NGO calls for human rights to be included in school curricula

A national human rights NGO in the Republic of Congo has called for the incorporation of human rights instruction in school curricula. At the conclusion on Saturday of a seminar held to discuss the matter, Christian Mounzeo, interim president of the Congolese Human Rights Observatory (Observatoire congolais des droits de l'homme), said that it was the responsibility of government authorities to take action as soon as possible, recalling that in 1995 the UN had declared a decade of human rights education. However, he said that one year before the end of the declared decade, no national plan for human rights education had been drafted or adopted. Participants in the seminar, which included journalists as well as representatives from human rights and democratic development NGOs, said that lack of political will and public ignorance of human rights were the primary obstacles to realising this vision. "There is a glaring lack of political will. When you see certain police officers openly flouting legal procedure, unconcerned, I think it is fair to say that our leaders are not looking for change," Romuald Mbepa, publisher of Le Defi newspaper, told IRIN. "We deplore the failure to respect conditions for arrest, excessive detentions of suspects, and the deliberate use of torture - a situation perpetuated by ignorance on the part of most of the population who cannot, therefore, defend their own rights." He added: "By including human rights education in school curricula from a very early age, we will be able to overcome this terrible deficit in people's understanding of human rights - a deficit that means that human rights are flouted on a regular basis." At the conclusion of the seminar, held in the economic capital port city of Pointe Noire, participants resolved to submit an outline of a plan of action to public authorities during a conference to be organised before the end of the year, with the objective of having human rights education included in school curricula. The theme of the seminar was "pedagogic methods for the teaching of law, human rights and a culture of peace".