1. INTRODUCTION CONTENTS OF THIS CHAPTER     THE HURIDOCS NETWORK THE HURIDOCS MISSION INFORMATION HANDLING TOOLS TRAINING PROGRAMME 1.1 THE HURIDOCS NETWORK HURIDOCS (Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems, International) was set up in 1982 as a global network of human rights organisations. Its purpose was to work towards an "universal system of communication of human rights information" called for by Martin Ennals. In practice HURIDOCS has concentrated on improving access to, and dissemination of, public information on human rights, among others, through the provision of appropriate tools and training services. HURIDOCS itself does not collect documents, but by linking the participants in the network, HURIDOCS aims to facilitate the recording and flow of human rights information. Human rights organisations in many countries are now actively documenting human rights violations. HURIDOCS - through the co-operation of networking organisations - provides tools and methods for such work and training in their use. 1.2 THE HURIDOCS MISSION HURIDOCS believes that an important way of protecting and promoting human rights is to strengthen a broad human rights movement, especially its large component of NGOs, with sufficient capabilities to carry out their mandates. Towards this end, HURIDOCS is committed to contributing to the capacity-building efforts of the human rights community. HURIDOCS‟ specific role in this capacity-building process lies in improving access to and the dissemination of human rights information through more effective, appropriate and compatible methods and techniques of information handling. HURIDOCS recognises that we live in an age of tremendous advances in information and communication technologies. There is the need to master these technologies to aid us in our human rights work. At the same time, we must be conscious of the fact that the technologies to be applied should be appropriate and responsive to the main focus of the mandates of human rights organisations. 1