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A Human Rights Curriculum for Tertiary Institutions

3 March 2005

Human Rights
Human Rights workshop, Nashik, India.
A working group is meeting in Nashik, India, from 1 to 3 March 2005 to finalise a draft human rights curriculum for tertiary institutions in Asia. The meeting brings together 15 representatives from the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Commonwealth Legal Education Association, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, the Commonwealth Youth Programme Asia Centre and a number of Indian universities. These include the Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University (YCMOU), University of Chandigarh, SNDT Women's University, University of Pune and Punjab University.

Based on the curriculum, the working group will plan for the development of study material for the students and training strategies for master trainers. The meeting is examining model case studies and identifying areas to be highlighted in the training workshops, including the basic concepts of human rights and procedures to promote human rights that can be included in the trainers' handbook.

The draft curriculum includes basic concepts of human rights and development, history and theory of human rights, rights and duties, human rights standards and humanitarian law.

Dr Rajan Welukar, Vice-Chancellor of YCMOU, said at the opening of the workshop that there is a need to educate students about human rights in order to create a greater awareness about this issue.

Jarvis Matiya, Acting Head of the Human Rights Unit of the Secretariat, said: "This workshop is intended to equip students with a thorough understanding of the importance of human rights to development and enable them to promote human rights in their community. It is important for every person to be aware of his/her rights and to use this knowledge in decision-making and in one's daily life."

The Human Rights Unit will be conducting three training workshops for trainers in April 2005 on how to deliver the course. The workshops will cover issues such as the objectives and nature of a human rights curriculum, the method of counselling and evaluation, as well as the use of teaching materials. These workshops will help the participants and students to understand more about the practical implementation of the rights-based approach to development through the human rights curriculum model. Another human rights curriculum model for an adults' diploma-level course will be targeted at teachers, community and civil service workers, judges and lawyers. Apart from developing a Commonwealth model, the workshop will discuss an India-specific curriculum at certificate level.

 

CNIS - the Commonwealth News and Information Service Issue 224 2 March 2005

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