The Strengthening Human Rights and Peace Research and Education in ASEAN/Southeast Asia (SHAPE-SEA) programme is committed to creating a critical mass of human rights and peace academics in the region. For four years, the SHAPE-SEA programme, under its Education Committee, has undertaken Lecturer Workshops on Teaching Human Rights to strengthen the capacities of lecturers invested in teaching human rights.
Supported by the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo, The 4th Lecturer Workshop on Teaching Human Rights was jointly organized by the ASEAN University Network-Human Rights Education (AUN-HRE) and the Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies (IHRP), Mahidol University, Thailand. Due the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, the SHAPE SEA -AUN-HRE programme alongside the organizers had to get creative in conducting the workshop. The workshop via an online platform is being used to conduct the workshop originally planned as a face to face event.
The Workshop aims at building capacity of university lecturers in effectively teaching human rights, enhancing capacity in learning methods and designing course/syllabus. It also aims at providing platform for mutually learning among participants and sharing experiences. The Workshop is divided into two parts, substantial one which covers a wide range of topics ranging from human rights fundamentals to international human rights standards and mechanisms, gender and sexualities and environment, to name some; and another part covers practical skills for those who are or prepare to teach human rights at the university level. One very important topic that constitutes an essential element in all workshops is academic freedom.
The workshop accommodates 22 participants from 6 countries backgrounds from 6 Southeast Asian countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. All of them are university lecturers with a diverse academic background and expertise.
