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Wise Heads
A consultative meeting on the Third South Asian Human Rights and Peace
Studies Orientation Course was held in Delhi on 5 April 2002. Present
in the meeting were C.R. Abrar, Ashok Agrwaal, Rajeev Bhargava, Tapan
K. Bose, Sanjay Chaturvedi, E. Deenadayalan, Ram Narayan Kumar, Rita Manchanda,
Navita Mahajan, Shobhit Mahajan, Mohanlal Panda, Jehan Perera, Aswini
Kr. Ray, Ranabir Samaddar, Kapil Shrestha, and Priyankar Upadhyay. Tapan
K. Bose chaired the meeting.
The meeting deliberated on:
- The reports on the past two orientation courses and discussion (selection
of participants, course structure, themes, and results of the past two
courses)
- Structure of the third orientation course, its features and link-up
with the peace audit exercise of SAFHR
- The theme and sub-themes of the third orientation course
- And, the Course reader
Structure of the course: In the discussion on the past two courses
several suggestions came up and the consensus among the members present
was that the following suggestions should be followed in further developing
the design of the course:
One part of the course could be a travelling element - such as an exhibition,
or a peace studies group travelling to different places as a form of fieldwork,
etc.
- There should be such courses at smaller scale and local level.
- The distance education part of the course should be more interactive,
carefully monitored and supervised.
- There should be an inbuilt structure of follow-up.
- After three courses SAFHR can have a stock-taking in terms of syllabus,
design, follow-up measures, and results.
- In notifying the course, attention be paid to notify the course on
an even wider scale, and reach the notification to more peace and human
rights personalities, institutions, and movements, general universities,
and peace studies journals.
- Encouragement has to be provided to ex-participants to arrange local
consultations on issues of human rights and peace studies, and organize
panel discussions, institute courses at local levels, and help in making
the alumni forum productive.
- The peace studies programme of SAFHR should interact more with other
programmes in form of inputs, participation, follow-up measures, and
other operational links.
- The course should remain of high standard, and empirical details of
issues be provided in a way that the critical skills of the participants
improve.
- An on-line system of interaction will be developed as part of the
programme.
- In terms of making the course more participatory, the course can have
provision for group papers and group work on problems.
- The profile of the course should remain foundational, rich in terms
of perspective, and interactive.
- The introductory section in the course in form of a separate module
or introductory lectures should detail out the specifics of the theme
of the course.
- Similarly the system of tutorials may be introduced to help the participants
with more complex and difficult themes.
- The audit exercise can be integrated with the course by paying more
attention to participants in the audit exercise, the findings of the
said exercise in terms making the audit reports part of the syllabus,
and taking the basics of the peace studies course into the framework
of the work on audit.
The theme and sub-themes: In the attempt to make the course strong
in foundational themes, while at the same time remaining relevant to current
situation, it was suggested that part of the syllabus should remain constant,
dealing with basics, and forming the core of the syllabus, while another
part may be revised regularly in order to deal with problems and issues
of the time. Thus it was advised that in the third course the basics of
the earlier two courses be retained while adding new dimensions to the
concerns of the course. Thus basic issues of human rights and peace, human
rights laws, and the problematic of universality and particularity of
human rights will be in this course also, as they were in the earlier
two courses. In adding the dimension of "War, Violence, Intervention,
and Their Impact on Democracy in South Asia" as the particular theme
of this year's course, it was advised that care about combining the constant
themes and the particular theme of this year's course be maintained. In
the context of the concept note on this year's theme, circulated earlier
among the members, it was suggested that the deliberations in the course
on the said theme should pay attention to following dimensions of the
situation:
- The element of "excess" in the war and war-like situation
existing today that is causing a deficit of human rights, decline of
human rights institutions, and the state's capacity and willingness
to protect human rights in this region and wide across the globe.
- The situation of minorities, immigrants, women, and different vulnerable
sections of society.
- Various scenarios of intervention and laws of war and peace.
- The relation of violence, communalism, and war against terrorism in
the context of killings and persecution of minorities in states of South
Asia.
- Cartographies of violence, and the paradox of the universality of
the ideal of rights and the state centric institutionalization of human
rights.
- The prevailing culture of impunity in the region as against the desired
culture of responsibility.
- The notion of responsibility - shared responsibility, collective responsibility,
individual responsibility, graded responsibility.
- Human rights law, humanitarian law - convergence and divergence.
- Roots of the current crisis - attacks against civil liberties, other
rights, downgrading of rights institutions.
- The need to question the adequacy of our understanding of certain
wars, particularly the "dirty wars", and the need to integrate
in the current context the arguments of human rights in the broad discourse
of justice.
The Course reader: The discussion on the Course Reader took note
of the care and labour that went into the making of the reader for the
second orientation course. It was also noted how the reader could carry
the participants in a journey through the histories, issues, problems
and practices related to peace, justice, and human rights. It was also
noted that the participants would be realizing the value of the reader
as they would become more active, critical, and contemplative in the process
of their peace activism. The reader is not for one-time use but is to
be a companion for time to come long after the course is over and participants
have gone back to their respective places and stations of work. The meeting
was of unanimous view that preparation of a suitable reader called for
separate attention and exercise. It was suggested:
- Preparing such a reader is a participatory exercise.
- In the course of preparing the reader, SAFHR may be able to gradually
build up an archive of documents.
- The reader will be effective for a tutorial system in such a short
and intense orientation course.
- In preparing the reader attention should be paid to having material
from non-European sources.
- There can be a media section in the reader as part of promoting media
literacy.
- The reader should be based on the principle of many sided presentation
of writings on a problematic of peace and human rights.
- The reader is a developing project, and three years of holding the
orientation course on an annual basis and organizing the syllabus for
each year's course should now lead to an exercise of preparing a durable
syllabus and an appropriate reader.
- This year's course material will include SAFHR papers specially authored
for the course, as was done last year.
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