Fifty young human rights defenders from the Middle East and North Africa met in Tunis from 23-27 April for an intensive workshop on advocacy and the human rights-based framework. The workshop was part of a year-long training programme, “Youth for Human Rights”, which provides intensive training and support for young human rights defenders in the Arab World in order to increase advocacy and monitoring capacity and foster regional networking.
The workshop followed an introductory distance learning course on human rights advocacy. From August to December the young activists will participate in a distance learning course on human rights monitoring and the programme will conclude with a five-day in-person workshop on human rights monitoring in Cairo (Egypt) in early 2008. During the programme the young human rights activists from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen and United Arab Emirates will receive on-going support from a mentor. “Youth for Human Rights” is jointly organised by the Arab Institute for Human Rights (AIHR), the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) and HREA.