Celebrating International Human Rights Day 2009
Human Rights Day December 10th 2010 marks the 61st anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly!
International Human Rights Day is a day which promotes, protects and pays respect to human rights and human dignity. It is also a time to reflect on the work that volunteers and human rights organisations contribute to raising awareness and promoting disempowered groups of society.
Here at Challenges Worldwide, we are committed to raising awareness and empowering organisations who seek to improve human rights. CWW works with a number of human rights organisations across the globe, notably in South America, Africa and Asia. Our volunteers work to empower organisations by offering crucial skills in finance, HR, communications, business, IT and Legal work. A number of the organisations with which we work are committed to:
“The promotion and protection of women and children’s right and the improvement of their general status through Legal Literacy, Legal Aid Service, Advocacy, Research and professional advancement of its members.” TAWLA, Mission Statement.
“A just and free society in which women and men have, exercise and enjoy equally their full rights and opportunities.” CREAW, Vision Statement.
“To empower the disempowered groups of Dalits, tribals, women, children and minorities to protect their individual and collective rights for a dignified life through, education, monitoring and mobilising civil society for concerted action.” SICHREM, Mission Statement.
CWW celebrates the success of one of our partner organisations. SICHREM (South India Cell for Human Rights Education and Monitoring) started in 1995, to address the growing insensitivity to the supremacy of the rule of law. They aim to build a more responsible civil society through education, sensitization and intervention.
“SICHREM’ s vision is to create a fearless society where the rights of the last and the least will be respected without any kind of bias and hopes to make human rights a household concept by adopting a proactive stance on the restoration of rights and by advocating a rights-based value system. SICHREM believes that the domain of human rights extends to all realms of the society to embrace social, cultural, economic, civil and political rights. Thus, it consciously takes a pro-poor, gender-sensitive and pro-child stance.
Coinciding with the declaration of UN Decade for Human Rights Education, SICHREM launched its human rights education program in 1995, since then has initiated innovative projects and activities to address the issues of dignity and rights of the marginalized communities.” SICHREM (December 2009)
Some key accomplishments of SICHREM include:
• Monitoring Human Rights:through fact-finding missions to ensure that victims are able to access and seek justice and compensation.
• Advocacy, Lobbying and Campaigns:SICHREM throughout the years has been active in promoting new campaigns and has supported existing ones. To name a few: the Campaign against Child Labour; Campaign against Constitutional Review; Lobbying for State Action Plan for Eliminating Child Labour.
• Biggest compensation awarded by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC):Since 1998 SICHREM has been campaigning for justice to the victims of the Special Task Force (STF) who were employed for nabbing the notorious sandal wood smuggler Veerappan.
• Karnataka State Human Rights Commission: SICHREM has been at the forefront, campaigning for setting-up of the State Human Rights Commission in Karnataka State.
• Presence in the Campus: As part of human rights education and awareness building, SICHREM did a lot of focused work in the college campuses with an objective of catching the young minds and orienting them towards human rights. One such example is the development of the One-Year Diploma Course in Human Rights Studies run in collaboration with St Joseph’s Evening College.
• Tying up with the Institute of Human Rights Education:to implement human rights education in about 123 schools in Karnataka and 55 schools in Kerala.
• Established a Media Presence
• Establishing the District Human Rights Centres (DHRC)
• National Project on Preventing Torture in India (NPPTI)
• Running Human Rights Clinics and a Human Rights Helpline
We would like to congratulate all our Country Partners on the work that they achieve. A special thanks to SICHREM for providing us with information.
A further update will follow with news from our volunteers in the field.
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