionnaires, which is appended to this issue of ‘Prava ludyny’.