Human rights education in schools halted

School learners will no longer benefit from the Ombudsman’s Basic Human Rights programme, as the office has discontinued it due to limited resources.
This was revealed in the Ombudsman’s 2015 annual report tabled in the National Assembly last week.
According to the report, during the past two years complaints investigators visited schools to introduce learners to basic human rights. It reached 200 schools in 2014 and 41 147 learners benefited.
The number of schools reached last year decreased to 111, benefiting only 35 073 learners.
For the past years the programme has only reached 311 schools from over 1 000 in the country.
“With a total number of 76 220 learners having benefited from the programme, I regret to report that we have to discontinue the project due to limited resources,” Ombudsman John Walters said in the report.
The report indicated that from the onset, they knew that the office would not be in a position to sustain the programme indefinitely.
“The programme has strengthened our belief that human rights education is one of the most powerful means at our disposal to prevent human rights abuses and to promote diversity and respect, yet we fail to implement it,” the report read.
It stated that the Ombudsman started the programme as a catalyst for the introduction of compulsory human rights education by the then Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture.
An inspection of school infrastructure and facilities was carried out in the Zambezi Region and the Ombudsman found that most schools in that region are in dire need of renovation.
“Most of the schools are not fenced in and that exposes both teachers and learners to many kinds of dangers, and there is a shortage of classrooms in the region,” he wrote.
A lack of identity documents for learners was also pointed out in the report. This emerged specifically from school visits at Keetmanshoop and in the Oshana and Omusati regions.
KAINO NGHITONGO