Human Rights Best Practices (ATHAM) in Schools
Children are the future of the country. Realizing the importance of providing human rights education to children, SUHAKAM conducts various educational programmes in collaboration with the Ministry of Education (MOE) to inculcate awareness and understanding of human rights among teachers and students in schools. In 2009, the Commission and the MOE introduced the Human Rights Best Practices Programme (HRBPS) in five (5) schools. The goals of this programme are:
- To encourage students and school administration to be aware and take steps to adopt human and children’s rights in the planning and implementation of activities in school;
- To cultivate an attitude of respect and responsibility among each other’s in schools;
- To increase the understanding of human and children’s rights among students;
- To encourage harmonious communication and interaction among students regardless of race, religion and gender.
The programme has been expanded to more schools and in 2019, there are 468 participating schools throughout Malaysia including Sabah and Sarawak.
- Post-PT3 Human Rights Module and Post-UPSR Human Rights Modules
The Post-PT3 Human Rights Module and Post-UPSR Human Rights Modules were developed by the Commission with the support of the Ministry of Education (MoE) through the Curriculum Development Division, School Management Division and Educational Planning and Research Division. The Modules were developed to introduce the primary and secondary students to the human rights principles and terminologies such as 'equality' and 'non-discrimination' through interesting and fun activities.
ATHAM schools were chosen to be the pilot schools to assess the effectiveness of these Modules.
In order to equip the teachers with sufficient human rights knowledge, SUHAKAM conducted series of Training of Trainers (ToT), particularly for the teachers from the participating schools. These ToT provided the teachers not only with human rights knowledge but also further guidance on the implementation of the activities in both Modules.