On Monday, 10 July, the Thirtieth Annual Human Rights Internship, organized by Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) for Arab and Egyptian university Students, will take place in the upper Egypt Association for education and development. The Internship will continue into 30 July 2006, under the title “Towards Activating the Role of Young People in Democratization”. Mr Edward el-Dahaby, Head of the People’s Assembly Human Rights Committee; Mr. Bahey Eddin Hassan, CIHRS Director; HE Ambassador Aly Mohsen Hameid, Director of the Educational and Scientific Research Department, Arab League States; HE Ambassador Mokhles Qutb, Secretary-General of the National Council for Human Rights, will be giving addresses in inauguration of this internship. The 80 Interns come from 7 different Arab countries with different majors including economics and political science, business, law, medicine, arts and languages from Ain Shams University, Cairo University, Helwan University, al-Azhar University, Assiout University, South Valley University, and both the American University in Cairo (AUC) and the French University in Egypt (UFE). In addition, interns will involve a range of non-Egyptian Arab students from Jordan, Bahrain, Sudan, Palestine, Morocco, Oman and Yemen. The Internship program covers a number of main themes, 38 lectures, 10 training sessions and roundtables, and 7 taskforces. A number of field visits will be made to human rights organizations and centers in Egypt.
Main themes include: theoretical and legal topics reviewing human rights principles, concepts, and international conventions; the second theme, however, tackles the problematic issues in human rights system emerging when it is put into effect within the Arab cultural context, such as freedom of expression, freedom of thought and freedom of belief. A separate theme will cover women’s issues exclusively, such as issues of violence, societal discrimination, women’s image in media and political participation. Regional issues, on the other hand, will be covered in another separate theme, tackling the Darfur humanitarian crisis, and other Arab-related crises, namely the Iraqi and the Palestinian. Besides, issues on disseminating the culture of citizenship will be covered over one whole day; arts also make one main theme. The last theme, focuses on issues related to the march and obstacles of political reform through reviewing experiences of the new social movements in Egypt, and the role assumed by judges in political reform and the civil society’s role in the process of reform and perspective into the potential scenarios in the Arab arena.
The internship will be conducted by a host of intellectuals, university professors, judges, journalists and human rights activists, carefully chosen as vividly representing the different political and cultural visions.
Moreover, students, themselves, will take part in organizing and managing the task forces throughout the internship duration, which in turn will discuss urgent issues in the Arab arena such as issues of political reform, democratization, women’s rights, universality, individuality, torture, and citizenship.
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