Pal-Think opens a «Training of trainers in democracy and human rights» course

Pal-Think for Strategic Studies opened a training course titled “Training of Trainers (ToT)” within the activities of the “Pal-Think Academy for Democracy and Human Rights — second phase”, funded by the German Institute for Foreign Relations (ifa).

The course was opened by Omar Shaban, Pal-Think's director, setting out its aim: strengthening the capacities of a youth group from the Academy's members and preparing them as trainers and lecturers in the field of democracy and human rights, through an integrated training programme that hones the trainees with the necessary training, skills, and knowledge package — including presentations, communication skills, and the management of dialogue sessions. Pal-Think relied on updated training methodologies, adopting international standards in the trainings, dialogue sessions, and awareness workshops — ensuring that the target group (25 members of the Pal-Think Academy for Democracy and Human Rights) is enabled to carry out 60 awareness sessions across the different areas of the Gaza Strip. The training course is set to run for 10 days, at 5 training hours per day.

On the course's first training day, lawyer Abdullah Sharshara addressed the concept of human rights, reviewing the development of human rights and their characteristics and their relation to the constitution — setting out the importance of those working in the human-rights field divesting themselves of interest, ideology, and social frameworks when taking up human-rights issues, to reach an abstract, neutral understanding of rights questions.

Trainer Osama Murtaja presented the basic concepts of reconciliation and the distinction between interest and reconciliation, and between partisan and national interest — defining reconciliation as a comprehensive national interest and one of the requisites of sound democratic transition, far from all narrow political calculations. He closed the training by taking up the Palestinian general elections as a gateway to achieving Palestinian reconciliation.