As we talk about Human Rights (HR) *Learning *a few additional things need
to be kept in mind (and practiced):
- The efforts needed are massive if we want to reach a 'tipping point'.
- Creating awareness among beneficiaries of social services of their social rights is a key first step.
- Creating awareness about duty-bearers' obligations is as much a priority (they need a change of heart and of their brains!).
- We also need to create awareness about the need for people to actively participate in collective actions.
- We have to create the link between HR issues at stake and the everyday real problems real people have.
- The above should be the basis for setting up HR learning curricula (that starts with a participatory situation analysis).
- We need to identify local institutions and (proven) local natural leaders who can validate HR principles in the context of their respective communities; this s crucial to create trust.
- We do not need to call our initial work HR Learning if it scares people off; there is time for that later.
- Let the core actors decide the course and progression of HR learning activities; start with something small and generate confidence.
- Do not underestimate possible repression as we get closer to the tipping point.
- Reminding claim holders of the obligations of government risks shifting the responsibility again back to the government!, i.e., the other side of the coin is: these are *your* rights; the government does not give them to you; so you fight for them.
- It is important t use participatory research, i.e., the affected gather pertinent evidence.
- Empower beneficiaries to make capacity analyses that identify all claim holders and duty bearers for each concrete major problem they have.
- Start at whatever needed level of conceptualization, but at the end of the process, we should have HR learning contributing to HR being used as a powerful banner and tool to resolve the HR violations at hand.
- HR learning agents have to be trained in HR so they have HR in their baggage as they work with claim holders and duty bearers.
- When grassroots struggles are already making headway in certain communities, we may not need to introduce HR so urgently; get into the movement with them and introduce the HR principles gradually.
- People's awakening to HR is itself a transformative process, but it has to lead to the realization of HR for this awakening not to be just a next-day ' hang-over'.
- A question you should ask is: Should HR learning be extended to the judiciary, the legislative, the police...?
- The challenge, in a world with distinct, different realities, is for HR learning agents to become better educators that have the wisdom to depart from different contextual realities.
- HR learning has to deliberately address issues of women's human rights on top of whatever other problems it is addressing.
- Bottom line caveat: Remember, people will say: "We do not eat HR, we eat rice". It is up to you to make the link and to struggle with them for rice tomorrow, at the sme time that HR learning is launched.
Claudio
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Claudio Schuftan
mailto:cschuftan@phmovement.org