Donor: Olof Palmes Internationella Centrum
Duration of the project: January – December 2007
The idea for the activities of the project Human Rights for the Future originated from a group of alumni of the Human Rights School 2006. The goal of the project was to increase knowledge about human rights and debating among secondary school students, young professionals and students, through training, practice and thus invest in future development and strengthening of human rights education and practice in Serbia.Activities on this project create the opportunity to the best participants who have shown an interest and have elaborated and successfully defended a paper soon after their participation in BCHR Human Rights Schools to lecture human rights on the seminars for the high school students. The main topics on seminars were prohibition of discrimination (HIV/AIDS and sexual minorities), tolerance, youth rights, environmental rights, economic rights, right to education and freedom of expression.
Trough introductory lectures on selected topics and basic human rights around 200 high school students from Požarevac, Jagodina (central Serbia) and Zrenjanin and Vršac (Vojvodina) participated on the seminars in the period February – March 2007. In addition to learning about human rights, the students have been simultaneously prepared for the debate competition (instructed in rules of debate and ways of presenting topics). They have been provided with literature useful for their preparations for the debates. The debate aimed to allow students to present their opinions and acquired knowledge on different human rights topics and to open discussion about problems related to human rights viewed from different angles and constructive discussions leading to specific conclusions. Divided into two debate teams six selected students in each of the four schools took part in the school debate competitions. The inter-school competition was held in May between teams from different towns in three competition rounds. Winners and losers of the first debate cycle meet in the second round and finally in the last, third round, the teams that won the second round compete for the prize. As the vast majority of young people were for a number of reasons prevented from travelling outside Serbia in the past decade, BCHR organised a three-day visit to Prague (Check Republic) for the winners of the competition, team from Zrenjanin.
Nine participants from the previous Human Right Schools of the Belgrade Centre created the programme of the seminars, organized all activities and gave the lectures. On this way alumni from the Human Right Schools were much more involved BCHR educational projects. Apart from coming up with the main idea of this project proposal, the best members of the group, the young BCHR associates who had been involved also in the project Investing in Human Rights for the Future: Increasing the Capacity of Young Professionals and Students for Training and Practice in the Field of Human Rights build their own capacity to independently design and implement future projects within the BCHR.
In the second part of the project the traditional programme of the Belgrade Centre’s Training for Trainers in Human Rights School was organised for the eleventh time and offer to the 25 selected participants the possibility not only to gain knowledge but also to become trainers themselves in the future.
