EDUCATION-PAKISTAN: Children Draw Line on Rights, War and Peace

By Zofeen Ebrahim Reprint | | Print |

Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Pakistan, Mar 10 2004 (IPS) - ”He’s a freedom fighter,” said the 11-year-old who had drawn Raphael, of Ninja Turtle fame. No one, however, had drawn the tanks, missiles or armed soldiers commonly seen at children’s art exhibitions on war and peace.

The workshop, conducted by leading Pakistani cartoonist Feica (who uses one name), took place during a Mar. 5-6 children’s conference organised by the non-governmental Human Rights Education Programme (HREP).

Some 125 schoolchildren of various ages took part in the two-day series of cerebral exercises at the Pak-American Cultural Centre.

Formed in 1995, HREP works with 500 schools and some 1,200 individual members to provide socially relevant education in which subjects are looked at in terms of human rights, with the ultimate goal of nurturing a civil and humane society.

HREP director Zulfikar Ali said this type of education was lacking in schools.

”In 1995, Karachi was going through a particularly turbulent and violent time. Children, especially in the elite schools, were made to believe everything was fine. The education system failed to address the realities on the ground and children were apathetic towards brutality,” he said.

Elite schools were conspicuous by their absence from this month’s conference, as were street and community schools.

Conference organisers said the workshops were designed to transform the children from passive listeners to active articulators of their views. ”The concept of HREP is to engage children in activism,” Ali said.

This was evident at a screening of a film on the dangers of nuclear weapons and subsequent discussions between the children and physicist and anti-nuclear activist Pervez Hoodbhoy.

Initially, the children repeated standard nuclear doctrine: that the weapons could help prevent war by deterring attacks. Then they began to ask about the environmental consequences of nuclear holocaust. As the horrors began to sink in, the questions turned to how best to get rid of the weapons.

The session ended with Hoodbhoy appealing to the children, as intelligent people, to raise awareness of the issues by explaining them to ordinary people on the street.

Adults who saw the children’s art, watched their theatrical skits, or sat in on their discussion groups could reflect on the qualities in themselves that had been stifled with age, and to see the potential for change embodied in their children.

Introverts and extroverts alike had their say and young boys and girls interacted naturally – a rare sight in Pakistan’s highly segregated society.

The children seemed oblivious to social barriers. They met for the first time and quickly adjusted to one another although they came from different schools and social backgrounds and were of different ages. Lacking stage props, lighting and costumes, they nevertheless showed irrepressible enthusiasm in cooperating with one another to draw up impromptu scripts.

Engaging in lively discussion with facilitators from Kathmandu and London, children talked about their rights and learned about the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Many had not heard of the document, adopted in 1989, and those who had were unaware that it spelled out 54 rights to be enjoyed by every child.

Most popular among children at the conference were the right to be listened to and heard, to express themselves, to be treated equally, to get time to play, and to be free to practise their religion.

Facilitators were left speechless, however, when one child got up from the back row and said: ”Children should have the right to know their rights.”

Emmanuelle Abrioux, a consultant for aid group Save the Children-UK, said she hoped teachers would use their influence within school administrations to mainstream human rights education since there clearly was demand for it from the children.

”It never ceases to amaze me that children need so little to be motivated,” she said.

But Ali, HREP’s director, said sustaining children’s activism remained a challenge.

The human rights group has struggled to sign up children through its Right-On Network of clubs. ”The idea was to have this kind of a formal structure so that our activities and campaigns can be sustained through these students. And that is the difficult task. We have only been able to form 13 clubs so far, each with 25 members. Children are reluctant to become members,” he said.

He blamed this on the absence of a tradition of youth showing solidarity by joining clubs.