The African Human Rights Leadership Campaign began in 2006 with the help in particular of young 20-something activists Jay Yarsiah in Liberia and Sammy Jacobs Abbey in Ghana. We started with the notion that Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) could help young people make a difference in post-conflict zones, and in broader Africa, using human rights education materials that cut across cultural and literacy divides.

Joseph Yarsiah, Monrovia, Liberia human rights education workshop, November, 2006

Those YHRI materials include the Thirty Rights DVD, a series of one minute youth-oriented visual stories, each portraying an article of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 (UDHR). YHRI-published booklets and lesson plans on the UDHR complement the piece.  Inside of a half-hour, that video alone can kick-off an understanding and enthusiasm on the breadth of the Universal Declaration, the first international document defining human dignity and social justice.  Yet, we had no clear path from there to a meaningful educational process for youth in countries with limited resources and very challenging circumstances.

In May, 2006, we dove in with video showings with laptop and a projector to groups of high school and college youth in Ghana and Liberia, sparking discussions on the relevance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to their lives and communities.  A common outcry from students at this stage was that parent and teacher guidance, control and discipline, obviously their prime peace and conflict battleground, were now “human rights violations.”  This was at the very least ironic (and not exactly what we were expecting), particularly in lands still reeling from such recent equal opportunity killing, mass refugee migrations and wholesale destruction, body-and-soul, all ages, backgrounds and genders.

On the last day in Liberia that May (less than three years after the cease-fire but still a time when there was no electrical grid and no running water in the capital, Monrovia), students from three high schools held a “showdown” human rights quiz, like a TV game show but without the cameras and studio audience.  With the room and desks divided into circle-the-wagons territories, leaders from each school sat with their classmates holding a button wired to a central plywood box with a battery-powered buzzer.  The moderator read a question.  The first to buzz got first shot at answering.  Points were scored for correct responses, deducted for incorrect.

The host school got off to a swift start, correctly answering the first question.  On the next one, the hosts buzzed before the moderator finished the sentence and again answered correctly.  Still, the full question could have been anticipated.  On the third, the moderator had said “Name the five … “ when they buzzed again, correctly naming the prime members of the U.N. Security Council. In the drive to compete, our hosts had helped themselves to the questions, sequence and answers in advance.  Once that uproar died down (we give the hosts penalty points and started over, scrambling the questions), the session proceeded as a raucous, good-natured affair. (Fittingly, the host school team placed last.)

High school students, Monrovia, Liberia human rights education workshop, November, 2006

We were back in Monrovia in March, 2007.  By this time, international relief efforts, headed by the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) had dominated the town for three-plus years.  Five military checkpoints continued to mark the airport road alone, citizens still hit the deck at the sound of a car backfiring, and tangible change for the better was difficult to observe.

Over a pizza-fringed planning session one evening (at the Royal Hotel, soldiers and relief workers at the other tables and with ESPN and Yankees vs. Red Sox surreally and hugely projected by generator on the wall above the bar), we observed that high school-going Liberians, while locked into the tedium of rote learning to pass exams, were also skilled at griping over the U.N. occupation, endemic government corruption, continuing human rights abuses, and their own supposed powerlessness to reverse the national inertia.

Monrovian youth, for example, were given to cynical nicknames for the common acronyms around town. “U.N.” actually stood for “United Nothing.”  Elected and appointed officials  had government cars with special license plates.  According to students, the license plate designation for a Senate member, “SEN,” really stood for “Since Election Nothing.” The license plate designation for a House of Representatives member, “REP,” should in truth stand for “Rebel Enjoying Power.”

Thus, it came to us that evening that if competition was such a passion that a group of students would blatantly cheat on a inter-school contest, what about a human rights issue and leadership contest that could strike at student apathy over their seemingly “helpless” situation?

In the student session the next morning, we presented the quickly created basics for the competition. The students perked-up instantly.  Each school was to choose a human rights organization (UNESCO and UNICEF were examples).  By research of that organization’s published materials and interview of its leaders, field workers and intended beneficiaries, the competitors were to evaluate how effectively that agency was fulfilling its human rights mission statement. As appropriate, the team was also to make recommendations to improve that agency’s conflict transformation programs. We would conclude the contest with a final event, with each school vying to present the most thorough and persuasive analysis.  The judges were to be college student leaders, anonymous among the audience.

Monrovia, Liberia human rights education workshop, November, 2006

Thus, in 2007, we set a three month runway for the project, with deadlines for written reports and a scheduled event date.  We repeated the process in Sierra Leone and Ghana.

As rough-edged as it was – including the inevitable cries of foul by the faculty and team members of the losing schools – the Liberian competition’s conclusion in May caught the attention of all major electronic media and top national leadership. (Labor Minister Kofi Woods, Attorney General Johnson-Morris, and the Vice President’s chief of staff Sam Stevquoah spoke.)  We had similar success in Freetown and Accra in May and June, 2007 and were on our way.

Best wishes,

Tim Bowles