ICERD 2021: Human Rights Roadshow – Rakiraki
Today we convened our interactive session for day 3 of the Citizens’ Constitutional Forum (CCF) human rights advocacy and awareness roadshow at the Rakiraki Tanoa Hotel.
A team from CCF has been traveling to parts of Viti Levu; a journey that started in Serua and Sigatoka, with the objective of working with youth from targeted communities to realise their human rights through interactive awareness and education sessions, while reminding them that their rights come with responsibilities, meaning that they should not use their rights to impinge or violate other citizen’s rights.
We continuously remind our participants as part of our activity that commemorates the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) to refrain from sharing information containing hate speech, violence or express themselves in ways that may cause harm or discriminate the audience or readers.
CCF also highlighted that individuals must not only feel obligated to refrain from discriminatory act or hate speech by existing laws but also because of the importance of showing respect to our neighbours as well as ourselves.
CCF received a good turnout of youth at our convening venues that were attended by diverse demographic in Serua, Sigatoka, Nadi, Lautoka, Ba and Rakiraki.
Our team at CCF will continue its duty to promote good governance, human rights and multiculturalism through its community engagement programme.
Reactions from today’s interactive sessions:
*Each participant that commented has been given an alias to protect their privacy.
“We should change our behavior towards others by respecting their way of life, and their culture,” Kaliova – Rakiraki.
“Promote the rights of children is important. These lessons we are learning today should be taught from a very young age. If children at primary school level learn their rights, we should be able to have a generation people in the future who will be able to live with each other without any discrimination,’’ Akanisi – Rakiraki.
“Our young group present today have been blessed with the knowledge that we have learnt today. Most of us had little or no understanding about our rights. We look forward to more advocacy and awareness activities from the team at CCF,’’ Meleani – Rakiraki.