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Each year, ISHR facilitates the attendance of human rights defenders at the NGO Forum and African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR). What do they get out of the experience? ISHR speaks to one such defender to find out.
 Benetta Barlinger works for Timeline for Justice, a human rights protection group in Liberia involved in helping to educate local people of their rights and ensure they have access to justice.
'My job is to visit and monitor the courts and the prisons ... because there are a lot of people who have been in prison for two to three years and they have never been to court – they are still pre-trial detainees.
'In Liberia, we have a [government funded] defence team [for those that cannot afford their own legal aid] but a lot of people just don't know about it. So they lose hope, and unless there's someone in the system that knows how to contact these lawyers that are being paid by the government, all the prisoners will do is sit behind bars... So I work to identify people who need help and ensure that our laws are working for such people.'
ISHR provided funding to enable Ms Barlinger to attend the NGO Forum and the 49th session of the ACHPR, in the Gambia, from April – May 2011. She says attendance at the meetings provided a whole range of benefits she wasn't anticipating.
'At the NGO Forum, I got to know there are mechanisms that my organisation could use, like the universal periodic review. Before I had only read about it, but now I've been to the Forum where I met other actors that have used the mechanism and I think we can start using it now too. I think if we start to properly use this and other mechanisms, then gradually things will start to happen and progress will be made.
'It was also really beneficial learning at the African Commission what other countries are involved in, in terms of human rights, and what the State parties are doing in response to the recommendations made by civil society.'
Ms Barlinger says she was able to pick up a number of useful resources and documents at the meetings, as well as make excellent working contacts.
'I met lots of other human rights defenders who are already working with the mechanisms and they had lots of stories to tell. It was helpful to learn there are others out there facing the same problems as human rights defenders in Liberia do, how they manage these issues, what kinds of mechanisms they use, and what process they've gone through to solve certain problems. It's also good to build contacts, friends who you can always go back to for advice.
'As a human rights defender, it's encouraging to know that you're not alone, that you have other African and international brothers that have a desire to make this world a better place. Sometimes, we can feel like giving up – but when you attend gatherings like the NGO Forum, you get to meet others that haven't given up and you think "well if they can do it, so can we".'
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