HRWMO Approach to Human Rights Education

HRWMO believes that education is the focal point in their mission to assist Afghanistan citizens in the protection and promotion of human rights. The respect for the rights of others on the part of a majority of the population of Afghanistan is the only guarantee that rights will be respected. Afghanistan is challenged, as is the world, to establish a culture for human rights protection, achieved through human rights education.

The attitudes HRWMO expects to build through education are:

• Strengthening respect for human rights and basic freedoms

• Development of the human personality and a sense of dignity

• Promotion of tolerance, gender equality, and friendship among nations, indigenous people, and racial, national, ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups

• Enabling persons to participate in a free society

• Furtherance of activities of the United Nations towards peace.

HRWMO agrees with the UN that the basis of human rights education is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Its simplicity of vision causes it to be accessible to people of all ages and conditions.

HRWMO focuses its Human Rights Training Courses on tolerance education. Respect for the rights of others by the majority of Afghan citizens best allows rights to be respected. WHMO understands that our understanding of human rights contains a personal value system. This system is a mirror of the culture and region where we live. Our experience in our circles of identity, such as gender, class, religion, and family status, further defines our value system. HRWMO strives to make its education participants aware of their own assumptions in this regard. HRWMO offers a specific course that teaches that if we presume that we can speak on behalf of everyone, we risk infringing on others whose rights we wish to defend.

Awareness of the manner in which diversity affects human interactions causes us to appreciate the richness of diversity, and to anticipate the challenges of diversity.In its Human Rights Curriculum HRWMO demonstrates group work which causes the participants to acknowledge differences, and find common ground on which to work together. HRWMO attempts to dedicate its human rights curriculum to the acceptance that the foundation of human rights is the universality of human dignity and interdependence. In its Seeking Common Ground module, the goals are:

• To examine what personal values and long-held assumptions are about? Right and wrong Influence personal actions and reactions and:

• To explain the positions in the debate about the universality of rights vs. cultural relativism.

In its Human Rights Curriculum, HRWMO offers 3 courses:

• "Seeking Common Ground", mentioned above;

• "Building Global Culture", based upon the UNDHR; and

• A Basic Human Rights module that discusses human rights, from the perspective of those which are positive, natural, and constitutional. The relationship between democracy and human rights is discussed. Human rights education is the process of transformation that begins with the individual and branches out to encompass society at large.