UN-CIHRS joint training seminar on international instruments and defense of human rights

On December 10, International Human Rights Day, the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights and the regional bureau of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies in Tunis will inaugurate their joint regional training seminar on international instruments and the defense of human rights, which will continue until December 22. Some 25 activists and human rights defenders in the Arab region are taking part, coming from Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, Palestine, and Yemen.

This is the seventh CIHRS regional training seminar on international instruments and their use to protect human rights; the CIHRS has sponsored several similar seminars for rights activists in various areas of the Arab region in the past.

This year’s seminar, being held in Tunis, aims to familiarize participants with international instruments such as UN agencies and convention-related bodies and introduce them to ways to engage and interact with these bodies. The seminar also reviews the UN Human Rights Council and the OHCHR, looking at how civil society can communicate and interact with these bodies through oral and written interventions or through reports and complaints. In addition, the seminar covers media campaigns and how to use social media to support and promote human rights issues.

The seminar explores in detail the Universal Periodic Review mechanism, its stages, participating parties, and how civil society groups can work through the instrument, while highlighting national experience with the UPR.

Participants in the seminar will also become familiar with instruments for cooperation with other regional and international entities such as the Arab League and the African Human Rights Commission.

The seminar features a group of trainers specialized in international human rights instruments from the CIHRS, the OHCHR, as well as a number of independent Arab and non-Arab trainers and media and legal experts.

The high Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) office supplied the participants with hundreds of UN publications related to the training topics.