HREP: Bringing in the Little People

One night, a fierce storm blows a small grey kitten across town – into a community of orange striped cats. And an orange striped kitten is flung into the community of grey cats. Both kittens are safe and looked after – until morning dawns, and each cat group’s perception of the ‘other’

kitten suddenly changes. From thinking of them as their own, the cats now see the kittens as ‘aliens’ - ugly, smelly, and weird .Now it is okay to abuse them and boot them out.

Scared and vulnerable, each kitten somehow finds its way home. Each is welcomed back, and there is horror at how it was treated by the other group. Then the cats realize they too treated another kitten similarly, and not how they would like their own kitten to be treated. The kittens tell them that the enemy cats are not that different either. They were first kind, and seemed to be the same; one looked like Aunty X, one ate too much, like…. Curiosity here does not kill the cat, and each group sets off to meet the other, joining up half-way. They realize that despite superficial differences, they are essentially the same – all cats.

This story, ‘A Tale of Two Kittens’ by Kathy Keirle, is one of my favourite Human Rights Education Programme (HREP) publications. HREP, which Kathy, along with her husband Zulfiqar Ali, initiated in Karachi almost ten years ago, aims to foster education that contributes to peace and understanding. Their books are beautifully illustrated and produced, but cheaply priced, available in Urdu as well as English.

International Children’s Day brings children’s issues into focus every year, issues that have made their way into public and political discourse over time – from the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in Geneva in 1924 (adopted by the United Nations in 1959), to the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child in 1989. Many of these rights pertain to the child’s right to freedom from homelessness and hunger, violence (particularly child soldiers and child abuse), illiteracy and preventable illnesses. More complex are the rights related to freedom of information, expression, thought, conscience and religion – the HREP’s main areas of concern.

One of their loveliest books is based on the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, which lists and explains these rights. Such publications, along with teachers’ manuals, are being used in some 700 schools in Pakistan. “When we started, people said that schools wouldn’t let us in, that our material would be considered ‘subversive’, that the teachers wouldn’t know how to handle it,” says Zulfi, as the HREP director is popularly known. “But we found that there was in fact a huge demand, and that the bulk of our support is from the lower middle class.”

It feels good to know that this organisation, focused squarely on children, is plugging away at an essential building block of a progressive, humane and just society: education that is socially relevant, contributing to an educated, aware and participating citizenry. The Henry Giroux quote on the HREP website says it eloquently: “… educational practices [must] … connect critical thought to collective action, knowledge and power to profound impatience with the status quo, and human agency to social responsibility”.

The HREP team believes that to enable children to contribute positively to society, education must equip them with an understanding of the world, and their relationship to it, as well as analytical and conceptual skills, critical thinking, problem solving, conflict resolution and communication skills. For children to want to contribute, their education must provide opportunities and training that enable them to take an interest in and responsibility for their societies. “Unless an education system meets these critical criteria, HREP believes it will not be useful, irrespective of the spread and quantity of the literate population.” Spot on. After all, look at the president recently re-elected by an almost entirely literate population in the USA. Let it not be forgotten, however, that almost half (49 per cent), did not choose him – as expressed eloquently in the new sorryeverybody.com website (50 million hits in two weeks).

Besides reaching out to schools and ongoing campaigns highlighting diversity and tolerance, for last three years HREP has been working on an ambitious project: a state of the art children’s museum for peace and human rights. This building, including galleries, library, auditorium and play and learn areas, will serve as a focal point for HREP activities and provide a constant interactive space for families, teachers, and children. This small, dedicated team invites participation – see http://www.hrep.com.pk.

Such activities will not improve society overnight, but they do add strength to the ongoing struggle for a more just, pluralistic and tolerant society. For this struggle to be effective, and for the sake of our collective future, children need to be involved as active and enabled partners.