Interventions : Capacity Building : National Workshops

National Workshop on Mainstreaming RBA in Development Organizations

The three day workshop was organized from 9th to 11th April 2009 to discuss and develop a common understanding of the human rights based approaches. A significant component of the workshop/discussions was also to have their experiences of mainstreaming human rights based approach. Three categories of organizations including International Support Funding Organizations, middle level NGOs working at national/state level and small grassroots organizations working at village/block levels participated in the workshops. The identification and targeting of the organizations was done to facilitate a cross exchange of information and assess the level of understanding of rights based approach and its meaning.

The workshop witnessed a great difference in the organizations understanding of rights based approaches, approaches per se, and tools and methods and resultantly there was considerable lack of agreement on what ‘integrating’ and ‘mainstreaming’ entails. Efforts were directed towards making them comprehend their work as a part of the agenda of ‘human rights’ rather than merely being projects on education, health services, children, women, so on and so forth.
The most important learning, which emerged from the workshop, was the realization of the limits of their micro project approaches in tackling the root causes of poverty. All the participants were in complete agreement of the need to address deeper structures of inequality and the exclusion and to confront these at legal and political as well as social, economic and cultural levels. Their dissatisfaction with projects could be evidenced by their engaging more and more with advocacy, mobilization and legal approaches.

In terms of mainstreaming of the human rights based approach in their work, it was generally witnessed that it has been addressed to some levels at program however as far as addressing it at the institutions/organizational level is concerned, the efforts have been few and sporadic rather than incorporating rights based approach and its values in organizations ethics and learning systems. Integrating the principles and basing objectives on the standards of human rights in the projects emerged as a major constraint in their quest towards mainstreaming human rights based approach.

National Interactive Workshop on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change: Priority Areas of Policy and Action

The workshop was organized by a collective of civil society organizations including Food Trade and Nutrition Coalition Asia, Institute of Development Studies Jaipur, Gene Campaign, CECOEDECON, and Pairvi at India Habitat Centre, Delhi on 27th July 2009. The workshop witnessed participation of more than 50 organizations from Delhi and other states. The participants included WWF India, RIS, Oxfam India, CENTAD, Delhi Science Forum, SADED. Speaking at an interactive workshop organized by a collective of civil society organizations, ex-chief economic advisor to Government of India and Under Secretary General of the United Nations, Dr. Nitin Desai, said that we must address the issues of denial within our efforts to ensure food security. He said that common property resources are getting gobbled up and we must link planning and execution at Panchayat level to make the anti poverty programmes more inclusive and locally owned. He added that climate change is the latest threat to long term food security and civil society organizations can make a huge contribution in terms of bringing more information on manifestations of climate change from the grass roots level. We must identify who will be adversely affected and try to plan which puts them in the centre.

Dr. Suman Sahai, leading geneticist and biotechnology expert said that India has been unable to handle international negotiations with skill; however, it has improved recently at negotiations at the WTO under pressure from the peoples at home. She emphasized the fact that though Convention on Bio-Diversity, makes it clear that it will have an overriding effect over all other international treaties and WTO regulated international trade framework must respect that. She added that rules of international trade should factor in the climate change. Dr. Devinder Sharma, well known agriculture scientist and food security expert insisted that the government approach to climate change is flawed. He said that under the NAPCC government is spending huge amounts of money on GM crops and research hoping that it will help the country combat food security and climate change, which is totally impossible. Trade and climate change linkages should be explored more and civil society needs to focus on that interconnectedness and watch that. The major achievement of the workshop was that it came up with a collective determined to work on issues of sustainable agriculture, food entitlement and climate change.

National Workshop on Rights Based Advocacy and Social Research

A five day National Workshop on Rights Based Advocacy and Social Research was organised from 25th to 29th November 2009 at Naukuchiyataa, near Nainital, Uttarakhand. Around 24 participants from 8 states participated in this residential workshop. The workshop tried to explore the potentials and experiences of the participants and provided a platform to learn from each others learnings and failures. Experts from various fields were also invited to relate the field experiences from the theoretical basis. The main objective of the workshop was to create cadre of social advocates who can work together to improve human rights condition and implementation in their respective fields.
The workshop differed from the previous workshops especially in its design and kind of assignments given to the participants. This time we introduced a new session on field research and documentation which was found to be very useful for the participants. The session was complimented by a field visit to a village and conducting research which was followed by documentation of the report. Despite the sessions on advocacy, rights based approach, Right to information, dalit rights, this time the workshop also focussed on the food security, hunger deaths, malnutrition, and forest rights and social research and documentation. Taking a lead from the workshop, one of the participants from Bihar, Ms. Alka has sought support from Pairvi to file a complaint with Bihar State Human Rights Commission on the issues of single women in her region.