05 October 2006 // Free human rights training available online
Top quality training on human rights is now available for free online, thanks to a partnership between Fahamu and the OpenCourseWare Consortium.
Through the partnership, the Oxford University accredited course 'An Introduction to Human Rights' has been made available on the Fahamu website. The course is designed to provide users with a comprehensive definition of human rights and how these rights are monitored and enforced.
"Some 600 organisations and individuals have completed this course since 2003," said Fahamu Director Firoze Manji, "and we are making the material available for free online so that anyone, anywhere can have the benefit of training in human rights issues."
Fahamu has specialized in developing a range of distance-learning courses aimed at strengthening the capacity of human rights and civil society organisations in Africa and around the world. The topics covered by the courses are the result of extensive research conducted in Africa into the training needs of such organisations.
Fahamu's distance-learning methodology, involving CDROMs, email-based facilitation and workshops, has been widely adopted by institutions such as the University of Oxford, Of?ce of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Article 19, the UN-affiliated University for Peace and others.
Previously these courses were only available to those participating in courses organised by Fahamu, but making these courses available on the web through OpenCourseware will allow anyone with access to the internet to benefit from Fahamu's unique human rights training materials. 'An Introduction to Human Rights' is the first course to be published which will be followed by 'Campaigning for Access to Information' in November.
The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware
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