AIHRC Education Unit

The Education Unit is one of the five programme units of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission that is actively involved in promotion and awareness raising of human rights at various levels. The Human Rights Education Unit has devised its programmatic interventions to enhance the patterns of attitudinal and behavioral changes through institutionalization of human rights. The Education Unit has been closely working with the AIHRC support units of Research and Policy and Publication and Media.

Vision: To institutionalize human rights and replace prevailing culture of war & violence to a CULTURE OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND PEACE throughout the country.

Mission: To promote human rights to replace culture of violence through awareness initiatives, support local capacities and voluntarism for human rights activities, as well as strengthening the role of civil society institutions to bring about positive changes in the attitudes and behaviors of people and institutions.

Objectives: To fulfill its ambitions the unit has set the following objectives:

To provide relevant information on international human rights instruments and principles

To device human rights programmes to effectively enhance attitudinal and behavioral changes through development of a human rights curricula

To assist law enforcement organs adapt their behaviors in accordance to international human rights standards and values

To broaden general public awareness about domestic laws and in particular about the new constitution

To network with like minded institutions and civil society organizations to sensitize them for effective protection and promotion of human rights

To develop new policies and strategies for institutionalization of human rights and teaching of human rights

To promote a human rights culture emphasizing respect for, and faith in, human rights and principle human rights

To form a pool of human rights educators, volunteers, and master trainers to enhance human rights training and education for various categories of people and institutions.

Programmes and activities: To materialize the above-mentioned objectives the Education Unit devised the following programmatic interventions and activities:

Organizing training of trainers (ToT)

Conduct and facilitation of human rights training and awareness raising workshops

Organizing various conferences, public gatherings and seminars on divers topics of human rights with academic, civil society, and government institutions

Developing training manuals for human rights training

Producing various literature on different topics of human rights for training workshops

Translation of international human rights instruments and conventions into local languages

Developing a revised teaching curriculum for schools and police academy

The Education unit covered a wide range category of people, who attended the human rights various training workshops, in Kabul and in the provinces.

The Education unit is closely working with the Compilation and Curricula Development Unit of the Ministry of Education to revise the current teaching texts of schools[1]. A joint committee of 6 people (4 people from the MoE and 2 people from the AIHRC) is now established and has been reviewing the existing teaching curriculum. Required suggestions and recommendations are passed to MoE.

The Education unit has assisted the University of Education for developing a new curriculum and syllabus for a newly introduced subject, being thought at the University, called Peace, Democracy, and Human Rights for its last topic.

The Unit was able to enjoy good working ties with the Ministry of Interior, and particularly with the Police Academy. As a result of the mutual co-operation, now human rights is an integrated part of the Police Academy current curriculum. Furthermore, the commission distributed over 700 honorary cards for police and national army soldiers. The cards emphasize on 10 principles of treatment of civilians and highlighting article 3, 5, 9, and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

With close collaboration with Faculty of Journalism, Kabul University, the Unit devised a joint initiative with the Faculty of Journalism for a month-long training course on Journalism and Human Rights. Human resources were provided by the AIHRC to conduct relevant sessions. So far over 400 people, including journalists, reporters, photo journalists working with various official and private media attended and benefited from the 8 rounds of the course.

The Education unit has been trying to build capacities within civil society and other human rights institutions to actively embark on human rights awareness raising activities. To this end the Education unit conducted several ToT for many Afghan NGOs to incorporate human rights in their ongoing training workshops.

Based on the complaints registered with the Complaint of Human Rights Abuses and Monitoring about mistreatment of prisoners, the Education unit conducted various human rights training workshops with the heads of prisons.

Partnership

The Education unit has been keen to develop working ties and mutual partnership with potential individuals as well as a diverse group of institutions involved in the field of training workshops.

So far the Unit has signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with 16 national NGOs and institutions, while negotiation and further discussions are going on with more than 10 other NGOs and civil society institutions.

The Unit has currently, based on signed MoUs, developed good working contacts and partnership with ministries of education, higher education, interior, and intelligence department. All partners regularly receive the Commissions diverse publications as well as Video and CD films about womens and childrens rights.

The Commission in general, and the Education Unit in particular, tries to effectively build the capacity of national resources and institutions as a cornerstone and vital step towards institutionalization of human rights. This will ultimately enable the AIHRC to facilitate a process rather than directly implement the projects and activities relevant to human rights promotion and protection. The AIHRC as a national institution is to feed partner organizations, to initiate effective advocacy and lobbying on various human rights issues, and to expand its coverage and reach out through networking with like-minded institutions and individuals at the national, regional, and international level.

[1] There were different school texts developed by both the Communist and Mujahiddin regimes. The texts were full of violent messages and promoting prejudice and discrimination.