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The Design of the Third Course
Held from 3 August to 17 August 2002 in Kathmandu at the Administrative
Staff College and Hotel Himalaya, the Third South Asian Human Rights and
Peace Studies Orientation Course had as its participants, peace and human
rights activists, media persons, researchers, academics, and a diplomat
involved in policy making in conflict resolution. Apart from engaging
with issues of perennial concern in human rights and peace, the third
orientation course examined themes related to War, Violence, Intervention,
and Their Impact on Democracy in South Asia.
The third course assumed additional significance in the context of increasing
human rights violations and humanitarian disasters after 11 September
2001. The course took into account laws of war and laws of peace; new
wars, civilian casualties, and humanitarian crisis; ethics of rights,
justice, and responsibility; and the collapse of liberal-constitutional
culture in the wake of new wars, and the need to defend the area of conscientious
dissent, human rights and freedom.
It had five components - (a) classes (b) roundtables, group discussions,
workshops, and other interactive sessions (c) term papers and group reports;
(d) literary sessions; (e) and visits to human rights organizations and
field work.
The classes and roundtable discussions were organized around four modules:
- Basic concepts of human rights and their links to peace
- Laws of war and laws of peace
- Ethics of rights, justice, and responsibility
- Collapse of liberal-constitutional culture in the wake of new wars,
and the need to defend the area of conscientious dissent, human rights
and freedom
The themes for the participants' roundtable discussions under these four
modules respectively were (a) "The Need to View Peace on the Foundations
of Human Rights and Justice", (b) "Humanitarian Wars in the
Mirror of Human Rights and Humanitarianism"; (c) "Law and the
Ethics of Care"; and (d) "The Need to Defend the Area of Conscientious
Dissent".
Each participant was required to opt for a module for writing a term
paper and making roundtable presentation.
Interaction sections: The interaction sessions consisted of (a) three
"face to face meetings with peace activists", (b) a literary
evening, and (c) three one-day workshops of participants on (i) how media
behave in participants' respective areas on issues of human rights abuses
and on peace, (ii) peace audit and SAFHR's peace audit exercises, and
(iii) issues relating to methods of work in human rights and peace activism.
These workshops were designed keeping mind participants' backgrounds,
their particular interests, and SAFHR's own direct experience in these
areas. The three peace activists with whom participants had engaging discussions
on their peace activism and peace politics and their own histories were
Oren Yiftachel, Sumanta Banerjee, and I.A. Rehman.
The Course as in the previous years had fieldtrip in its schedule. This
year the visit was on the theme of resource rights and resource conflicts.
Participants discussed the theme of the visit and related issues.
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