 Hello, I'm Alex Dunson. I'm a senior program strategist at the Wikimedia Foundation who is focused on campaigns and organizing, especially around topics for impact. And I'm here today to present a panel of videos we put together about the experience we had with the WikiGap and Wiki for Human Rights campaigns. These are global campaigns in partnership with the UN. And we wanted to focus on what impact or what we've learned by working with these UN level partners to really make an impact both on our content and help our communities connect more with the global international community. John Cummings and I are going to be answering questions on the etherpad. We invite you to join. It's really important that we hear from you. But most of this will be recorded videos from different organizers, both at Wikimedia Sweden. We'll have Eric Luth. We'll have several of our partner experts from the UN. And then we'll have Euphemia from the Nigerian community who was a local organizer for Wiki for Human Rights. To get started, Eric Luth is going to introduce the WikiGap campaign and why we work with the UN and the sustainable development goals. Hi, Alex. We don't have audio on the video. Could you turn up the volume? You may want to reshare again and make sure that you click on Share Audio. For the last few years, I have been coordinating the global WikiGap campaign. WikiGap is, I think, one of the most successful initiatives within the movement to try to bridge the gender gap. We know that four out of five articles, biographies, on most language versions are about men. And of course, this doesn't properly reflect the way that society looks. One large part, I think, of the success of the WikiGap campaign is that we have successfully across the world worked together with partners. The campaign is coordinated by Wikimedia Sverige and the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is organized on local level by Swedish embassies. Wikimedia affiliates and other partners in more than 70 countries. Together, partners have identified resources, material, references, they have provided venues, and a lot of other things that have made it possible for the Wikipedia editors to quickly and successfully write more than 60,000 articles on women on Wikipedia. The strategic recommendations of Wikimedia 2013 talk about the topics for impacts. Topics for impact are areas of knowledge, which are important that they are covered well on Wikimedia platforms. We know that the more Wikipedia and other Wikimedia platforms are used if us to go, the higher responsibility we have as a movement to make sure that knowledge on Wikipedia and Wikimedia platforms is correct, and that all knowledge is actually reflected on the platforms. Across society, there is a large ongoing conversation around the sustainable development goals. These are 17 goals that are also called the global goals as part of Agenda 2013. 17 goals that humanity should work together to overcome before 2013. I was the conference manager for Wikimedia in 2019, the last physical Wikimedia that was held in Stockholm. The theme of Wikimedia in 2019 was stronger together, Wikimedia free knowledge and the sustainable development goals. And we chose that theme because we wanted to focus on how important partnerships are for us as a movement if we want to work together to make sure that important topics are covered well on the Wikimedia platforms. I have worked a lot on the gender gap, which is global goal number five. But there are many gaps on the Wikimedia platforms. We know about this. And now we also, I think, have started an important work to try to change this. But if we want to bridge gaps on our platforms, if we want to contribute to the fulfillment of the global goals in Agenda 2013, we need to work together with partners. Wikipedia, to give one example, doesn't contain primary research. It refers to secondary sources, things that people have said in the media, things scholars have written in articles, things that are part of the ongoing conversation across the world. That means that we need to work with the rest of the world if we want to bridge the gaps on the Wikimedia platforms. And one of the actors across the International Society that sits on the most information is the United Nations. The UN has so much information in their archives, on their platforms, on their websites, in their reports. That could be very useful for the Wikimedia platforms. During Wikimedia in 2019, a partnership was signed between the Wikimedia Foundation and the UN Human Rights on working together to try to shed light on human rights issues across the world. We'll hear more about this partnership based on the discussion. We have also seen partnerships working together to try to overcome and give better information on the current ongoing pandemic. We have worked with the UN Population Fund, FAO, and the World Health Organization and many other actors to try to have better information and knowledge available on the platforms about the current ongoing pandemic. I live in Sweden, a country where four-fifths of the population regularly use Wikipedia. And where Wikipedia remains one of the few non-partisan sources that remain in society. We also know that readership of Wikipedia increases in many parts of the world, either directly through reading articles, for example on Wikipedia or indirectly by other actors reusing the material from the platforms. That means that responsibility on us as a movement is increasing day by day. And if we want to give good information on passing matters on these