Dictators wish Journalists a “Happy Press Freedom Day”

Reporters without Borders have made my day. Well they have made many journalists day. They have put in pictures what corrupt, autocratic and authoritarian regimes, policies and laws do to journalists everyday. 

more after the break

Urgent request: Please behave as Putin comes along in Amsterdam

Smart campaign from Amnesty International broadcasted on the Dutch television in the run-up to the visit from Russian President Putin to Amsterdam.

Translated transcript:

Urgent request.
On Monday, April 8, the Russian President Putin visits Amsterdam.
This visit is on a friendly basis.
We therefore ask everyone to avoid the following topics in the immediate surroundings of Mr Putin:
- Sexual orientation other than heterosexual
- Critical journalism
- Independent judiciary
- The right to demonstrate
- And Punk bands
Don’t frighten President Putin.
Keep Amsterdam free of Human Rights

Nobody can live with Swiss chocolate

Swiss chocolate is the best, say experts. And that opinion is about the final product.

The production of chocolate is a different story. The raw materials are harvested under bad conditions, like child labor and human rights violations.

Swiss chocolate companies and dealers are implicated in this, according to the Die Erklärung von Bern (The Berne Declaration). The organization started a campaign, in advance of Easter, to inform the Swiss public.

Companies such as Nestle, Lindt and Mondelez (formerly Kraft Foods) neglect their social responsibilities, and still a third of the industry refuses to provide any information at all.

The main problem is the lack of traceability of the cocoa raw materials. It is the outcome of a recent study by the Berne Declaration.

More than 20 million people make a living from cocoa farming. This requires transparent and controlled supply chains and major investments in actions against child labor and price guarantees that allow cocoa farmers a decent living.

The Exhibition that Shouldn’t Exist

Great online experience from Control Arms: The Exhibition that Shouldn’t Exist.

The exhibition doesn’t have an artist and it isn’t art. It portraits the reality of the irresponsible arms trade around the world. The exhibition will be presented in Lisbon in the central hall of the Electricity Museum and it will be displayed in New York during the week of the Arms Trade Treaty conference.

And the exhibition is online.

Does what we wear define who we are?

Nice student work made for Amnesty International. It’s is made by Daniel Blomberg, Irene Aroney and Annie Elfstrom, students from the Video Storytelling-class at the Miami Ad School San Francisco.

“Does what we wear define who we are?
Help us stop discrimination and make a real difference to peoples lives.”

This weekend, you probably won’t have time for Amnesty International

Guilt is a powerful emotion. But will it work on you?

Cossette Montreal bet on it with this December, 2012 work for Amnesty International’s Write for Rights. Titled “Saturday”, it contrasts all of the mundane things we do on the weekend with the desperate needs, of prisoners of conscience, for advocacy and help:

Amnistie Internationale - Le samedi 8 décembre from La Cavalerie on Vimeo.

I’m ambivalent about the use of guilt in general, but considering that Amnesty is probably just trying to remind its committed supporters of how little it asks of them (and how much they can accomplish) through Write For Rights, it may have been just the thing.

It’s also an example of how much can be accomplished with very little money, when people are really behind the cause. The director of the ad (and one of my regular collaborators), Dominique Laurence, told me in his submission that the whole thing was shot in one location in Montreal, in just nine hours, for less than $5000! With free media online, that puts spreading a powerful PSA campaign well within the reach of many cause marketers.

(English version after the break.)

“Are you really open” to equality?

Quebec’s Ministry of Justice has launched a campaign to ask people if they are really as open-minded as they think about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transexual (LGBT) people. According to Marketing Magazine, it’s the province’s first large-scale, publicly funded campaign to fight homophobia.

The campaign was launched this week with TV ads (you can see one here) but what I like is the interactive version, reallyopen.com (French: vraimentouvert.com).

In this version, the viewer is taken through a number of scenarios designed to challenge his or her comfort level living and working with people who are LGBT. It’s not a particularly difficult challenge, but it does make you think.

Censored Tweet

The social network so central in the Arab Spring is now the creative field for a new campaign by Amnesty International Brazil.

At http://tweetcensurado.com.br, some of your 140 characters are turned into black stripes, which when shared remind our followers how freedom of speech has been a battle for the past 50 years.

How can you see the truth if it cannot be told?

Everyone has the right to be informed. This is the raison d’être of Reporters Without Borders, a French NGO that raises public awareness regarding the role of information. After an inspiring print campaign released in September 2012, Reporters Without Borders implemented lately the website VoicelessEyes, offering an innovative digital experiment.

Why is this “NOH8” portrait special?

If you spend a lot of time on social media with celebrities, you have undoubtedly encountered the NOH8 campaign For four years, prominent online personalities have been posing with duct tape over their mouths and “NOH8” painted on their cheeks. Originally a reaction to California’s anti-equal-marriage Prop 8, it has since become an ongoing statement for GLBT rights.

The woman in the photo above represents an important new development in American civil rights: The abandonment of the ultra-homophobic Westboro Baptist Church — of “God Hates Fags” funeral protest infamy — by a young generation of women members.