Romania: Starting early on human rights with school textbook

A textbook on human rights activism, being introduced in Romanian schools this year, steers away from preaching and uses interviews with global and local rights activists to suggest how young people may get involved. The Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mexican attorney Digna Ochoa and Czech playwright Vaclav Havel are some of the people interviewed for the book 'Speak Truth to Power' by Kerry Kennedy, the rights activist daughter of former U.S. senator and attorney general Robert F. Kennedy. Many of the interviews are included in the Romanian version of a rights educational package that is being prepared for use in some high-schools in the country. Alongside interviews with prominent global human rights defenders, the Romanian book contains discussions with local activists fighting such issues as domestic violence and the rights of the Roma. For a start, the book is being tested in selected high-schools in the capital and a few other major cities. The contents were discussed at a training session, organised for a group of 20 teachers on Feb. 4, in Bucharest, with a view to finding ways to use the textbook in the classroom.