INOVAS seeks to change the perception of victims and survivors with key national, regional and international bodies, but also working alongside fellow individuals and organisations and supporting the work already being done on the ground. As such, the network focuses on five key activities:

Memorialization of victims in NEPAL

  • Advocacy. INOVAS conducts awareness-raising and advocacy with national, regional and international bodies by educating policymakers and political actors concerning key issues related to transitional justice, victim participation and the fight against impunity. One of the key elements in this advocacy push is to remind policymakers that victims and survivors must lead justice processes at national, regional and international levels. However, key to INOVAS’ advocacy work is the advocacy done at society and community-level, to raise awareness about victims rights among affected communities and to share experience about how to build movements so that victims and survivors can, themselves, fight for their rights. 
  • Empowerment of victims and survivors. In step with its advocacy efforts about the central role that victims and survivors must play, INOVAS also seeks to ensure the empowerment of victims and survivors as activists who can lead the struggle for justice, seeking to ensure they both gain visibility and facilitate access to technical support and resources to drive change. This also involves capacity-building with victims and survivors so that they are better able to fight for justice and accountability in their respective contexts. 
  • Protection of activists. INOVAS seeks to protect victims and survivors activists working on the ground and those supporting them by providing visibility, network-building access and solidarity to ensure their safety and security first and foremost as well as the continuation of their vital work in pursuit of justice and accountability.  
  • Documentation. INOVAS supports, and complements, work being done on the ground at the local level by amplifying victims’ and survivors’ voices and protecting those in danger as a result of their activism. This work is conducted in tandem with international network-building by INOVAS: carrying out transcontinental solidarity initiatives and supporting national/grassroots movements. INOVAS hopes that this can expand the reach of documentation efforts being done at the local level, and ultimately raise the visibility of documentation leading to concrete results including sentences for the perpetrators, and justice, truth, accountability, reparations and recognition and preservation of memory for the survivors.
  • Participatory research and peer-to-peer exchange. As well as documenting abuses and the work being done by victims and survivors to document, challenge and remember those abuses, INOVAS conducts a range of participatory research and peer-to-peer exchange activities around themes of transitional justice, victim participation and the fight against impunity. This research, led by victims and survivors themselves, allows those same individuals and networks to collaborate across contexts and to drive experience sharing and knowledge production for now and the future. INOVAS is interested in building partnerships with academic institutions as well as victims and survivors around the world to centre victims and survivors at the heart of knowledge production. INOVAS members exchange their experience and expertise, as well as best practices, and this is something the network prioritises with partners as well. 

Banner Photo Credit: NEFAD