Murad Code Project – Quarterly Highlights

In 2023, the Murad Code project entered its sixth phase, which will last until 2026. The government of Canada, through Global Affairs Canada, is providing funding and other partnership support to the project during this period. 

Building on the foundations of the work done between 2019-23, and working with partners around the globe, the sixth phase of the project will focus on advancing:

• Implementation of the minimum standards distilled in the Code by documenters, investigators, funders, humanitarians, governments, inter-governmental organisations, journalists and others.

• The use of the Code by survivors to demand respect for their human rights during documentation and other information-gathering processes. 

• Improved collaboration and cooperation between and within sectors.

Starting in 2025, the Murad Code project team will share quarterly highlights from the project, including key recent and upcoming activities the team and its partners are delivering to advance the focus areas for the project’s the sixth phase. As this post marks the first quarterly highlight, it also includes a recap of highlights from the project over the past year. If you would like to learn more about the activities mentioned in these quarterly digests or discuss collaborating on them with the team, please reach out to info@muradcode.com. 

Key highlights from the past year include:

• The translation and dissemination of the Code in several new languages, including Bosnian, Sorani Kurdish, Nepali, Burmese, Amharic and Tigrigna. 

• Delivery of information-sharing sessions on the Code with more than 25 organisations based across the global south and north, including seven women’s rights/survivor support organisations. 

• The launch of a series of dialogues exploring how the standards contained in the Murad Code can strengthen the work of practitioners gathering and using information about systematic and conflict-related sexual violence (SCRSV) in different regions. The first dialogue took place in June 2024 and was entitled “Uncovering Blind Spots: Empowering Survivors in Transitional Justice - Understanding Drivers of Harmful and Good Practices When Documenting Systematic and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and Adopting a Survivor-Centred Approach.”

• The re-launch of the project website in English, to make it more accessible to the wide range of potential users of the Code. A multilingual version of the website will be launched in early 2025. 

Key highlights from the last quarter include:

• Release of the Murad Code in Hausa

• In October 2024, the Murad Code project team finalised the Hausa translation of the Code, which is now available to download in Word and PDF format. The team is grateful to Explore Humanitarian Aid Initiative (Explore Aid) who provided the initial Hausa translation and to the other expert who reviewed the translation before it was finalised. The team was also pleased to publish an updated translation of the Code in Swahili, which was revised to make the earlier translation as accessible as possible to Swahili speakers across certain parts of eastern and central Africa. 

• First Community Pilot Implementation Project in Cote D’Ivoire

  • Starting in September 2024, the project team is supporting survivors in Côte d’Ivoire on the first of three community-level dialogues.  (The other two will happen in other countries.) The aim of the community level dialogues is to support the empowerment of survivors to use the Code to demand respect for their rights. The "models" or "approaches" for survivor empowerment will use the Code itself as starting point (i.e., how can survivors use it to help empower themselves to take more control over their information and any information-sharing process?). 

  • Frustrated by the slow justice process, minimal reparations and lack of clear standards, survivors of SCRSV in Côte d'Ivoire are looking for new ways to engage with national authorities. Building on a Global Survivors Fund study, IICI is working with SCRSV survivors to strengthen their leadership and advocacy skills using the Murad Code, supporting their empowerment to become activists in their own right.

• Open-Source Research Guide – pilot forthcoming in 2025

  • The Murad Code project team has partnered with the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (HRC) to develop a guide for practitioners on how to conduct survivor-centred and effective open-source research, investigations and other information-gathering (OSR) into SCRSV. The Code is the benchmark and framework for the forthcoming guide.  The guide’s content will be aligned with the minimum standards distilled in the Code and articulate how the minimum standards apply to OSR. A pilot version of the guide will be published in 2025.