I AM HUMAN is a tool to raise awareness for human rights violations. By simply making a small change to a Captcha, we catch internet users off guard. Usually a captcha asks to prove that you are not a robot by selecting pictures of random objects. We ask the users to identify people in need of help – and truly confirm their humanity. Afterwards the users learn more about the stories behind the pictures and ways to join our fight for human rights.

A captcha is a common online tool. Thus, we only needed to make small changes (exchanging the pictures) to achieve the desired effect. With the free plug-in we gave everybody a tool to support the project without much effort or coding knowledge.

Having Meade Soltani, daughter of the imprisoned human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani, as a testimonial in our activation film and in our press conference helped to engage the public – including several politicians. By putting the plug-in on their websites, they supported the movement with a public statement and became forerunners for many others.

I AM HUMAN is no sprint. This is a campaign and a tool made for the long run. However, the first results show that the project is on track: the average user spent more than 2 minutes with the captcha. This interaction, our activation film and the engagement of several politicians lead 350% more support for the IGFM projects. The most important outcome is that the IGFM was able to win more politicians as political sponsors: 300% more than before the campaign. These political sponsorships are the most effective weapon for freeing imprisoned human rights activists – and therefore in fighting human rights violations in general.