Digging Gold

international human-rights organizations use existing international legal frameworks as an important guide when evaluating and presenting their research findings. Additionally, some local as well as international human-rights groups have begun to use different mediums for presenting their research findings. For example, Witness, previously a project component of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, uses videography as its primary campaigning medium. Nonetheless, the main substantive tool for research dissemination for most human rights organizations remains a written report or informational booklets, which are often preceded by report summaries and press alerts. For international human rights organizations, there is a general format to these reports.

In a 1996 article, Stanley Cohen noted that the standard report format employed by human-rights organizations contains seven fixed elements. According to him, these include expressing concern, stating the problem, setting the context, enumerating the sources and methodology employed, detailing the allegations, citing relevant international and domestic law; and calling for the required action. This outline does, in fact, capture the layout of most international human-rights organizations reports. Neither the format nor the methodology used in compiling such reports differ significantly among the larger international human rights NGOs. However, there is a great deal of variance among national and thematic international human-rights organizations regarding the quality of research and the degree to which international legal frameworks play a role in determining findings.

Ideally, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) should not have to play any sort of a role in reducing these impacts. Ideally, the governments of the various countries in which gold is mined..