November 4, 2008: Workshop: Human Rights and Advocacy
Training Report - Leadership Development Course 2008

Group photo with three facilitators

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was adopted in December 2006. But do we really understand what human right is? How is it related to our day to day life? Often trivial abuses or maltreatments which are even not recognized as abuses can develop into serious violation of human rights.

We had three facilitators the “Human Rights and Advocacy” workshop. This workshop was first introduced to this course last year but this year it was made into a two-day workshop with some improvements in the contents.

We started the workshop by singing a song “Kono Machiga Sukisa (I Like This Town).” It's a simple lyric but the song somehow cheers us when we sing it. This year it was sung not only in Japanese but also in English, and the participants sang this song repeatedly throughout the workshop.

The workshop consists of five steps: (1) what is abuse? (2) why is it difficult to stand against abuse? (3) In this way, you can stand against abuse! (4) Have a try! Believe in your power. (5) Win back our rights! Each step was explained in more details. A lot of role plays were used as a straight-forward but effective method to convey messages during this workshop. The new scenarios which reflected the reality of the participants' countries were created especially for this year's workshop. In this way the participants can take the role plays back to their respective countries to reproduce this workshop right away. The participants were encouraged to share their experiences or the cases commonly seen in their countries.

Role play by three facilitators