topics for impact, we need to work together with other partners. We can't do this on our own. We need to be stronger together, identify partners that we can work together with, to upload content, improve content on that already exists, to get the references and resources needed. And one of the first partners I think that we should go to and work together with are all the UN agencies across the world. Welcome to this session and I hope to continue this conversation also after Wikimedia in 2021. Eric was a coordinator for our international campaign with UN Human Rights and the Swedish Foreign Ministry, WikiGap. And I was also a coordinator of the Wiki for Human Rights campaign, which is a global campaign that we coordinate with UN Human Rights. And we found that the UN partners have been very valuable for working with our communities. And this panel that we put together of interviews is about that dialogue between the UN experts and our community. And importantly, campaigns are a good place to start with partners because they're one of the best ways to access one of our great strengths as a movement, the multilingual, multicultural, multi-context that our communities operate in. The ability to translate UN level information and knowledge to local contexts has been very important for our ability to kind of bring value to the expertise that these institutions have, the UN and others. It's also really important for our local communities because when a UN agency puts their name to a global action by the Wikimedia community, our local communities can recruit partners and organize local communities better. We also know that both of these campaigns had different parts. They combined a writing challenge with local editing events. And this is very deliberate to meet the needs of our partners and our communities. Writing challenges in the Wikimedia movement create really good content. They encourage translation and multilingual work and they really reward our community that's already here. They give opportunities for a light competition, playful competition and acknowledgement of the work that people do as Wikimedians. But we also know that as a movement we need to have more of the experts and more of the activists, what I'm increasingly calling knowledge activists on the ground joining our communities and strategically working to fill these gaps, such as human rights, climate issues, sustainable development goals. These local editing events are important for new editors. They're also very important in parts of the world where we don't have big editing communities. Without the local perspective and local context it's very hard to kind of represent all of the different diversity that's involved in achieving the sustainable development goals. In particular, local partners who are very invested in working with the UN and with international communities to address the sustainable development issues have been really kind of important to growing these campaigns. The Wikigap campaign has grown from dozens to nearly 100 events globally. And Wiki for Human Rights in our second year we're already at 25 local events. And that's because of this real opportunity for connecting through local editing events. Next we are gonna have conversations with our UN expert partners so you get a sense of what value they find from these events. Great, I'm here talking with the Ruben Rowers. Can you perhaps present yourself a bit? Yeah, thanks Eric. So I work in the women's rights and gender section at OHEHR and I'm based in Geneva. And as part of my work one of the focus areas that I engage in is the issue of women human rights defenders which I'm sure we'll be talking about today. Great, thanks Ruben. I'm very happy to have you on board. We have been working quite a bit together on the Wikigap campaign and especially on crowdsourcing names of missing women human rights defenders on Wikipedia. But could you start by giving a global picture of the issue that you're working on? Yeah, no for sure. Well, for the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights the issue of civic space is a priority focus area. And just to help you understand what we mean by civic space we see civic space as sort of the public space within which people express their views, assemble, associate and engage in dialogue on all issues that either affect their lives or the lives of their communities. And this is really at the heart of human rights work in a way. And I'm sure also at the heart of the work of Wikipedia and of all of you in the Wikimedia community. But what we see globally is that this space, the civic space is shrinking and this is both online and offline. We see restrictive laws and policies and practices. We see crackdowns on demonstrations. We see judicial harassment, surveillance, attacks and violence against anyone who speaks up in public or who expresses dissent. And this is an issue that affects particularly women human rights defenders. And women human rights defenders for us it includes women and girls who work on any human rights issue but it also includes anyone of any gender who works on rights related to gender equality. And they face restrictions and attacks that all human rights defenders face but in addition they face these attacks and obstacles that really are shaped by their additional and they're shaped by who they are because they're women and girls. What they're part of because they're for example part of the feminist movement or because of the work they do on women's rights issues on gender equality issues including for