Transmenu powered by JoomlArt.com - Mambo Joomla Professional Templates Club

The Bar Council Human Rights Committee (“HRC”) completed the last leg of the Training on Human Rights for Effective, Sustainable, and Holistic Outcomes in Law and Democracy (“Project THRESHOLD”).  This project targeted primarily Members of the Malaysian Bar and was financed under the US Government Federal Grant Programme.

Interactive sessions were later held with participants, organised into groups and challenged to handle specific cases of human rights violations based on principles under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“UDHR”) and the core International Human Rights Instruments.  Towards the end, a way-forward session drew much valuable inputs and comments from all present, in terms of empowerment and awareness of human rights issues in Malaysia.

Next, HRC engaged members of the Selangor Bar on 18 Jan 2011 in a 10-person roundtable discussion on various human rights issues, focusing on the rights of the marginalised groups in Malaysia.  Problems on human rights implementation were identified and possible solutions discussed.  The interaction was encouraging and though different views and perspectives were expressed, there was general indication of intent from all about pushing the human rights agenda further.                 

The last stop of Project THRESHOLD was in Kota Bahru, Kelantan.  A training workshop was conducted on 17 Feb 2011 for 24 members of the Kelantan Bar.

Human rights concepts were introduced through empowerment of the group, not by conventional direct lecture-style methods.  All inputs from the participants were directed and guided by the resource person first.  Sometimes questions were thrown in to challenge these inputs that were later synthesised and integrated.  Such pedagogy enabled the participants to formulate concepts of human rights like dignity, indivisibility, inalienability and universality, with much fun and ease.  The activities sharpened their analytical skills to understand and tackle the main human rights instruments like the UDHR, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Next came the application of theory to issues and this was expertly managed by the Chairperson of HRC, Andrew Khoo.  He showed participants a copy of the day’s paper; and having conceptualised human rights through the group empowerment methods earlier, the participants, with a little prodding from him, were able to tackle contemporary human rights issues on just about anything by reference to what was reported in the newspaper, with simple confidence.  The general participants’ response was they were able to grasp human rights principles more easily after the training than when they first started.