Human Rights Training With De Brug – Part 2

De Brug Migranten voor mensenrechten second training session was held last Friday, on the 12th of June, at the conference room of the SEVA Network Foundation in The Hague.

As with the first training session, the programme was divided into three parts. The first session under the theme of Lobbying Human Rights Violations, was presented by Professor Peter Baehr (Honorary Professor of Human Rights at the Utrecht University and Emeritus Professor of Human Rights at the Leiden University). In the lecture, Prof. Baehr provided a theoretical background on methods of lobbying and their effectiveness.

Unfortunately Ms. Annick van Lookeren, Policy Adviser at Oxfam Novib, who was scheduled to present the second session, Tools to Raise Awareness on Human Rights, was unable to attend. However, thanks to a quick reaction on the part of GHRD staff, the basic content of the session was successfully incorporated with the third session. This took the form a workshop on Addressing Human Rights Violations and Raising Public Awareness and was conducted by Ms. Anna Innocenti (Project Manager at GHRD). The workshop gave an introduction to various practical methods and tools available for lobbying and creating awareness of human rights violations, with a focus on the European Union lobbying and the importance of media.

The success of this session clearly showed the wide demand for training programmes that cover these subject matters. This fact being reflected by the number of participants and range of nationalities represented at the training session: Argentina, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Ghana, Italy, The Netherlands, Nigeria, Sudan and Suriname. After a successful visit to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Wednesday the 10th of June, a second visit was arranged for Wednesday the 24th of June. Thanks to the interest of the participants, this time, the visit will include both a guided introduction to the court and a sitting at Thomas Lubanga’s hearing. The next and final training session will be conducted on Friday 26 June