A human-rights lecture for democratic awareness among youth

The Pal-Think for Strategic Studies institution organised the tenth lecture under the title: “An introduction to human rights”, within the project “Strengthening the democratic and civic values of the youth”, and this lecture comes within a series of lectures the institution implements in the field of democratic awareness.

The lecture was opened by the director of the Pal-Think for Strategic Studies institution, Mr Omar Shaban, speaking of the importance of the project, which targets the Palestinian youth who suffer from the blockade and have not had the opportunity to exchange experiences with the outside world, to develop their capacities and skills.

Shaban sees that life training completes university education, continuing his talk on the institution's mechanism of choosing the participants in its activities: the geographical distribution is observed and an opportunity is given to new participants in the institution's activities, in order to widen the scope of knowledge at the level of the Gaza Strip.

The lecture was presented by the researcher and legal activist Mohammed Abu Hashem, with the attendance of a group of young men and women from the various university specialisations and geographical areas. At the lecture's beginning he showed a video narrating the emergence of the right and the historical development of human rights; following that he discussed with the attendees the concept of human rights, and that the goal of human rights is living in dignity.

Abu Hashem continued his talk on the development of the freedoms in Europe and America, and the idea of universal human rights, to which all the world's civilisations contributed — but the first to gather them in one document, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, were the West. He went on speaking of the characteristics of international human-rights law, and the divisions of the legal rules (peremptory rules, substantive rules).

He continued by reviewing a number of the international agreements in the field of human rights, such as: the International Bill of Human Rights, with its three components (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights); in addition to that he reviewed the agreements binding on the Palestinian Authority, and the rights the Basic Law has protected.

At the end of his talk Abu Hashem directed a question to the participants about the importance of human rights, and the answers centred on the point that human rights show their importance in being a deterrent to those in whose hands are force, power, and authority that enable them to misuse and exploit them against the human being or to abuse them, or to affect badly the human being's capacity or freedom — and that they represent the essence of human dignity.