2021 Middle East Webinar: Overcoming Human Rights Violence During Pandemic

On 26 June, HWPL held a Middle East Webinar with the theme of “Overcoming Human Rights Violence During Pandemic” which served as an opportunity to resolve human rights issues that occurred during the pandemic and shed awareness so that these rights can be respected.

Khader S. J. Abuabbara, the Principal of Hope Secondary School, shared the importance of peace education to overcome situations–especially the increase in domestic violence–that arose during the pandemic period. Although the peace education forum was brought to a hiatus due to the pandemic, he expressed his plans to resume this. He further shared, “Education is important in the process of achieving peace, because we can achieve peace and protect human rights through education. Peace education should be provided to protect our children, especially in the Middle East, because war can break out at any time. It is also important for children to know the value of peace, and education is needed to prevent human rights violations.”

Ibrahim Zrary, a member of the High Council of Kurdistan Zoroastrian, also said, “We must look for common points between religions for the purpose of increasing love and spreading peace. And hatred must be renounced and the other accepted as he is and not as I want.”

Furthermore, Iman El Damrany, a journalist of Elshare3news, participated in the webinar in October of last year. She shared the importance of protecting the rights of media outlets that publish the truth by saying, “Journalists suffer from some problems in many countries, and that there must be international legislation and binding laws imposed by the United Nations to protect journalists from any harassment.”

HWPL is continuously hosting webinars to overcome the comprehensive human rights crisis in the Middle East, which intensified due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to gradually create a social atmosphere of recovery, peace, forgiveness, and understanding. On 27 June, HWPL hosted a Youth Empowerment Peace Workshop (YEPW) and began training HWPL peace education lecturers in the same month. We hope that peace activities done in various fields, including human rights, media, education, and youth, will help bring peace to the Middle East a day faster.