example, sexual and reproductive health and rights issues. And at times what we see is just by simply speaking out in public they are seen as challenging gender norms that are really deeply entrenched in societies. They're seen as challenging power structures that tend to favor men over women and also tend to confine women to the private sphere to the domestic space and to roles such as caregiving and reproduction. And this then leads to attacks that are very discriminatory in nature that are stigmatizing and oftentimes women human rights defenders also face stigma in their own communities even by some of their own family members just for being that public activists or they're gendered and sexualized attacks that they face and we've seen a lot of that of course online. And most importantly I think for our discussion today is also that there's a lack of recognition that they face of the work that they do. And this is everywhere in the world whether it's in Europe, whether it's in Africa whether it's in Asia Pacific whether it's in the Middle East or whether it's in the Americas, both North and South we see that this is a particular challenge that women human rights defenders in all their diversity face. And that's why it's a priority issue for us as an office and hopefully also for the Wikimedia community as well. You mentioned a bit about the lack of recognition and for many of those who work in this area and Wikipedia and the Wikimedia platforms I think are one of the places that people go to for information and for knowing about what's happening in the world. So what you say is the role of public education in this area and how do you work with public education to change or improve the situation? Yeah, no, thanks, Erica. It's a really good question. And I think it's critical, first and foremost. I think what we see and what often isn't known actually is that historically and nowadays as well if you look at social movements that led to positive social transformation that led to changes that really benefited all societies women human rights defenders are often at the forefront and also often the first to come under attack. The different social justice movement. So it can be Black Lives Matter, it can be climate change issues and it can also be, of course, feminist movements and then women's rights and gender equality issues. But what often is missing is the fact that they have that central role and they played that really critical important piece of that transformation. And a big part of the discrimination that women human rights defenders face and the challenges that they face as well is that they're really essential contributions and the work that they've done for our societies and for our communities often goes unnoticed, often is ignored and sometimes even on purpose as well and often is belittled as well. And this is something that we see in our human rights community even, amongst sort of our allies, so to speak. But we also of course see it on Wikipedia and you'll have all the best information and up to date data, but what we've understood as well is that if you compare the representation of the information women human rights defenders on Wikipedia versus the other human rights defenders, you'll see that there's a massive gap and that's sort of the whole purpose of also the WCGAP challenge. And that's why it's also so important for us to really reflect and recognize women human rights defenders and address that gap, particularly on Wikipedia and then hopefully also in our other areas of life. So for us, I think public education on women human rights defenders really helps recognize their work. It really helps share their views and their diversity of experiences. It really has the power to change these discriminatory social norms that we see particularly around gender and really transform our societies to a more equal and just one, which is really key. And I think generally, there's a lot of work that still needs to be done to improve the legitimacy of women human rights defenders in the public eye to transform the stereotypes that they face, the dehumanization that they face, to inspire also others that they can join and build solidarity with the women human rights defenders that are out there speaking on our behalf. And it really can help expand civic space including its inclusivity and diversity. So there are lots of benefits to public education on this issue. I mean, it's not just benefits, it's essential for our work and our work on civic space. Thanks a lot for that Rubin. I think that's a few really important reflections on both why the topic is very important in itself and also why we as a movement with media movement should continue working and filling those gaps and working together with you, the Office of Human Rights. Thanks a lot, Rubin, and I hope to continue the work forward. If I may just add one last... Yeah, of course. Sorry. No, it's just, I also, I don't want to miss out on the opportunity now that we're also speaking to the Wikimedia community to really express our appreciation and also the appreciation of many of the women human rights defenders that have seen their profiles suddenly reflected in so many different languages around the world and also express their appreciation to us to share with you because it's fantastic for them to be recognized. And for us to have this diversity on the Wikimedia platform is really fantastic and really will help change the narrative and change the space for women human rights defenders. So we really want to appreciate again the participants