National Human Rights Commission created a Human Rights Education Council of Local Governments composed of 17 Metropolitan Cities and Provinces. The first meeting was held on 25 July.
NHRCK after making a recommendation to head of local governing bodies to enact or amend human rights ordinance in April 2012 continued to carry out human rights education for public officers or residents in metropolitan cities and provinces. However, there are cases where human rights education for public officers was not carried out, or the education was carried out without institutional foundation or direction for sustainable human rights education. Under these circumstances, NHRCK created a human rights education council in order to check operation status of human rights education courses and further vitalize human rights education. The council is composed of NHRCK and 17 Metropolitan governing bodies.
At the meeting, creation and operation standards of the council which was already reviewed at the working-group level meeting in June was discussed and confirmed. The operation standards include measures to expand human rights education and enhance its quality, creation of partnership and provision of human rights education information among member institutions.
In addition, measures for cooperation between the NHRCK and local governing bodies for vitalization of human rights of education were discussed. The NHRCK proposed to have a workshop for people in charge of human rights education and human rights counseling on a regular basis. With increasing number of local governments that independently carry out human rights counseling and investigation, the workshop is expected to serve as an venue to share know-hows and techniques of NHRCK for human rights investigation and counseling. It also decided to expand joint operation of human rights education training which is already being carried out in cooperation of some local governments.
The NHRCK hopes the council serves as an opportunity to vitalize cooperation for human rights education.
