Developing Peace and Human Rights Educators in Iraq

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By Maria Jessop-Mandel

Overview

USIP's Maria Jessop-Mandel [3] writes about the Institute's recent human rights workshop, “Putting Human Rights Values into Action," for Iraqi professors held in Beirut, Lebanon.  The program explored three human rights-related themes specific to the Iraqi context -- children’s rights, women’s equality and academic freedom -- and ways these professors could more effectively teach human rights in their classrooms, and ultimately learn from each other's experiences.

Read the full text below.

I recently returned from Beirut, Lebanon where I and my colleagues -- Linda Bishai [1] and Manal Omar [2] -- facilitated a five-day advanced human rights education workshop for Iraqi professors who teach human rights in Iraq’s universities.  Twenty-three professors came to Beirut from Iraq – about half from the Baghdad area and the other half from the provinces – to attend the workshop, “Putting Human Rights Values into Action.”  The program was coordinated with the support of USIP’s Baghdad Office as well as the Lebanese American University in Beirut.  Following is a summary of the program along with a few highlights.

Our Baghdad participants from various colleges at the University of Baghdad had attended USIP’s workshop “Creative Approaches to Teaching Human Rights”  held in Irbil, Iraq last summer.  They shared their accomplishments in implementing teaching strategies and lesson plans over the 2008-09 academic year.  They reported many successful examples of using the participatory teaching approaches (such as using role plays, facilitated dialogue, and case studies to explore human rights themes).  For example, one law professor shared that she held a mock trial in her classroom that was highly successful in engaging the students on human rights.  She also reported that students were working on ways to advocate for their rights at the university.

The Beirut workshop was aimed at both reinforcing the teaching skills of returning participants and introducing new professors to participatory and more effective methods of teaching human rights.  The imbalance in the training group between the new and returning attendees presented somewhat of a challenge, but we overcame it to a large degree by doing some relationship-building activities on the first day and creating mixed discussion groups where participants shared successes, lessons learned and challenges in teaching human rights over the past year.

The program covered core principles and methods of effective human rights education and approaches to human rights advocacy. Additionally, the workshop interactively explored three human rights-related themes specific to the Iraqi context which participants had earlier identified as their primary interest areas: children’s rights, women’s equality and academic freedom.

The sessions on women’s equality proved to be the most controversial and stirred up emotions, but had the desired effect of prompting participants to think more deeply and talk more openly about the issue.  What became apparent is that the degree of commitment to human rights varied within the group and that grappling with what human rights means in practice (rather than in principle)  was challenging at times.  The USIP training team felt that Manal’s identity as a Muslim Arab-American was essential to exploring the particularly sensitive theme of women’s rights in Iraq in an effective way.

Two other components of the program stood out for participants.  The first was meeting with local human rights nongovernmental organizations in order to learn more about the development and management of such organizations. The second was a daylong program at the Lebanese American University where the group participated on panels and in discussion groups on “Best Approaches to Human Rights Education” and on “Creating a Culture of Respect for Human Rights on University Campuses.”  The Lebanese professors and human rights practitioners reinforced and in some ways legitimized the principles and approaches Linda, Manal and I had been teaching the group for the previous three days.  Incorporating these Lebanese academics and practitioners into part of the program was a definite strength as the participants could relate to them professionally, culturally and linguistically. They will also be useful regional contacts for the participants in the long term, which is an important step in helping to reverse the effects of decades of isolation Iraqi academics have experienced.

Another part of the program that resonated with the participants was that before the Beirut workshop, ten of the participants wrote essays on human rights themes as they might apply in Iraq. These essays are currently being edited, and will be used as both teaching resources and as tools for raising awareness among Iraqi government agencies and nongovernmental organizations.

We concluded the workshop on our last day with a discussion on how to spread knowledge and resources on effective human rights education to other teachers and professors working in Iraq.  These will be incorporated into a Train-the-Trainer program next year which will involve using a select number of professors we have trained to train other professors charged with teaching human rights.