Feature

9th HRSS 2008
Grooming of the rebellious lawyers of tomorrow…

Tabassum Mokhduma

THE formal teaching and education on human rights is far from getting impetus in Bangladesh. A very few law schools in our country are offering intensive human rights course. Moreover, in this country, the existing curriculums on human rights are not beyond questions. Perhaps this is the reason because of which even after completing the course on human rights one realize that what s/he studied is something else but not human rights.

Well, even after so many lacking, there are some inspiring initiatives as well. Human Rights Summer School is such an initiative.

“Lawyering for the poor is lawyering for justice”, with this slogan “Empowerment through Law of the Common People (ELCOP)” organized 9th Human Rights Summer School (HRSS) 2008 at Proshika Human Resource Development Centre (HRDC) Trust, Koitta, Manikganj from 17-27 December 2008.

The school was inaugurated with the aim of grooming the future lawyers to ensure and protect human rights and thus the venue was given a new name for the duration of the school as 'Adhikarbhumi'. Eminent lawyer Dr. Kamal Hossain was the Chief Guest who formally inaugurated the event. Presided over by Professor Mustafizur Rahman, Treasurer, ELCOP; Dr. Mizanur Rahman, Professor, Department of Law, University of Dhaka and Director, ELCOP; teachers and students from law backgrounds were also present among others at the inauguration ceremony.

Expressing that human rights needs to be established in reality rather than in speech, Dr. Hassain urged the law students to work to ensure human rights in every phase of life. “Change does not come in a day but you have to give effort to make the change”, he said.

“Lawyering for the poor is lawyering for justice. You are here not for pleasure, comfort or pastime, rather you are here for a different and difficult journey to be a rebellious lawyer to work for human rights”, urged Dr. Mizan as he said that without being a rebellious lawyer, it is practically impossible to work for ensuring human rights, especially for the underprivileged people of the society.

Professor Mustafiz also highlighted the importance of human rights and expressed that the participants will be able to explore different aspects of human rights from this school.

Participants each from different participating countries also shared their expectation from HRSS and reasons behind joining it.

The theme for 9th HRSS was “Human Right- 60 years after UDHR” as it coincided with the worldwide celebration of sixty years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Every single day of the training had its own name and theme in accordance with the main event theme and included heated discussions, arguments, group exercises, workshops, group presentations and so on. The name of the day were quite creative in its own way like “Living in Adhikarbhumi Day”, “Genesis of Human Rights Day”, “Enforcing Human Rights Day”, “Protection of Child Rights Day”, “Refugee and Displaced Person' Rights Day”, “ Empowering the Communities Day”, “Regaining Control over the 'Self' Day”, “Lawyering for the Poor Day”, “Lawyering for Justice Day” and so on.

Besides all these burning issues, there was also the ultimate challenging but practical work- the community visit programme or field work. This was perhaps an extremely helpful task for the law students to gain insight into different human rights issues- particularly to differentiate between law in books and law in reality. Law has its very own social purpose and without real life experience it's tough to know how to work for whom.

But perhaps the most anticipated moment for the participants was hearing about the War of Liberation from none other than a freedom fighter himself. It was Bir Pratik Lieutenant General Harun ur Rashid who shared his experiences during our glorious War of Liberation; how the war crimes were committed by Razakars, Al-Badrs and their allies in 1971; moral and legal obligation to bring them to justice and possible ways of achieving that goal. As he was unfolding the touching real stories of the real people, tears were rolling down from the eyes of the participants. Through this session the international participants also came to know about our glorious past.

The event finally came all the way to the end. Advocate Sultana Kamal, Former Advisor to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh graced the valedictory session as the Chief Guest while Justice Md. Golam Rabbani, Chairman ELCOP presided over the session. Among others Dr. Mizanur Rahman and Dr. S.M. Allameh of Mofid University of Iran were also present.

In her speech the chief guest urged the participants to start the mission to protect human rights. “I am sure you will lead to help people enjoy their rights in true sense”, she said.

Dr. Allameh added that working for human rights means doing the work for human being right away without misusing time. Dr. Mizan also wished all the participants to be rebellious lawyers in future to work for human rights. Citing ELCOP's goal, Justice Rabbani said that these future rebellious lawyers will definitely make the changes in the society to eradicate the gaps between the haves and have-nots thus will ensure human rights.

At the end ELCOP distributed awards to the following students in the subsequent categories: Utkarsh Dwivedi of Gujrat National Law University (GNLU) received Justice K. M. Subhan Memorial HRSS Best Mooter Trophy; Bapan Chandra Das of University of Chittagong (CU) got Professor K. A. A. Quamruddin Memorial HRSS Academic Excellence Award while Barun Ghimire of Kathmandu School of Law (KSL) won the Professor K.A.A Quamruddin Memorial HRSS Best Fellowship Trophy. Mofid University of Iran also gave away the following awards in as many categories to the following students: Overall Academic Excellence Award to Barun Ghimire of KSL, Best Performance Award (Male) to Md. Monzur Rabbi of University of Dhaka (DU) and Best Performance Award (Female) to this writer from CU. The closing session was also a memorable one for a very important reason as all the participants adopted the “9th HRSS Declaration Bangladesh” which the students themselves prepared with the hope to see the world as an 'Adhikarbhumi' (Land of Rights). It was a very good document which showed their dedication towards ensuring universal human rights.

Every single day at HRSS 2008 was tough but versatile ideas from 48 students from 13 law schools of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Iran as participants; dynamic resource persons from different renowned law schools and intellectuals from other professional fields as well as the cooperation from International Organization for Migration (IOM), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) made the 11-day event a success while different cultural presentations from the participants of different countries gave the break to make them innovative and active to be future rebellious human rights lawyer all the time. It was the event which actually gave the students insights about different international bodies as well as human rights situation of this world.

(The writer is a student of Law, University of Chittagong)