KITA-UKM Workshop on Contemporary Human Rights Issues in Malaysia


Datuk Dr Denison Jayasooria (KITA-UKM) has been teaching a CITRA UKM Course entitled “Contemporary Issues in Human Rights in Malaysia”. Twenty eight under graduate students have registered for this in Semester Two (2017/2018).

The students self-divided into six groups based on human rights topics of their choice, including visiting a human rights related organisation. The course is an independent study with the lecturer providing introductory lectures but the student undertake a group study approach on thematic areas agreed upon.

The six human rights topics and organisations visited are:- 

Topic
Organisation
Number of students
UN system & human rights
UN country team in Malaysia
4
Enforcement Agencies
Bar Council Human Rights Committee
6
Ethnic discrimination
KOMAS
5
Universal Periodical Review (UPR)
COMANGO-Empower
4
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
WWF
4
Land rights & Indigenous People (Orang Asli)
SUHAKAM
5

On Dec 23, 2017 from 9am till 1pm at KITA-UKMthe students made presentations on the six thematic areas. All of the groups made power point presentations and handed their reports on the theme. This was a collective exercise in terms of the study, report writing and presentation.

From the lectures point of view Datuk Dr Denison Jayasooria noted that the students have taken the effort to read up and understand the issues. According to his impression he indicated that the field visits had made an impact upon the students, especially in their interaction with an activist or CSO person directly in the field. He further noted that at least one group had taken the extra mile to visit the organisation more than ones and participated in other activities hosted by them. In the case of three other study groups, they made use of case studies to illustrate human rights violations and compared these with the United Nations declarations/conventions and also in reference to the Federal Constitution. However at least two of the six groups had been asked to rewrite their papers as they had not dealt with the theme comprehensively and the students agreed to do so soon.


From the feedback received the students expressed that this course has enabled them to be exposed to alternative views and has opened up their minds.  A number said they will try and volunteer or undertake a field placement and one or two indicated that they might seek employment in them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

LEAVING NO ONE BEHIND – SDGS FOUNDATION FOR INSTITUTIONAL REFORM

Image
By Prof Datuk Dr Denison Jayasooria Yesterday on May 28, 2018, six CSO leaders from the ‘CSO Platform for Reform’ met up with the Institutional Reform Committee (IRC) at Menara Ilham, Kuala Lumpur. The team members were Mr Adli Zakuan (Pusat KOMAS), Ms Rozana Isa (Sisters in Islam), Mr Jeffery Phang (MyPJ & Friends of Kota Damansara), Mr Euguene yapp (GBM - Gabungan Bertindak Malaysia), Mr Mansor Saat (Bar Council Human Rights Committee) and myself on behalf of PROHAM and the Malaysian CSO-SDG Alliance. We had a fruitful discussion with the five IRC members with Datuk KC Vohrah Chairing the meeting. Our presentations were on three main themes namely National Unity & Ethnic Relations, Addressing Poverty & inequality & National Human Rights Action Plan. We did note that while the theme of institutional reform and the focus could be on major institutions such as parliament and judiciary, we hoped that these three themes that we highlighted have key signif...
Read more

GE 14 THE BATTLE FOR THE INDIAN VOTE & REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

Image
By Prof Datuk Dr Denison Jayasooria Introduction There has been intense campaigning to capture the Indian votes. The days before dissolution of Parliament we saw both the BN and PH having intensive discussions with Indian groups. We noted that Dato Seri Najib was at many Indian based activities pertaining to Tamil schools, citizenship granting, micro credit as well as special grants to NGOs to run grassroot programs. More recently BN distributed calendars to Indian voters. We also saw the PH chairman Tun Mahathir meeting up with Hindraf leaders and concerned groups to ensure Indian support in GE14. Some refer to Malaysian Indians as potential kingmakers. While the Indian community is a minority the general belief is that in GE 12 the Indian voters played a major role in this shift away from the BN. This was further consolidated in GE13. There is now another opportunity to see how this minority community will vote and who will be their representatives in Parliament a...
Read more
Image
TAPPING POTENTIAL OF SSE FOR SDGS The Asia Solidarity Economy Council (ASEC) hosted a side event on “Social Solidarity Economy & SDGs, Tapping the potential” at the Asian Pacific People Forum on Sustainable development on March 26, 2018 at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand About 20 people from various CSOs from eleven Asian gathered at this session which was moderated by Datuk Dr Denison Jayasooria, who is the Chair of ASEC and who is a Malaysian with the Institute of Ethnic Studies, National University of Malaysia (UKM). In his opening address he highlighted the clear links between SSE concepts and the SDG core values (People, prosperity, planate, peace & partnerships). He noted that there would be a conceptual discussion of these as well as specific case studies addressing SDG 11 on the informal sector in cities, as well as SDG 15 on rural and forest based communities. Dr Ben Quinones the former/past chair of ASEC dwelled on the 5 key SSE principl...
Read more