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[home]>[programmes]>[orientation
course]>report
How It All Began
 Set up in 1993 as a regional public forum to promote respect for universal
values of human rights, the interdependence of rights and the indivisibility
of rights, the South Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR) took up issues
of human rights, peace and democracy as the main areas of its concern.
With work on human rights becoming more engrossing, Peace as a value
started to inform its vision, and became the core of its peace studies
programmes, regional dialogues on human rights and peace, and campaigns
on issues of justice. SAFHR started articulating the notion of peace as
a space for the enjoyment of rights of people; and programmes on issues
such as rights of indigenous peoples, protection of minorities, rights
of refugees and migrants, issues of impunity, militarization and lack
of regional cooperation, women's rights, media - in all these the objective
came to be pronounced in a framework of human rights, peace, tolerance,
and democracy.
 In course, SAFHR initiated a regional campaign to promote the concept
of "Right to Peace" as a fundamental right through such mechanisms
as people to people dialogues and regional coalitions. SAFHR works through
a network of several partners comprising civil society organisations,
committed to the promotion human rights and peace. SAFHR's programmes
reach out to human rights groups, peace constituencies, other civil society
organizations, academics, journalists, professionals and policy makers
to build regional solidarities for peace. Constituted by several human
rights organizations and public bodies working for peace and democracy
and spanning seven countries of the region, SAFHR's programmes are regional.
They advocate participatory and cooperative approaches. In addition, SAFHR
participates in several networks and alliance building programmes.
The Peace Studies Programme explores the relation between peace in the
region and the activism for democracy and human rights through peace studies
courses and peace audit exercises.
 The South Asian Human Rights and Peace Studies Orientation course is
held each year. The program aims to reach out to activists, researchers
and academics, media persons, and functionaries engaged in formulation
of policies for conflict resolution. About thirty participants are selected
based on criteria related to human rights and peace activism and work
in the area of peace studies. The course is participatory and involves
intense course work and visual studies. Frontline activists and researchers
on human rights, peace and reconciliation share their knowledge and experience
with the participants who leave the course with a critical understanding
on issues of justice and peace in South Asia. As part of the peace studies
programme, smaller courses are held at local levels, and help is provided
to such initiatives at local levels.
 As part of the peace studies programme, SAFHR organizes also public audits
of peace. Participants from peace constituencies in the conflict zones
join in the audit exercise to analyze the peace questions in the region.
These audit exercises are also trans-border dialogues; they bring out
the plural nature of peace process and the democratic vision of peace.
Statements of understandings issued from these audit exercises form the
core of the agenda of human rights and peace constituencies in these conflict
zones. The audits are conducted with the philosophical approach that tolerance
and peace are essential values to be cherished and nourished by democratic
societies and polities. To be more than mere conflict-management exercises
run by States who themselves have been responsible for exacerbation of
conflicts, militarism, and nuclearization of the region, and have tolerated
private militias in their pursuit of national security, these audits emphasize
the fact that peace is plural in nature in as much as constituencies for
peace are also plural.
The peace studies programme of SAFHR is an act in experiential education.
The course is participatory and involves intense course and fieldwork.
Visual studies are part of the course. Frontline activists and researchers
on human rights, peace and reconciliation share their knowledge and experience
with the participants towards developing an enriched collective understanding
of issues of justice and peace in South Asia. The peace studies programme
links SAFHR's efforts in such diverse fields of human rights and justice,
such as women's activism for peace, work on forms of autonomy and minority
rights, protection of refugees, campaign for national laws and regional
convention on refugee protection in South Asia, and promoting media participation
in the work of human rights and peace. The links are established in three
ways:
- by drawing young participants from these activities in the course
- by using SAFHR's lessons in these engagements as the material for
discussion in the course
- by connecting the participants of the course with these activities
in as wide ways as possible.
The first course (2000) was on the theme of Peace as
Value.
