15 apr 2011

Secular and religion human rights

In the frame of the project “Mainstreaming of Youth Police against Radicalism” (MYPAR) funded by European Committee the first phase of seminars on “Secular and religion human rights” is being conducted. The participants of these seminars are the youth groups which were established under the project activity in 6 target jamoats in Asht and B.Gafurov regions.

The target groups include secular and religious young people at the age of 15 till 21 from Asht and B.Gafurov regions.

The aim of the seminars is to introduce to youth and school students of target jamoats:

• International documents on human rights protection
• Law on religion and religion associations
• Law on freedom of conscience and religion.

The objectives of the seminars are to provide information on:

• the Declaration of Human Rights
• the international pacts
• the documents governing the relationship of citizens to religion in Tajikistan.

At the beginning of the seminar the project coordinator Tyuryaev J. welcomed all the participants and briefly informed about the project. Then he introduced the trainer Dadoboev M.M. who has a long experience in conducting such seminars.

During the seminar day the participants were informed about:

• human rights and the categories of rights
• the code of legal acts
• the attitude to religion
• the structure of religious associations
• freedom of conscience and religion
• the role of religious associations in democratic state as well as Decree of Supreme Court on March 30, 2006 in which some of organizations were admitted as terrorist and extremist and their activity was prohibited on the territory of Tajikistan.

It should be noted that the proposed topic was very interesting to the participants and it was the reason of their activity during the seminars and they regret that school syllabus do not include such topic. Moreover trainees actively participated in small groups work, mini-lectures and brainstorming.

At the beginning of each seminar the level of participants’ initial knowledge on rights, laws, religion, religious pluralism was evaluated. Questionnaires showed that the seminar participants have little information about their rights and more know about religion, sacred books and religious associations.

Generally the seminars were very interesting and informative.

The same seminars on different topics will be conducted in 6 target jamoats of Asht and B.Gafurov regions during 6 months.