Suggested Activities for Students

1. Select one of your favorite companies and contact them to see if they have endorsed the Global Compact. To find out more about this concept, access the web site at http://unglobalcompact.org
2. Monitor the progress of war crimes tribunal proceedings and country reports to the various human rights committees by accessing the web site of the United Nations, www.un.org
3. Human rights organizations use the following criteria to evaluate compliance with a human rights principle:

   No discrimination - ensuring equitable treatment for all Adequate progress - committing resources and effort to solve the problem True participation - involving people in decisions which affect their well being Effective remedy - ensuring redress when rights are violated

   Select one of the conventions and see how this criteria is implemented in the reports of human rights monitors.
   
   
4. For many countries recovering from a period of human rights abuses, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions have been set up to document the abuses. Choose one of the following countries; research and report on the findings coming out of these commissions: Bolivia (1982), Argentina (1983), Philippines (1986), Chile (1990), Chad (1992), El Salvador (1992), Germany (1992,) Rwanda (1993), Guatemala (1994), Haiti (1994), Uganda (1994), South Africa (1995), Nigeria (1999), Sierra Leone (1999)
   
   
5. From the UN website, obtain scripts of UN radio/tv programs on human rights issues. Recreate these in class. Using research from any of the suggested sites, develop your own script.
   
   
6. Using information from this briefing paper, create a talk show format and stage a program about human rights in your classroom. Select a range of personalities to be interviewed, such as the High Commissioner, the Secretary General, a victim of a human rights abuse, a member of a human rights monitoring group, a person interviewed by the Gallup Poll, etc. As a class, decide any follow-up activities that you might wish to pursue, such as a letter-writing campaign, fund raising for a particular human rights program.
   
   
7. Compare the copy of the Constitution of your country with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other major human rights documents. What similarities can you find? What changes might you suggest?
   
   
8. Organize a school-wide event in commemoration of Human Rights Day on December 10^th to honor the General Assembly's adoption of the Universal Declaration in 1948. Decide which aspects of human rights to focus on and invite speakers knowledgeable about the topic to explain progress, problems and recommended actions to take. You may wish to decide on an international, national or local focus.
   
   
9. Have a poster contest on a human rights theme. You might wish to select one article or one convention to focus on per poster. Try to show the abuse, the remedy and the implementation of improvement in the poster.
   
   
10. Design a map of human rights issues for the class. Using the web sites for human rights organizations, create a list of major human rights abuses you wish to show, the geographic areas where these abuses are occurring and which areas are in need of urgent attention. Decide on some actions to take to address abuses of special concern to members of the class.