Organizations

In collaboration with the Pan-African Centre and Femme Africa Solidarite, Senegal, the Human Rights Centre developed and facilitated a one week cutting edge- training workshop on Gender Mainstreaming in Conflict Early Warning Systems for 30 selected African professionals working in the field of peacebuilding and human rights. The training was conducted in Dakar, Senegal.

UPEACE-HRC has been providing customized training in online, on-site and/or hybrid modalities to business corporations around the world interested in mainstreaming human rights into corporate activities, including designing of due diligence policies, conducting of human rights impact assessments, and setting up of operational level grievance mechanisms for human rights complaints by stakeholders.

The Centre has been delivering an on-site module on Global Governance to students of Long Island University since 2015 at its Costa Rica campus, which includes a field visit to Panama.

Combined with the 3 full-days participation in the UPEACE Model UN Conference, the Centre offered a week-long workshop to students of Pace University, New York, on the United Nations System and Human Rights.

Since 2013, the Centre has been conducting a customized 4-weeks online certificate training for Universidad Alfonso X El Sabio, Madrid and the Berg Institute on the topic of “Development and Human Rights: Implications for the Globalized World- Dynamics of Conflict and Cooperation”.

UPEACE-HRC has, since 2018, developed and conducted an instructor-led facilitated online training in conjunction with and funding from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Not only is the four-weeks online training organized and delivered by the Centre, but the development of the module, including coordination of the author-contributed chapters thereof, was led by UPEACE-HRC.

With funding from ICCO, UPEACE conducted a successful project for training business corporations in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama on the topic of mainstreaming human rights into corporate activities using ISO 26000 and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The content and design of the workshops were developed by the UPEACE Human Rights Centre and the training was delivered by Dr. Mihir Kanade, Director of the Centre.

With funding from the Canadian Fund for Local Initiatives, administered by the Embassy of Canada, the Centre conducted two capacity building workshops as aforesaid, the second one being an advanced workhop, for 50 Costa Rican youth working with NGOs on the topic of ‘Building Sustainable NGOs in Costa Rica for Promoting Human Security’. The workshops included both face-to-face and e-learning components to ensure maximum impact. This project brought together 50 young women and men from different parts of Costa Rica, having a common vision and passion for promoting human security in Costa Rica through civil society advocacy. The participants were selected on the basis of their proven track record in issues concerning human security in Costa Rica, such as migrants rights, juvenile crimes, drug abuse, domestic violence and other gender issues, environment and human rights. The workshop was conducted in Spanish by experts in the field who trained the participants on not only the contemporary human security issues in Costa Rica and the legal human rights mechanisms for promoting them, but other issues relating to human rights and human security advocacy as well. In addition, the workshops trained participants on practical issues for NGO work such as fundraising, project management, community development and social entrepreneurship.

The Centre conducted a comprehensive training workshop in December 2010 on human rights and other issues arising out of free trade agreements (FTAs) affecting the Dominican Republic and the five Central American countries. A total of 18 lawyers from 6 countries – the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, participated in the workshop. Half of the participants from each country were nominated by the respective Ministry of Trade (or Foreign Relations) and the other half by the major Bar Association (or Chamber of Commerce) in each country. The major goals of this project were to create awareness about the importance of a proper understanding of FTAs affecting the region and its indispensability in fostering good governance. Furthermore, it is important to build and strengthen the capacities of lawyers from the above countries to properly advise their government and local investors, to represent their interests before dispute settlement bodies created under the different FTAs, and to create a platform for further local initiatives on the topic. Course participants’ professional experience encompassed various fields such as human rights, international trade law, administrative law, corporate law, mediation and arbitration.