The Documentation Unit monitors and compiles news clippings on HR violations, legislative changes, current affairs and governance issues, as well as restores audiovisual materials while maintaining these in digital archives. In addition, the Unit provides access to over 9800 books and reports, and maintains CDS/ISIS database for in house usage and also for external readers.
The main objective of the Unit is to preserve and disseminate information systematically.
The Unit has begun its work in 1994.
MAJOR ACTIVITIES
- Monitoring media reports for allegations of human rights abuse and providing relevant cases to the legal aid or other units for immediate response;
- Compiling press reports on subjects related to human rights and governance and tabulating and compiling statistics on human rights abuses;
- Maintaining a library of books and periodicals on law and human rights;
- Purchasing and cataloguing audio-visual materials produced by ASK and other organisations on human rights issues;
- Preserving hard and soft copies of the issue based information from the national newspapers; and
- Distributing ASK publications and periodicals.
WORK PROCESS
The Documentation Unit supports ASK’s other programs by providing information on human rights violation. ASK has action meeting in every morning. The Unit raises issues of HRVs in the meeting from newspaper clippings. Based on those clippings, ASK decides its actions or responses.
In order to monitor the human rights situation, the Unit complies and tabulates statistics from daily newspaper on human rights violation. After every three months, these statistical charts are shared with the electronic and print media. The Unit also provides these statistics for uploading in ASK official website in monthly basis.
The HRV statistical charts are used for filing case, writ petition, investigation, litigation, research, advocacy, publication and other purposes. The Legal Aid and Policy Reform unit files writ petition on different human rights issues and they use news clippings provided by the Documentation Unit as references.
Relevant Links from old website:
- Statistics of Human Rights violations, 2012 (January – December) http://www.askbd.org/web/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/vhr_jan_dec_2012.pdf
- Statistics of Human Rights violations, 2011 (January – December) http://www.askbd.org/web/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Statistical_Chart_Bang_11%28Jan-Dec_2011%291.pdf
- Statistics of Human Rights violations, 2010 (January – December) – available at http://www.askbd.org/web/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Stat_Chart_Bang_jan_dec_2010.pdf
- Statistics of Human Rights violations, 2009 (January – December) – available at http://www.askbd.org/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Statistical_Chart_Eng.pdf
Publication and Resources:
- ASK Publication List available at http://www.askbd.org/web/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Publication_List.pdf
- Human Rights Reports (1996 – 2010)- available at http://www.askbd.org/web/?page_id=430
- Special Publications – available at http://www.askbd.org/web/?page_id=711
- Annual Reports (2006- 2010) – available at http://www.askbd.org/web/?page_id=447
- Articles in English – available at http://www.askbd.org/web/?page_id=577
- Articles in Bangla – available at http://www.askbd.org/web/?page_id=576