Pilot human rights teaching program in high schools starts this year

A pilot experience to introduce human rights and peace principles courses in some secondary schools will be implement this academic year before being generalized to all schools.

Moroccan human rights minister, Mohamed Aujjar, made the announcement Saturday at the closing of the first Arab regional human rights training session for school teachers held this Sept.4-9, in Sale (Rabat twin city)

A commission, comprising education and NGOs experts, will be supervising the experience, the revision of school manuals and the organization of training sessions for 4,000 teachers and education executives.

In parallel, the human rights documentation, information and training center, set up last April by Morocco and the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, will also hold a training session for law-enforcement executives, said Aujjar.

For chairman of the Moroccan human rights advisory council, Driss Dahhak, human rights violations in the Arab world are due to a poor training and education.

Over 50 executives, teachers and NGO delegates from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Mauritania, Palestine, Syria and Tunisia took part in the session that is part of a three-year program recommended by the 1st conference on human rights education in the Arab world (held in Rabat in February 1999).