Successfully conducted the Basic Human Rights Training in Puta-O

1 4 – 18 April 2014 (Puta-O Township, Kachin State, Myanmar)

Equality Myanmar (Mandalay) has done a five day human rights training at Puta-O township, Northern part of Kachin State, started from 14 to 18 April.

There were about 25 training participants who belong to different Kachin ethnic tribes such as Lisu, Long Mi, Jinghpaw and Rawang. They also came from different places across Puta-O township.

The five days training covered on concept of human rights, history of human rights, UDHR articles (30), comparison between UDHR and Myanmar’s 2008 Constitutional Chapter (8), International Human Rights treaties and Group Rights, and Complaint Mechanism. The two trainers from Equality Myanmar led the training through various participatory leaning methods and using local creative tools.

One pastor in the training said that, “We still need a lot of similar human rights training in this region. For me, the training is a very useful and effective since there are so many human rights violations happening in my community.”

The trainer also shared his view that, “All of the participants are so active and energetic to share what they think and feel. Surprisingly there are none participants who are absent during five days training.”

The training ended with so much mutual respect and trust building among participants from different areas, a great amount of discussion about local human rights issues, and possibility of emergence of local human rights groups in the region.