Problem Solved: How Rights with a Voice Educated Young Latin Americans about Human Rights

Amnesty International needs to reach a younger generation. This is especially true in Latin America, where youngsters are dangerously accepting and even admiring dictatorial behaviours and anti-democratic tendencies from our governments.

The ‘Latin American and Caribbean Youth and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ paper revealed that, on average, 69% of eighth-grade students in five countries (Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Peru) would prefer dictatorial governments if they provided security and order, while an average of 65% would prefer them if they brought economic benefits.

What is really scary is that the younger generation of Latin Americans don't receive any education about human rights. So anti-democratic speeches are getting to their ears and there's no balance of opinions. We may face a new society where the violation of human rights in the name of order and stability not only will be accepted, but promoted.

Amnesty International exists to make sure that human rights are respected across every country in the world. So, we have to do something.

Music is one of the more powerful ways to connect with younger people.

In Latin America, local musicians are more relevant than global stars. In that region, 75% of streamed music is local, a much higher number than Europe, for instance.

The fact that we used new artists on this campaign comes from the habits of this new generation. Younger people are way more open to discover and follow upcoming artists than previous generations. As a matter of fact, most people build their musical memory between 16-24 years old, so we chose to speak directly to that age group through the new artists they love to support.

On the other hand, the way these age groups get their information faster is TikTok, and then Instagram. New music is discovered every day, and TikTok is the channel of choice of upcoming artists to make their creations known.

So we created ‘Derechos con Voz’ (Rights with a Voice). A call to new artists to compose Tik Tok songs about each one of the human rights.

We launched this campaign on December 10th, 2023 on the 75th anniversary day of the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights. We approached 10 young artists from Mexico, Argentina and Peru and asked them to compose the first 10 original songs (we recommended them to not exceed the 60 seconds limit). They could choose one of the 30 human rights. The genre was free, as long as they made a song they really love. Then, we asked those artists to invite other upcoming artists they admire. We gave them a graphic template and the hashtag #DerechosConVoz. Around mid January 2024, there were 30 original songs linked through the styles of the different artists and the graphic template. All the human rights were covered. But there were also covers of songs about freedom and democratic values. The spontaneous contributions were being uploaded until February.

Eight million targeted people saw our videos in two months (interactions and views). This means that eight million (mostly younger Latin Americans) heard about human rights at least once in the past two months.

Seventy one videos were uploaded.

The engagement rate on TikTok was 154%.

The engagement rate on Instagram was 102%.

More than 450,000 people came from the artist’s communities.

Interactions came from Mexico, Peru, Argentina and Colombia.

Amnesty International grew its followers on TikTok and Instagram attracting people in the age group 16-24.