We need a culture of respect for Human Rights

Human Rights Education seeks to create awareness among people of their entitlement to human rights.

Human Rights Education also implies the learning and practice of human rights in a broader sense. It involves training and information dissemination, which ultimately intends to build a culture of human rights.

Research has found that the most intriguing result of Human Rights Education is the emergence of a human rights culture and therefore a democratic, peaceful society . This comes after having realised that Human Rights Education helps people feel the importance of human rights, internalise their values and integrate them into their traditional way of life so much that at the end of the day they do not fall prey to political manipulators who lure them into vicious and bloody orgies of mass violations of the human rights of their fellow citizens.

This is what we have been witnessing in Zimbabwe of late – where political violence erupts over varying political ideology and opinion.

Our people, particularly the youth who are the most targeted group for manipulation by political vultures and also the leaders of tomorrow, need to be taught the virtues of tolerance and acceptance of varying and diverse opinions.

It is noticeable that most serious human rights violations emanate from intolerance of diverse opinions political, religious or whatever. Human Rights Education assists in building mutual respect and understanding by all citizens towards each other. This culminates in a symbiotic togetherness of the people against a tyrannical regime rather than against each other.

There definitely is an urgent need to harness the power of solidarity across critically important issues like rule of law and respect for human rights by all citizens of our country against the political evil that has besieged us and reduced us to global beggars.

We need to restore our dignity as a people and only we can empower ourselves for social justice. The challenge is for Zimbabwe to build a peaceful, democratic and prosperous country. Constant Human Rights Education and learning is needed to meet such a challenge. – Dzingo is the coordinator at the Human Rights Education Project.