[hr-education] Re: First phase of the World Programme for HRE

Dear Friends, 

I have been working for the last 12 years in different parts of Pakistan
and for the last 2 years in Afghanistan. The human rights situation is
similar in both the countries to some extent but the deteriorated peace
situation in Afghanistan added to the human sufferings more severely. As
per the UN HRE program the first phase (2005-2007), the focus is on human
rights education in primary and secondary schools. Its an excellent
strategy to address human rights issues for having long term impact. But
keeping in view the context of Pakistan and Afghanistan we also need to
have some immediate responses to human rights violations. As both these
are Islamic countries and also have strong culture and both religion and
culture are being used as pretext for human rights and especially for
women's human rights violations. Islam gives women their due rights on the
other hand our cultural history says that there were many customary
practices which were being practiced to protect women from any sort of
violations. Still there are a lot of controversies in understanding Islam
in its true sense. And in fact these are the two areas to be focused more
if we want to get desired results.

These are my personal views and that I think would be useful if taken into
consideration in the subsequent phase of World Program for Human Rights
Education. Thanks and looking forward for your valuable comments.

Noor Marjan, Human Rights activist 
Pakistan and Afghanistan 





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