Isabella Empowered From Training
Society has gotten to the point where people think it doesn’t matter what they say, that they think their comments and hate don’t affect other people.
Humans are often hurtful towards each other, but I believe we all were born with the innate of compassion and love.
These were the statements shared by Isabella Nabole, the youngest participant of the twoday Human Rights Training for Youth and Women Human Rights Defenders in Lautoka. The Year 10 Student of Swami
Vivekanada College felt that with alarming regularity, human rights are disregarded, and violated, sometimes to a shocking degree. The overwhelming majority of victims of human rights abuses around Fiji and the world share two characteristics: Deprivation, and discrimination – whether it is based on race or ethnicity, gender, beliefs, sexual orientation, caste or class. From hunger to massacres, sexual violence and slavery, human rights violations are rooted in these hidden, and sometimes not so hidden, factors.
“Being the youngest participant, I came to this training keen in learning the importance of human rights and what responsibilities we have with the rights been given to us”
Isabella also added that youths are three times more likely to be unemployed than adults, and working in more precarious and unstable conditions. To improve youth participation in the governance of human rights, conceptual and structural barriers need to be removed and groundwork that facilitates meaningful participation must be introduced.
She also stressed that the Fijian Ministry of Education should work closely with the United Nations Office of the High Commission for Human Rights in the Pacific and Ignite4Change to engage students on the importance of human rights, the international human rights mechanisms: the treaty bodies, special procedures and in particular the Universal Periodic Review ( UPR) process.