Developing a digital resource centre to defend human rights
How we developed a digital resource centre to defend human rights
The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) exists to ensure that human rights are protected and corporations around the world involved in abuses are put in the spotlight.
They work with a global network of NGOs and companies to advance human rights in business, promote corporate accountability and eradicate abuse.
To do this at scale they needed a digital partner who could help them to develop a strong digital presence that makes huge amounts of content available to targeted audiences in an efficient and effective manner.
Our website, tracking allegations of human rights abuse involving more than 10,000 companies, is at the centre of everything we do as an organisation, so having the right partner for the site is critical. We have that partner in the Developer Society.
Phil Bloomer, Executive Director BHRRC
Central to building their new site was creating a framework that would support BHRRC’s team of researchers and campaigners to communicate their vital work. Using a Wagtail Content Management System (CMS), The Developer Society developed a strong site structure for launch, and through flexible content pages and the development of blocks, provided a system that provides BHRRC with the flexibility to evolve this site structure as required.
By using a CMS that gives the BHRRC team unparalleled control over their site, we were able to free up their resources and time to be used in other ways to combat human rights abuses.
One of our larger site build projects, BHRRC’s directory of businesses and incidents is at the very heart of their site. We combined large data sets with beautiful UI/UX to support communication, navigation and search - developing bespoke APIs to ensure data flows correctly and join up data systems across global and national teams.
Their responsiveness to planned priorities as well as unforeseen urgent issues is always reliable, so we can trust that we’re in safe hands. But even more than that, as an agency specialised in working with progressive organisations, they understand our mission and are able to put that mission at the heart of their vision for how we can develop and improve the site together.
Stuart Fowkes, Head of Communications BHRRC
BHRRC is available in eight languages and now tracks the human rights impact of over 10,000 companies worldwide. In the first year after launching their new site they received nearly 39 million unique page views - a 50% increase on the previous year.
