Successfully accomplished Basic Human Rights Training in Thar Ga Ya

17 – 21 March 2014 (Yedashe Township, Bago Division, Myanmar)

Equality Myanmar’s HRE Program Team (Yangon) has successfully accomplished five-day Basic Human Rights Training in Thar Ga Ya, Yedashe Township, started from 17 – 21 March 2014.

Approximately, 18 diverse participants including political parties’ members, construction workers, student and school teachers, actively participated in the training. The training has also been the second times for Equality Myanmar in the very same region.

The goal of the training were; to strengthen the relationship among participants, to increase the cooperation and coordination between participants, to gain knowledge of Human Rights as well as to enable analysis between Human Rights and Constitutional Chapter (8) “Fundamental Citizen Rights and Responsibilities”, and to screen the overall current Myanmar Human Rights situations.

The themes of the training were; principles and concepts of Human Rights, history of Human Rights, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, types of Human Rights, development of Human Rights, Group Rights, and the connections of Human Rights and Constitutional Chapter (8) “Fundamental Citizen Rights and Responsibilities”.

During the training, participant discussed about the current Myanmar Human Rights challenges, the controversial issues like ethnic and religious violence through the angels of “Human Rights”, the role of military representation in the current 2008 Constitution that is contradictory with constitutional Rights, the current Human Rights violation situations happening in their community. In every part of discussing above topics, trainers used various types of participant-centered approaches and tools such as discussion based activities, drawing, screening TV, and group discussions and presentations.

“Before the training, I didn’t use to concern for any actions that I did, but now I came to realize that some of my actions are against Human Rights” said by one trainee.

Another trainee also cited that, “I am so amazed that there are so many Human Rights norms and teachings in our own religion and beliefs.”

At last, the training ended with the promises from the participants about their future plan for sharing of the knowledge that they studied in the training. Importantly, participants also asked for assistance from Equality Myanmar in terms of teaching materials and tools for their upcoming sharing sessions.