Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions In general, NHRIs commonly focus on one of the following goals to guide their advocacy efforts: • Advocating for changes to government laws and policies • Advocating for changes to the practices of government or private sector organizations • Encouraging individual or community action on a particular issue. In some instances, the campaign goal will be an extension of the NHRI’s recent work; for example, advocating for the implementation of recommendations made in the report of a national inquiry conducted by the NHRI. In other instances, a specific event might occur – for example, a police crackdown on a peaceful political protest – which highlights systemic human rights failures that need to be urgently addressed by the relevant decision makers. In either case, the campaign goal should clearly and simply articulate a solution to address a pressing human rights issue – or one aspect of it, at least. For example, a campaign goal “to end violence against women” will be too broad to achieve within a campaign timeframe of a year or two. A more focused goal might be to “ensure that safer and more accessible services exist for women who have experienced gender-related violence”. The campaign goal should be supported by a range of discrete objectives. Campaign objectives “help in the planning and design of activities that will achieve tangible outcomes. They are also essential in monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of campaigning work.”19 Campaign objectives need to be SMART: • Specific • Measurable • Achievable • Relevant • Time-bound. For example, objectives to support the campaign goal of “ensuring safe and accessible services for women who have experienced gender-related violence” might focus on: • Increasing funding for domestic violence support services • Increasing the number of domestic violence support services, especially in non-urban centres • Changes to the policies and practices of police to increase the reporting of assaults against women. Objectives should include measurable, time-bound benchmarks; for example, “securing a 25 per cent increase in funding for domestic violence support services in the next national budget”. Vague objectives such as “raising community awareness” need to be reframed into measurable ones. The IFEX Campaign Toolkit20 explains that this can be done “by setting out to receive coverage of your issue through a targeted number of newspaper articles and TV or radio interviews at specific media outlets. Thus, campaigners can infer that through the readership and audience of these newspapers and broadcasters, the public’s awareness of the campaign issue has been raised.”21 Specific objectives should also be set for other awareness raising elements of a campaign, such as visits to a campaign website, user activity of social media platforms, subscribers to a campaign e-newsletter and public participation in campaign-related events. 19 IFEX Network; “Developing a Campaign Strategy: Setting Campaign Objectives”; available at www.ifex.org/campaigns/ developing_campaign_strategy/index2.php. 20 The IFEX Campaign Toolkit is available at www.ifex.org/campaign_toolkit/. 21 IFEX Network; “Developing a Campaign Strategy: Setting Campaign Objectives”; available at www.ifex.org/campaigns/ developing_campaign_strategy/index2.php. 42 | Chapter 3: Media advocacy