Preaching human rights education

IT is undeniable that young people in a society can play pivotal role to disseminate human rights knowledge with a view to ensuring human rights culture.  With this vision of  fostering human rights education, Empowerment through Law of the Common People (ELCOP) facilitates a program called Street Law (Protidiner Ain) which aims to educate people about basic human rights, democratic norms, rights and duties, and other petty legal issues. Street law program has been running by young law students from public and private university of Bangladesh since 1998. On part of this, ELCOP organised a seminar titled “The Idea of Human Rights: From Theory to Practice” in its premises on April 4, 2015. Around 30 bright and diligent young street lawyers attended the seminar with their enthusiastic mind and interest.

Mr. Ruslan Khusainov, Activity Director of Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI), and Mrs. Sandra Lucas, International Ambassador of YHRI, spoke in the seminar. Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) is a USA based nonprofit organization which aims to teach human rights among youth and inspires them to become advocates of human rights. 

Mrs. Lucas emphasised on the importance of protection and promotion of 30 human rights contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The essence of her discussion was to simply present and talk about the basic concept of human rights by showing 30 short-storied videos for each of the Article of UDHR. The seminar was moderated by Mr. Mohammad Golam Sarwar, Program Coordinator, ELCOP-Street Law and Lecturer of Law, Eastern University. Mr. Sarwar substantiated the discussion between discussants and participants by giving inputs on the issue of human rights from his experiences. Mr. Saimum Reza Talukder and Mr. Mostafizur Rahman, two young human rights activists, also shared their experiences. 

Muhammad Mahdy Hassan
Street Lawyer, ELCOP