of the challenge and congratulate them for the great success of all these new profiles and also of course thank the Wikimedia community more broadly and Wikimedia Sweden of course and really look forward to as you said as well to continue to see more women human rights defenders profiles on the Wikimedia page and also to work together to expand that even further. So thank you again. Great and thanks a lot to you to Ruben. I think it's a really important and on my behalf also fun initiative to work with. It's just like it's important and we're actually doing some real change together. So thanks a lot. So that was Eric Loof talking with Ruben Brower. The name is in the etherpad if you are looking for further follow up. Next we have John Cummings who has been coordinating with many different parts of the UN over the years on behalf of different parts of the Wikimedia movement. He's currently working with Wikimedia Sweden on as far as on outreach to some of the UN organizations. And so we have a conversation between him and one of the FAO experts. So hi Suzanne, would you be able to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do at FAO? Sure. So my name is Suzanne Lappston and I work in the Publications Branch of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Within that branch I'm leading the teams responsible for production, dissemination and rights. And I've been here for 10 years now and we have a very big publishing program, approximately 900 books a year. And one of the challenges that we have is making sure that that content reaches the people who should be reading it. Could you tell us a little bit about what FAO does? Yeah, so FAO as I said, it's the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. So a big part of what it does is in the name, Food and Agriculture and all aspects of that which is extremely broad. But not only, it also covers many other subjects so relating to climate change, forests, soils, freshwater resources, oceans and fish and how to manage all of that sustainably. So it's not just making sure it happens but making sure it happens in the right way and also equitably. So benefiting everybody so that economic development is across the board so in all geographic locations so that we don't have gender inequity and we also look at how to increase people's resilience to disasters and conflict. So as you can see, it's really broad. Could you tell me a little bit about how that work connects to the SDGs? Yes, of course, the SDGs really provide a roadmap for our work for the next 10 years. And of course, a major focus is SDG too. So ending hunger, achieving food security and nutrition and sustainable agriculture. We don't just focus on hunger as I mentioned, the mandate of FAO is really broad and we're really contributing to all of the SDGs but I'll just mention a couple of other really important ones for us. We have SDG 14, which is conserving and sustainably using the oceans, the sea and marine resources. And FAO, many people don't realize but it's actually the main organization in the world reporting on fisheries and regulating fisheries questions. So even if when you go and buy your fish at the market it may have a little number on it and that corresponds to the FAO defined fishing zone, for example. So the publication that we produce every two years on the state of the world's fisheries it's the reference in the world of fisheries. And then another really important SDG for us is SDG 15 which is protecting, restoring and promoting terrestrial ecosystems, including forests, combating desertification, reversing land degradation and halting biodiversity loss. So this is also a really vast area of work and again we have some really key publications that are reporting for example on deforestation and it's been very interesting working with Wikipedia counterparts to get some of that content up on the pages relating to forests and deforestation, et cetera. And then of course I've wanted to mention SDG 5 on gender because this is also where the wiki gap connection came in because women in agriculture play a really important role but that role is not yet fully recognized. So an area that we're working on within the gender team but also mainstreamed across the organization is to really understand the role of women and to promote the role of women in all the different aspects of agriculture. And so it was very interesting to work on the wiki gap campaign relating to the representation of women in Wikipedia but what we found was really interesting when we did the wiki gap workshop was not just that we were able to improve some of the content online relating to women and women in agriculture but it also shed light on other areas where there were gaps and for example, there was one of your facilitators and I'm really sorry because I can't remember her name right now who had a lot of interesting things to say about climate change and the way that the knowledge is even structured within Wikipedia and how we could potentially work together more also to just think about the way that not just updating pages but also thinking about the way knowledge is structured and I think that would be a really interesting avenue to pursue further and I'm really looking forward to doing that. Could you tell me a little bit about the role of public education in the work that FAO does? Yeah, it's really important. So FAO is a knowledge organization. It's not a humanitarian organization in the same way as let's say the world food program which rushes in when there's a disaster. We do some of