This was probably the first such orientation activity in South Asia in
peace and human rights education, in the form of a foundational course
on the moral-ethical values of peace and human rights. The imperatives
of such an orientation course were several. First, as a regional human
rights forum, SAFHR realized how issues of human rights, for several reasons,
were getting irretrievably linked with issues of peace and conflict resolution
in a situation where human rights abuses were becoming worse in situation
of conflict and state repression, and the voice of the people was being
erased from peace process. Second, while individual rights hade been receiving
(though insufficient) recognition, group rights such as rights of minorities,
refugees, non-state persons, internally displaced, indigenous people,
had got almost no recognition at all from legal authorities. Third, neither
a purely human rights activism alienated from the wider concern for peace,
nor a purely peace concern devoid of the values of human rights and justice
was going to be able to connect the two, and establish the democratic
linkage. Fourth, numerous civil liberty activists and peace campaigners
had been in search of a forum that would undertake the task of establishing
such a connection in the pedagogic form of an orientation course in peace
studies.
 Professor Rajni Kothari from India gave the introductory address and
Professor Anisuzzaman from Bangladesh delivered the valedictory lecture.
Participants were thirty in number and the faculty consisted of academics
and human rights campaigners such as A.H. Nayyar, Asad Sayeed, Kanti Bajpai,
P. Saravanamuttu, Nimalka Fernando, Gautam Navlakha, Samir K. Das, Ravi
Nayar, Rajeev Bhargava, I.A. Rehman, Ranabir Samaddar, Tapan K. Bose,
Rita Manchanda, Dipak Gyawali, Ajay Dixit, Kanak Dixit, Stefan Melnic
and Nick Gower.
Field visit on the theme of conflict and cooperation on water resources
was part of the course.
The second course (2001) was on Justice, Reconciliation,
Peace and the Practices of Non-Violence.
There were three reasons for choosing justice, reconciliation, and non-violence
as the key theme of the course: (a) resistance to aggression, injustice,
and authoritarianism had been conducted in both violent and non-violent
ways, but the issue of violence had often overshadowed the reason for
which resistance had been mounted; (b) vast experiences of non-violent
conduct for justice, dignity and equality have not been adequately noted,
particularly in propagation and campaign on human rights, and finally,
(c) the overwhelming presence of violence and aggression in crucial sectors
of social life, in politics, economy, public life, family life, gender
relations, made exploration of the structures of violence imperative.
Explorations into these themes by activists and young scholars with public
concerns became a refreshing aspect of peace studies programme. Experiences
were discussed; and levels of tolerance, accommodation, and understanding
in both public and private spheres that indicated the capacity of peace-building
in society were studied. Built around six modules that included studying
maps and peace studies films, the second course spent much time on dynamics
of dialogue and reconciliation, women's rights, media in conflict and
peace, information basis of human rights, human rights protection mechanisms
in the region, theories and practices of justice, and the agenda to make
reconciliation a matter of public culture.
The participants were thirty in number and came from all over the region.
The faculty consisted of several eminent South Asian human rights and
peace activists and thinkers with few joining from outside the region.
Members of the faculty were: Tapan K. Bose, Sanjay Chaturvedi, Afsan Chowdhury,
Leo Fernandez, Rada Ivekovic, Hina Jilani, Ram Narayan Kumar, Rita Manchanda,
Syed Sikander Mehdi, Chaitanya Mishra, Bishnu N. Mohapatra, Pratyoush
Onta, Günther Rautz, I. A. Rehman, Ranabir Samaddar, Susanne Schmeidl,
Jeevan Thiagarajah, and Daya R. Varma.
Professor Rada Ivekovic delivered the inaugural lecture and Professor
Daya Varma gave the valedictory address.
Field visit on the issue of people's ideas about human rights and democracy
in a conflict-torn area was part of the Course. The Course had in it a
smaller level course in Srinagar.
- Last Year's Lessons and the
Wise Heads
- The Design of the Third Course
- Structure, Thrust Areas, and Components
- The Faculty
- The Participants
- The Modules - Issues and
Discussions
- Note on the Course Reader
- Auditing Peace, Learning Peace
- Inaugural Lecture by Oren
Yiftachel from Ben-Gurion University, Israel. Topic: From
the Belly of the Beast Lessons to peace-making from Israel/Paestine
- Valedictory address by Partha
Chatterjee from Centre for Studies in Social Science, Calcutta
Topic: The Rights of the Governed
- Its like an Open University
- Overall Evaluation Note by
Patrick Hoening
- Three Essays by Participants
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