Geneva Institute for Human Rights

From 25 – 29 January 2010, the Geneva Institute for Human Rights (GIHR) launched an advanced training course on International Human Rights Mechanisms, addressing representatives from Syria; Egypt; Tunisia and Morocco. Training courses of this kind are provided by a number of international non-governmental and governmental organizations. However, they are often conducted in English or French. To reach people from the Arab region engaged in human rights activities it was considered essential to offer a similar program in Arabic to get human rights information to the grass-root level and to offer such services to other representatives who are not familiar with English or French.

The course took place during the 53rd Session of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the 45th session of CEDAW: Reports of UAE and Egypt, enabling participants to attend the sessions, to meet with members of the committees, as well as United Nations experts and NGO representatives attending the sessions.

We would like to warmly thank the sponsors and resource persons who made this project possible and whose suggestions and recommendations helped us in designing this very peculiar training
program: The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Political Affairs Division IV, Human Security and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva; UNICEF Syria.