A Week Is a Long Time in Amnesty

So a busy week last week in the Amnesty Office I have just cherry picked a few of the activities to give you a flavour.

 Monday saw the launch of Making the Grade Northern Ireland, Amnesty working as part of the End Violence Against Women Coalition. The  report was launched at Stormont and seem to have gained real positive engagement by the government and officials.

 Tuesday it was off to the launch of the Belfast Fim Festival; the programme this year is excellent with great human rights content. Amnesty is involved in  presenting two films The Jammed; about sex trafficking in Australia and In Prison My Whole Life; about the death penalty in the US. there will be panel discussions afterwards.

I was in derry at a Children in Crossfire seminar for International Womens Day. We were  addressed by Goretti Horgan on the history and importance of International Womens day and then there were a couple of workshops. I lead a workshop on behalf of Amnesty on how a rights based approach copuld help to liberate women. We looked at the UDHR and  noted what we thought was missing from it which led us to looking at the additional conventions and CEDAW in particular, after identfying the rights specific to women we then talked about action that women can take to demand those rights and make sure that they can access them. I met an amazing bunch of women from all walks of life and many will be attending our activists day on April 20th to see how thay can bring Amnesty campaigns into their local community.

Then it was off to Oakgrove Integrated College to see a play that they had on there dealing with domestic violence and I got a chance to meet the Amnesty youth group at the school. After the success of the Youth group in Belfast we have decided to roll this model out and start one in Derry on April 19th in the Junction, Bishop Street. This group is not only a chance for young people who are not able to join Amnesty Youth Groups in their schools, but also a chance for those young epople in schools to meet others who want to campaign for human rights.

And so to Friday when LIFT OFF!  the human rights education project in primary  schools had a forum to support  teachers involved in Northern Ireland. this took place in Northern Ireland and if the feed back forms are anything to go by were a huge success. Well done Mary and Brenda!