41 3 PROMOTION STRATEGIES 3.2 PUBLIC EDUCATION AND AWARENESS RAISING Example NHRIs can engage in public education and awarenessraising activities to promote women’s rights and gender equality. This can be achieved through meetings, outreach and training. Collaboration with media, government, business organizations, religious leaders, civil society and academics can significantly increase the effectiveness of promotional strategies and convey key messages to a broad audience and to particular targeted groups. The Austrian Ombudsperson appears on the 45-minute weekly television show “Bürgeranwalt” (“Advocate for the People”), a major platform for human rights issues. Each week, individual cases are presented to an average audience of 320,000 viewers. Given that NHRIs usually have limited resources for promotional activities, they need to prioritize issues and develop strategies for conveying key messages most effectively. In addition to general awareness-raising campaigns, NHRIs may develop targeted thematic campaigns, for example, on issues related to women’s rights and gender equality. NHRIs should also be aware of intersectional issues that affect vulnerable populations of women and girls (for example, discrimination based on age; minority and migrant status; or disability). These types of issues can form the basis of targeted campaigns, whereby appropriate outreach opportunities and communications strategies need to be identified and used to reach the targeted group. Utilizing mass media: NHRIs can use television, radio and print media to publicize topics related to women’s rights and gender equality. Public broadcasters in many OSCE participating States are required by law to dedicate a given share of their programming to public service messages and social causes; NHRIs can collaborate with them to develop public service announcements, news coverage, interviews or other types of programming on women’s rights and gender equality. NHRIs may also undertake initiatives to ensure that journalists have training to cover these issues in a human rightsbased and gender-sensitive manner.

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