that as well but the main function of FAO is to do the research, to inform the policy and to generate the knowledge that's needed to make a change. And in fact, the first function in our basic texts is says that the organization shall collect, analyze, interpret and disseminate information relating to nutrition, food and agriculture. So right from the very beginning, that's what FAO is about. So the question that we and I in my work in particular grapple with every day is how can we do that? How can we get that information and that knowledge out there where it's really needed? And that's where Wikipedia came in because Wikipedia is such an amazing resource both in the way it's put together and the way people use it that it just seemed like such an excellent way of being able to share the knowledge that we have which we consider to be a global public good. So when you have a global public good how do you get it out there? And because it's available for free in some ways that's almost a disadvantage because you're not sort of out there in the same way that big publishers are out there. So it's always a challenge to find the best way to get that free knowledge to people who need it and will use it. And Wikipedia has that amazing breadth in a sense that it's used by people who come for sort of very general knowledge and a first sort of glance but it can also be very, very niche. And we need both of those aspects. So that's really great. And something that has facilitated our work with Wikipedia is the fact that we have an open access policy. And although we've been sharing our knowledge via our document repository now for decades and we were actually pioneers in that area at the time we then sort of fell behind. And it was only in 2018 that we formally committed to an open access policy with a CC license. And so we do need to tweak that a little bit because we have the non-commercial restriction on that license. So we tweaked the license on the content that we put into Wikipedia but it's that has really facilitated the dissemination of our knowledge. And as I said, as a global public good. For us it's been a really interesting journey with Wikipedia because it started off with seeing what John Cummings, what you were doing with UNESCO. And I'd had a dream actually before coming to FAO I was working with UNESCO and it was my dream to do something with Wikipedia. So when I saw that that was happening I wanted to jump on the train and get FAO involved as well. And so we started off sort of very hesitantly and learning the ropes and the rules of the community and just working with a few people within the publications team closely collaborating with you and others such as Richard Neville in the UK. And now we're getting more and more interest across the organization. So people who are interested in joining workshops and doing the editing themselves. And really the next step that we'd like to take the leap is to get people who aren't at FAO involved in just taking our content and running with it reusing it and sharing it in every way possible. And again, that's why I would really encourage people to come along as well to our information sessions. Thank you very much. Say hi, Suzanne. Would you? So next we have a conversation with our partner at UN Human Rights and their environmental human rights section that is focused on the that we partnered with to create the topic list and theme and focus for Wiki for human rights. So, hi Monica. It's so great that you're talking with us. Can you explain a bit for the Wikimedia audience what you do and about your team? Sure. So my name is Monica Iyer. I'm a human rights officer with the United Nations Human Rights Office. And I'm on the environmental climate change team. So what we do is we look at and try to make clear for other people the connections between environment, climate change and human rights, which there are many of. Yeah, it's a space like you've taught me a lot as we started working together. And we got to work together on Wiki for human rights. So I'm wondering what was kind of appealing to you about working on that? It's such a, like it was neat to learn so much but I'm always curious like why our partners want to be part of that collaboration. Yeah, I mean, I think for us it was really exciting to get to work with people who we don't normally get to work with, including you. But also the Wiki community broadly and really to reach a more general audience and to reach an audience that often we don't get to exchange what they're here from. And then also we got the chance to not just work with the Wiki community ourselves but also set up exchanges and collaboration between some of the people that we collaborate with normally including international human rights experts with the Wiki community. And it was really fun to get to see those conversations happening and see those connections being made. Yeah, it's kind of unexpected how many opportunities there are for collaboration when you start working with the work media. And I'm wondering like in particular, you're an expert on like human rights and the environment. Why for that topic area that group of experts is Wikipedia important? Like what does it help you do in that space? So access to information, including access to information about the environment and access to education are human rights. And the environmental education, environmental information are really, really key to helping people access their human rights in relation to the environment. And so making information more broadly available and making