More about our meeting with the fabulous Shula Koenig!

If you have seen the short video clip, then you will definitely understand that we had a fabulous meeting with Shula Koenig this past Monday. As we all found out, she is an amazing woman! She is the founding president of the People's Movement for Human Rights Learning. In addition, Koenig has worked to have the UN declare this decade a "Decade for Human Rights Learning" as well as has developed an international public policy that is being put into place to encourage this learning throughout the world's people. Also, as we already know, Koenig is demonstrating this vision of worldwide human rights by helping to initiate and facilitate the UN "Human Rights Cities" program with which we are involved! Through this program, she is trying to provoke human rights learning at the local level. In 2003, Koenig was a recipient of the United Nations' "Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Human Rights."

At our meeting, she had so many important points to make to us--we just sat there in awe soaking it up! One of the most poignant points that she made to me, however, was this idea of spreading human rights WITHOUT the use of imperialism. I mean, many of us do not think about imperialism when we are trying to spread human rights and teach others about them. Yet, Shula pointed out that this is a very tricky situation--one in which that we can become easily trapped. Indeed, Shula stated that she does not go to the different countries herself. Rather, she has people from that country come to her so that she can teach them about human rights. It is then up to these country delegates to go back to their country to teach their fellow citizens about human rights. By approaching human rights this way, fellow citizens are helping each other rather than having a human rights expert swoop in to teach and dictate the idea of human rights. This way, human rights come from within!

If you want to learn more about this amazing and powerful woman, you can check out the People's Movement for Human Rights Learning website: http://www.pdhre.org/index.html.

Koenig regularly writes articles as the group's president. Also, the website offers some great information and tools--from learning about human rights methodology and materials, to browsing summaries of Human Rights conventions, information about Human Rights Cities (!!!), to reading some great articles (in both English and Spanish!) about human rights in the Dialogue and Discourse section of the website and more! There is even a Get Involved! link on the website if you would like to join our fight for worldwide human rights! Without a doubt, our talk on Monday only helped to better inform us as well as to motivate us. As Shula Koenig so often pointed out, WE CAN DO THIS!!!!