Monrovia — Human rights education as a vital component of Liberia's post conflict reconstruction, the Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) has completed a three-day workshop with participating schools from four high schools in Monrovia namely; Cathedral (last year's winner), William V. S. Tubman High, St. Peter Lutheran and Global Cares Academy.

Without knowledge of such fundamental freedoms, youths were exposed to a repetition of the exploitations and atrocities of the war years therefore YHRI has been working with its local chapter leaders since 2006 to build consensus and support to teach the nation's youth their basic human rights and responsibilities contained in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

HRI Director, an American lawyer, Tim Bowles who recently returned to Monrovia to kick off the organization's second annual human rights leadership competition among other high schools said that as with last year's successful competition, the aim of such competitions is not only to inform young people on the existence of such rights and responsibilities, but also to train and enable them to be effective leaders in the advocacy for human rights.

At the three-day workshop, YHRI Liberia Project Coordinator, Joseph Jay Yarsiah, Teewon Dolopei and Boersen Hinneh along with Mr. Bowles agreed that these sessions introduced the students to basic leadership principles and purposes as well as trained them in presentation of human rights education to their peers.

Mr. Bowles said the participating students are now divided into two coalition teams, each with members from all of the schools. Through June, the two teams will now conduct human rights presentations to 12 other schools each within the Bushrod Island, Central Monrovia and Paynesville communities respectively.

"Each team has already selected a particular human rights issue to research and promote in the course of their event. Team A chose the issue of rape and other violence against women while Team B chose discrimination focusing on religious tolerance," Mr. Yarsiah explained.

The students are expected not only to gather the consensus views on the problems and solutions to those issues from the youths they reach in the schools but also from community and national opinion leaders as well as other members of the public.

The teams have also begun training to document their upcoming work in still and video portraits and are expected to prepare and present their work at the concluding event this coming July which will be judged by college student leaders, Mr. Dolopei added.

Last year's culminating competition saw Labor Minister Kofi Woods, then Attorney General, Frances Johnson Morris and the Vice President's Chief of Office Staff, Sam Stevquoah, all who spoke endorsing the efforts of YHRI. Mr. Bowles is expected to return for this coming July event.

"We hope this initiative will assist Liberia to become an innovative pioneer for the implementation of human rights education nationwide. No nation, no continent can accomplish anything worthwhile without effective leadership. As we saw with the passing of South Africa's apartheid in 1990s, strong leaders such as Nelson Mandela and his ANC colleagues can overcome seemingly impossible odds," Mr. Bowles stated.