information available to people about their rights in relation to the environment really helps us to expand our work and really gives rights holders more tools for their work and to advocate for their own human rights. And so that's really valuable to us. And then also, I think like you said, once you learn about these things to us, the connections between human rights and the environment are really clear because when the environment is damaged, people have trouble accessing their right to a livelihood, their right to clean water and sanitation, their right to food, their right to life even into health. And but making those connections clear and finding ways to include human rights information in sort of Wikipedia entries that maybe aren't directly about human rights is also I think a really important way of advancing people's understanding of the work that we do. Yeah, and I like for me, when we first started talking, I knew I was an environmentalist. I knew we were working with you and human rights, but I didn't always like draw those connections. Can you give a couple like examples of areas like emerging areas where that connections are really, really important? Sure, I mean, so one of the most important things is that there's a global movement right now for global recognition of the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, which is a human right that's recognized in various wording in the laws or the regional commitments of more than 150 states, we don't have that right recognized at the global level yet. And one of the major things that happened in this campaign was that we had people write or people chose to write articles in a lot of different languages specifically about the right to a healthy environment. I think that really contributed to helping to advance global knowledge of that and hopefully to putting the pressure on the global community to recognize that there's a right at the international level. Yeah, and that kind of connects to this next question, like what is it largely from your perspective as a UN human rights like program officer? Oh, why is Wikipedia helpful in kind of advancing those kinds of international things? Those are international awareness initiatives. What does it do? Yeah. Yeah, so there, I mean, there are a couple of ways that I think the Wikipedia or Wikipedia community really fits in with sort of the broader goals of the UN. I mean, one is that we're really, our role as UN human rights is to advocate for and support the human rights of all of the peoples of the UN. And one of the struggles that we have or one of the challenges that we have is that people communicate in a lot of different languages. We work with six UN official languages. We publish documents usually in English and in French or in Spanish and Arabic and Chinese and Russian. But we often struggle to go beyond that. And one of the things that Wikipedia, the Wikipedia community really helped with and this was making these concepts available in a lot of different languages. And thus helping us to hopefully better serve or build better connections with people who are outside of those six language groups. And then another thing is that we are, the United Nations is really committed to protecting and expanding civic space and participation in all areas because it's crucial and it is a human right that we particularly in the environmental context and we have these huge environmental challenges to deal with and we really need the possibility of participation by everyone in the world. And the Wikipedia is a civic space that where people can exchange ideas and where people can contribute to global knowledge on these issues, which really helps them then push for their rights to participate and to contribute to environmental action. That's so great. And I'm wondering, do you have any last words before we go off to the rest of the panel? No, just thanks very much for the opportunity. We really enjoyed this cooperation and I think we learned a lot too throughout the course of it and I'm really excited to learn more coming forward. Cool. Well, looking forward to it. Thanks. So we have one last video from Euphemia Uwandu who's a local organizer for Wiki for Human Rights. I acknowledge we're really short on time and she's gonna be cut off a little bit. We will make sure that the slides get shared afterwards and you can watch the videos yourself. My name is Euphemia Uwandu. I was one of the local organizers for Wiki for Human Rights 2021 in Nigeria. One of the things I have discovered about working with international organizations to run content campaigns is that it gives additional color in some context. As a local organizer, I'm particular about not just mobilizing and engaging participants in campaigns, but mobilizing and engaging tools who will contribute with their hands and their hearts. And to ensure we have these kind of people, we have to position what drives them in the background. For some of these people, it is carrier goods. For others, it is relevance, visibility, and networking. For example, in Nigeria, the UN is seen in the light of growth, relevance, visibility, and networking, and people who want to be part of any event they are associated with. The Wiki for Human Rights 2021 is not defined. It was an event that was sponsored by the UN to improve content related to the theme of the campaign which is rights to a healthy environment. In Nigeria, this campaign brought in environmental activists, resident in Lagos, who came in to work together to improve articles in the Nigerian context.