The Global College Community Projects

Rotary/ HR Education

Media Release - March 27, 2008

Free Press Story - March 25, 2008


University of Winnipeg / Rotary District 5550 World Peace Partners

Program Proposal Summary

Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Studies 
 

On November 15, 2007, representatives of Rotary International District 5550 met with representatives of the University of Winnipeg. The objective of the meeting was to explore a partnership between Rotary and the UW to offer educational programming in the area of Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Studies, in conjunction with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights for Rotary international students. The following proposal is based on the stated educational needs and requests by Rotary.

With its Global College, Menno Simons College, and Collegiate, and its unique thematic major in Human Rights, the University of Winnipeg is well poised to meet the diverse needs of the Rotary request.

The proposal is divided into three parts:

Part I - Core Courses

  • Two 2-3 week university courses (see attached curricula summaries), modeled after Global College’s Summer Institutes. If these were offered concurrently, students would need to choose one of the two. Depending on enrollment and with advance notice, UW could offer courses concurrently at any time during the year. Each course would have a 3-credit value.
     

Part II - Other Options

  • High school courses offered by the UW Collegiate in the areas of Peace and Conflict Studies, Current Affairs, Human Rights, Global Citizenship, and World Issues. Several of these courses are currently offered as a part of the regular academic year (Sept – Apr); all of these courses can be adapted to Spring or Summer camp alternatives.
  • One – three day seminar for Young Professionals Program students. Topics would include Human Rights and Conflict Resolution. These seminars would be offered through the Global College and in collaboration with the UW Division of Continuing Education.
  • For interested long term exchange students, Global College offers a thematic major in Human Rights in three and four year Bachelor of Arts programs. This program of study is the only one of its kind in Western Canada and will be inaugurated in September 2008.

 Part III - Resources and Supports

  • Develop and provide the course content focused on university and/or high school courses on the subject of human rights, conflict resolution and other related subject areas;
  • Provide a classroom venue for the delivery of the courses on the University campus;
  • Provide the teaching resource for developing and teaching course content;
  • Have the sole right and responsibility for all course content both in its development and delivery;
  • Provide cultural support for the students similar to that provided to University international students while they are attending classes on campus;
  • Take responsibility for the student’s safety and welfare as it would with all of its students in the normal course of conducting the academic and administrative operations;

Curricula Summaries

1.  Course Title: Human Rights & Conflict Resolution

Course Scope and Objectives

Human rights advocacy and conflict resolution are often framed as separate with human rights activists supposedly promoting justice, usually defined as the prosecution of human rights abusers, and conflict resolution practitioners (sometimes portrayed as peace-builders) seeking peace, usually defined as the absence of violence. The contestation is particularly visible when ending violence requires negotiating peace with perpetrators who invariably insist on amnesty and sometimes even participate in a new dispensation before they lay down arms. This makes the task of balancing accountability for gross human rights abuses with the practicalities of ending violence a difficult and contentious issue. Human rights and conflict resolution is a course that would explore this dilemma.

The course would use the examples of places where these issues have arisen such as Northern Ireland, South Africa, Sri Lanka and others. The objective would be to examine how activists and conflict resolution practitioners as well as perpetrators and victims can address human rights and peace issues, with a view of achieving a just and sustainable peace worldwide.

Learning Outcomes

Students would be introduced to such topics as:

  • What are human rights and how are they supposed to be applied?
  • What are some basic principles of conflict resolution and how do these intersect with the principles of human rights?
  • Is there a way of reconciling the demands of peace and the requirements of justice?
  • What emphasis and resources should be directed toward retributive as opposed to restorative justice approaches?
  • How can potential neighbours deal with these questions?

2.  Course Title: Introduction to Human Rights

Course Scope and Objectives

This course aims at providing students with a historical introduction to the notion, theory and global practices of human rights. Thus the course introduces students to the basic principles of human rights. Particular focus will be paid to the international and regional conventions as well as the instruments that embody human rights – The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, and the subsequent historic and global covenants, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The course explores how and who enforces these documents. To help broaden our understanding of this study we ask such questions as: What are Human Rights? Who is entitled to them, and why? What kinds of Rights (cultural, economic and political – positive, negative) are human rights? How are human rights monitored and enforced? What is the role of courts, state and international community in the monitoring and enforcement of human rights? We will explore and interrogate the interrelationship of human rights instruments, the relativist notion of human rights – universal v. local. Specific case studies will be explored, including South Africa, Sierra Leone, East Timor and Chile.

Also investigated will be the complex relationship between democracy and development on one hand and human rights on the other. Essentially this is an introductory course whose primary objective is to give students grounding in the basic notion, principles and practices of human rights as well as the international and regional instruments that codify human rights.

Learning Outcomes:

A student who successfully completes this course will:

  • Define human rights;
  • Explain how human rights are codified;
  • Understand the interrelationships among documentary instruments in which human rights are codified;
  • Understand how the values underlying the notion of human rights affect our every day issues and experiences;
  • Critically discuss the intricate relationship between economic, social and cultural rights;
  • Understand how human rights are monitored, enforced and protected;
  • Be able to discuss the historical evolutions of the notion of human rights and documents that embodied it along the way;
  • Understand and assess the relativist critique of human rights.