CrossFireArabia
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has launched the third edition of the WikiRights project in the Gaza Strip, targeting a new cohort of young men and women who survived the genocide in the enclave.
Launched in Gaza, the project targets 12 young Palestinian men and women. It provides them with in-depth training in human rights research and documentation, as well as professional editing on Wikipedia. The training covers creating, developing, and updating content, and involves using editing and contribution tools in both Arabic and English.
The project aims to enable participants to produce reliable content based on international documentation standards, address knowledge gaps concerning human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territory, and improve worldwide access to accurate, current information. Additionally, it strives to develop the skills of a young generation equipped with digital influence tools, empowering them to protect the human rights narrative from marginalisation or distortion on open knowledge platforms.
At a time when online platforms often disseminate false information about victims of armed conflicts, it is crucial for us to empower young people to share accurate facts and document Israeli crimes
Anas Jerjawi, Chief Operations Officer at Euro-Med Monitor
This round of the project is an exceptional version driven by the reality of the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip. Its main focus is on live field documentation and interviewing victims and witnesses, rather than just content creation, due to the urgent need to challenge efforts to conceal the true story of victims of genocide.
The first round of the project was launched in 2015 to enrich Wikipedia, which ranks seventh in the world by visitor numbers, with accounts of victims of violations in the historical documentation of contemporary events and crises, and to promote and develop human rights content in the electronic encyclopaedia. The project also aims to train human rights defenders to use the encyclopaedia and to modify its articles.
Upon completion of the training, participants are expected to take responsibility for adding documentation-based articles to Wikipedia that are rooted in live testimonies. This effort aims to showcase the stories of genocide victims in Gaza and ensure their voices are heard by the international community as part of a historical and human rights record.
Euro-Med Monitor’s Chief Operations Officer, Anas Jerjawi, said, “Training young people to edit Wikipedia content seeks to transform victims of genocide in Gaza from mere statistics into storytellers, especially given the recent failures of some platforms or their complicity in not conveying the scale of genocide.”
“At a time when online platforms often disseminate false information about victims of armed conflicts, it is crucial for us to empower young people to share accurate facts and document Israeli crimes, ensuring that these details are not exclusively recorded by the perpetrators,” Jerjawi added.
Wikipedia is regarded as a major online resource for information and statistics. Amid increasing events and armed conflicts in the MENA region, Euro-Med Monitor’s detailed analysis of human rights content on Wikipedia revealed that both the Arabic and English versions of the encyclopaedia have weak coverage, especially regarding the genocide in Gaza.
While government-issued official narratives largely shape Wikipedia articles, there is a near-total lack of stories from victims and survivors. Therefore, adding field-based facts and documented testimonies is crucial to fill this gap and promote fair, unbiased reporting on human rights issues.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor launched the WikiRights project in 2015 to record victims’ stories alongside official narratives. This effort reflects the organisation’s commitment to involving marginalised groups, especially victims of occupation and genocide, in shaping priorities and defending their rights. – Euro-Med Monitor
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