#StopTorture – Raising international awareness

Compelled by our Sri Lankan Tamil heritage, we wanted to raise international awareness of the alleged continuing atrocities carried out by the government since the civil war officially ended in Sri Lanka.

Context 

The International Truth and Justice Project  - Sri Lanka (ITJP) is administered by the Foundation for Human Rights in South Africa under the guidance of transitional justice expert Yasmin Sooka.

ITJP both collects and stores evidence for any future credible justice process but also intervenes where they can to assist victim communities in Sri Lanka in seeking accountability. #StopTorture is a co-created campaign by ITJP, the world’s leading human rights lawers and TEMPLO.

Approach 

From visiting Sri Lanka over the years, we accrued an instinctive kind of knowledge about how messaging and propaganda work in Sri Lanka. For instance, the Tigers have a flag with a tiger roaring and two rifles and it’s deep red, whereas the BBS [radical Sinhalese group], use an orangey-yellow predominantly within the national flag itself.” This meant we had to steer away from those or any similar colours.

In order to raise awareness of the human rights violations in Sri Lanka we created a trilingual branded platform in Tamil and Sinhala the two native languages of Sri Lanka and English to connect with the global community.

We created two ‘brother and sister’ logos that fused the Sinhala and Tamil words for ‘stop’ with English. These allowed us to dual brand everything and create a sense of balance from both perspectives.

At the heart of the campaign was a specially commissioned report that was endorsed by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and was written by some of the world’s leading human rights lawyers.

These legal reports are normally very dry, so infographics were used to pull out key and often uncomfortable information, making it easy to understand for all readers. Spearheaded by Yasmin Sooka, the Executive Director of the Foundation of Human Rights, the report was presented to the United Nations in New York.

Impact 

The campaign and the report provided a basis for advocacy and lobbying to be carried out in both Geneva and New York. The Stop Torture campaign persuaded United Nation countries to vote for an international, independent inquiry into human rights violations in Sri Lanka.

As a result of the campaign William Hague stopped deporting victims of torture back to Sri Lanka. Having a bilingual branding system helped to connect with two distinct audiences and provided both communities with the opportunity to read the campaign in their own language.

The Stop Torture campaign persuaded United Nation countries to vote for an international, independent inquiry into human rights violations in Sri Lanka.