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Human Rights at Home Blog
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A Plan to Improve the Quality of Human Rights Information — Whoo hoo!

By humanrightsathome

Hopefully your students know enough not to cite Wikipedia as a source in research paper or a brief.  But let’s face it, we all rely on Wikipedia at least a little bit for general background information or to get started on a research question.

But what about the reliability of the content?  Sometimes it’s hard to know.

In the human rights field, however, help is on the way!  On August 29, Wikimedia and the OHCHR announced a new partnership:

“’To claim your rights, you need to know your rights,’ said Laurent Sauveur, UN Human Rights’ External Outreach Director at the 2019 Wikimania Conference in Stockholm. On its opening day, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) and the Wikimedia Foundation announced an innovative partnership to improve the quality and quantity of human rights content on Wikipedia – the world’s largest and most popular general reference site.”

Interestingly, the Wikimedia Foundation CEO reports that the article on “human rights” is the most searched legal content in English-language Wikipedia.  One approach to beefing up the quality of this content will be edit-a-thons.  According to OHCHR:

“As part of the partnership, edit-a-thons on important human rights topics will be co-hosted around the world, bringing together contributors and local communities. Global campaigns around key international dates – such as International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (21 March) and Human Rights Day (10 December) – will be prime opportunities to rally the Wikimedia community to build new content across languages, highlighting local contexts.”

Law students and law schools will be well-positioned to make sure that this new, expanded Wikipedia content is accurate and complete.  Keep your eyes open for opportunities to contribute to this important human rights education project!