By Kelvin Obambon
One of the world’s leading human rights organizations, Amnesty International has met with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and representatives of media establishments in Cross River to discuss issues of human rights and Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) in the state.
The briefing and collaboration meeting which took place at the Monty Suite Hotels, Calabar, on Tuesday, also provided Amnesty International the opportunity to build partnerships with CSOs for future engagements.
The Country Director of Amnesty International, Isa Sanusi, in his speech, said the meeting was to plead for public support because he views them as very important partners.
He explained that Amnesty International is a research-based organization, adding that through research the organization has been able to gather a lot of evidence and balance that can convince people about Amnesty’s work.
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According to Sanusi, who was represented by Maurice Chukwu, a researcher at Amnesty International, “The importance of our work in human right education is that we undertake human right education as one of the priorities. In terms of human right education, it is setting out human right clinics across universities, we already have partnership with University of Lagos and other state universities. We also have partnership with Yaba College of Technology which is also in Lagos. We go to this universities time to time to engage the students about human rights and to conduct human right education across campuses.”
He stated that the University of Calabar was the reason Amnesty International decided to bring human rights to Cross River State, disclosing “we had meeting with the Vice Chancellor of the University of Calabar to regulate the human right chain in the University.”
“One of the areas use to build a relationship with the CSOs is in the human right education. We considered human right education as one of the very important components of the work. Amnesty International is dedicated in ensuring that every human being can enjoy this human rights,” he said.
Speaking further, the Country Director said human rights should be made available in order for people not to take laws into their own hands and stop listening to superstitious beliefs. He clearly stated that taking laws into one’s own hands is not right. He however sought to know the key areas in human rights issues that each civil society organization would like to work on and proffer solutions to.
He expressed optimism that with research, campaign, advocacy and support from the people, the problems of police brutality, sexual and gender based violence could be effectively tackled.
The meeting also featured an open forum session for actionable plans moderated by Leader Ben Usang, Head of Cross River State Civil Society Network, and as well as a question and answer session.
