Human Rights and Conflict Management Project

The HRCT project was launched with an international conference in Belfast in November 2002. Since that time the project has involved a range of activities including conferences, papers, training and networking. The aims of the project are three fold:

• To encourage dialogue, discussion and increased understanding between people working within the broad Community Relations and Human Rights sectors within Northern Ireland.
• To develop training activities that will help CR workers to integrate human rights principals and practices into their work and vice versa.
• To place the inter-relationships between CR and HR in Northern Ireland within a wider international context.

The project activities have been developed on a series of small budgets and on a 'one step at a time' basis: we have initiated and completed one piece of work, and then assessed what should be involved in the next stage. The activities that have been undertaken as part of the project to date include the following.

Dialogue and Discussion:

• An international conference, funded by the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland, including speakers from NI, USA and South Africa, was held at NICVA in November 2002.
• A series of meetings were held with the Committee on the Administration for Justice and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission in November 2002.
• We convened workshops on the theme of human rights and community relations at CRC conferences in October 2003 and November 2004 and at the Human Rights Commission conferences in November 2006 and September 2007.

Training:

• ICR co-ordinated two training sessions for the Parades Commission's Authorised Officers in May and September 2003.
• ICR organised for a member of staff from the Human Rights Commission and an independent trainer to attend a training-for-trainers programme in Cape Town in March 2004. This was funded by CRC.
• ICR are currently working with the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission to develop and deliver an introductory Human Rights training programme for conflict resolution workers. To date five training sessions have been delivered, with two more planned for late 2007.
• ICR and the NIHRC are planning to produce a training back based on the materials developed and piloted through the HRCT programme.

International Context:

• ICR hosted a conference near Belfast in May 2003, funded by the Fletcher School of Law, to convene an international network of people working on HRCT. The network currently involves approximately fifteen individuals from Norway, Denmark, UK, USA, South Africa and Uganda. A second HRCT network conference took place in Nottingham, England in December 2004 and subsequent events were held in the USA in 2005.
• Two papers on the theme of Human Rights and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland have been produced for publication.