The Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) is today celebrating Human Rights Day by launching a training video on YouTube to increase awareness among civil and public servants of human rights. The launch supports the theme of this year’s Human Rights Day: ‘Social Media and Human Rights’, which acknowledges the power of social media in mobilising people to promote and defend human rights.
Launching the video on the IHRC’s website, Dr Maurice Manning, President of the IHRC said
"it is fitting that Human Rights Day 2011 recognises the role that social media can play in mobilising people in defence of human rights as evidenced this year by the extraordinary events around the world. Social media is also an excellent medium to promote learning. I am delighted to launch the IHRC’s training video, which is an e-learning tool that offers an introduction to human rights standards for Civil and Public Servants. Civil and Public Servants can access the video through our dedicated website as well as on the web as part of a wider IHRC Human Rights Education and Training Project."
Dr Manning continued
"The IHRC has already provided initial human rights training to 350 Civil and Public Servants across a range of Departments and State agencies. Evaluation feedback indicates that this training has been very well received so far. As the Government works to reform public services to create more effective delivery, human rights standards must be central. The IHRC’s project delivers free, tailored training to support the work of Civil and Public servants in making that happen."
ENDS/
For further information please contact,
Fidelma Joyce, IHRC, Tel: 01 8589601 Mob: 087 783 4939
Notes to Editor
Web Launch Format
- Dr Maurice Manning, President of the IHRC will launch the video in an address uploaded at 8.30am, 10 December on IHRC homepage (www.ihrc.ie)
- Human Rights Video for the Civil and Public Service uploaded at 8.30am, 10 December on IHRC homepage (www.ihrc.ie)
The IHRC’s Human Rights Education and Training Project
The IHRC’s Human Rights Education and Training Project (HRETP) has to date trained approximately 350 participants using tailored training resources for each department and organisation, as well as distributing for reference purposes the free and downloadable resource – ‘Human Rights Guide for the Civil and Public Service’. So far, 7000 Human Rights Guides have been distributed and hard copies in Irish are now available on request.
Training has included 12 Civil and Public Service Trainers who completed a 2-day training course equipping them to deliver basic human rights training and linking the benefits of human rights training to specific staff roles such as Human Resources and Customer Charters. The Trainers now have access to on-going support from the IHRC and are utilising the newly developed Human Rights Training for Trainers Pack that was distributed to participants, accompanied by a memory key with specific resources that can be used at training sessions. To register interest to apply for the next round of Human Rights Training for Civil and Public Service Trainers, or to discuss specific human rights training needs, please email the Project Manager: fmurphy@ihrc.ie
All Civil and Public servants can avail of the website created for Human Rights Training purposes. This website has a menu of useful tools that will help in a training situation or for individual work related purposes to acquire accessible, useful and practical information. The website contains quizzes on the International, European and Domestic human rights frameworks, along with a human rights timeline, information on Treaty Bodies and useful charts and diagrams. Most recently it also contains multi-media resources including an introduction to human rights video and the first fully developed e-learning course will be available by January 2012. See www.ihrc.ie/training for more information.