CHAPTER 12

Sharing and Improving This Handbook

You are free to copy this Handbook or any part of it. You may share it freely (and free of charge) with anyone who might use it. In fact, we encourage you to do so. Please mention that the material came from our Handbook, in case someone else wants to contact us to obtain a copy. Please let us know about any educational or other resource materials that you create on economic, social and cultural rights issues.

You are welcome to use this book for teaching, when you contact politicians, the media, the UN or other NGOs, or when you make presentations at public meetings. You may summarise some of the information to help write your own fact sheets or pamphlets. If you use this Handbook in any of these suggested ways, we recommend that you include examples of human rights issues faced in your own community or country.

Publication of this Handbook will not stop the process of trying to improve it. The author and publishers would like to hear from any NGO that uses the Handbook as a resource when that NGO participates in the periodic review of its own country under the Covenant. The staff of that NGO will be able to lend advice on how to improve future editions of the Handbook.*

If you contact those of us who wrote and co-ordinated this Handbook, please tell us the following:

• What kind of information would you like us to add to the next version of the Handbook?
• If you have been involved in campaigns to promote or protect economic, social or cultural rights, did your campaign employ strategies/tactics that you would recommend or not recommend?
• Do you have any printed or electronic documentation to share with us that describes the purpose and activities of your organisation?

The ideas and lessons you offer to us can then be shared with people anywhere in the world who work to fulfil economic, social and cultural rights, including NGOs and the UN bodies monitoring the fulfilment of economic, social and cultural rights.

An important role of NGOs is to teach others about economic, social and cultural rights. You can use this Handbook to assist in training the staff of organisations in which you are active, as well as from other organisations with which you co-operate. It would be helpful to inform teachers and journalists about the rights covered in this Handbook, since they are in a good position to spread the knowledge to other people. We hope that teachers and trainers will use this Handbook as a resource for their educational work.

* You may contact us at shrp@aaas.org. Please include the words “ESCR Handbook” in the subject line.