Human Rights Summer School

Experience and realization of a Participant 

By Akramul Islam 

The Empowerment through Law of the Common People (ELCOP) organized 13^th session of Human Rights Summer School (HRSS) from 11 to 23 December 2012 at PROSHIKA HRDC, Koitta, Manikgonj.

This year’s theme was “Human Rights and Critically Disadvantage People.” I was one of participants and it was my great opportunity to accomplish myself with the training provided through the HRSS. 
There were 47 Participants from Law Schools in Bangladesh and a Guest Participant from the United kingdom.  

HRSS is an extensive training opportunities for young students- it included lecture sessions, interactions, field works, group discussions, and presentations.

The availability of the eminent jurists and scholars as speakers and presenters was a great opportunity for the young learners which opened avenues not only to learn from them; it also facilitated to share our views on issues, findings, and put forward queries to meet our respective thrust in various issues on human rights and law.

The pro-active learning by doing methodology helps us to experiment a different mean and way of learning left behind traditional learning methodology.

To conform to the declared theme of the training, HRSS tried to make orientation about the critically disadvantage community of the society who have been pushed to a situation of mere survival with their dignity being compromised at every instance of their existence.

For better understanding of their plights, the program included a visit to the field to explore the reality and relate with our theoretical lessons.

It was horrific for us to come across how rights of marginalized people are being violated and exploited by society’s power structural mechanism.

There is lack of awareness on own right as well among individual concerned.

For ensuring justice for this disadvantaged group, it is the duty of state actors to create an atmosphere where individual will have an easy access to justice- without being obstructed by any difficulties.

However, the experience shows us that the cry for access to justice for socially downtrodden people is far away form the reality as they can not afford to pay lawyers to realize their rights which ultimately contribute to violation of human rights.

Moreover, the reality is that the existing mechanisms manipulate their mindset in such a way that the deprived people are unwilling to know about their own rights and unfortunately they compromise with their “fortune” although being deprived of rights and getting marginalized.

The realization of us is that justice cannot be ensured at root level without proper institutional arrangements. That’s why it is the reason, we experienced, that the people at the grassroots are forced to rely on traditional justice system yet rather than the formal justice system. And thus they are denied of true justice.

Now, we do understand that to become a Lawyer, we have to go to the depth and root of the law for understanding the norms of the Law.

The black letters of the Law in the book must be applied in the field and we have to prepare ourselves to challenge the status quo of the society.

We want to be catalyst to change the society, the sentinels of human rights, and advocate for promotion and protection of human rights. 

Akramul Islam is a Student at the Department of Law, University of Dhaka and Volunteer at the Human Rights Law Clinic (HRLC) at UNESCO Madanjeet Singh South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies (UMSAILS) in Dhaka.

[The group photo is a courtesy of Mr. Akramul Islam].