Through the partnership, the 'Introduction to Human Rights' course, jointly developed by Fahamu and the University of Oxford, Department for Continuing Education, has been made freely available on Fahamu's website. The course is designed to provide people with a comprehensive definition of human rights and how these rights are monitored and enforced.

Fahamu has specialized in developing a range of distance-learning courses aimed at strengthening the capacity of human rights and civil society organisations in Africa and around the world. The topics covered by the courses are the result of extensive research conducted in Africa into the training needs of such organisations.

Fahamus distance-learning methodology, involving CDROMs, email-based facilitation and workshops, has been widely adopted by institutions such as the University of Oxford, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Article 19, the UN-affiliated University for Peace and others.

Previously these courses were only available to those participating in courses organised by Fahamu, but making these courses available on the web through OpenCourseware will allow anyone with access to the internet to benefit from Fahamus unique human rights training materials. 'An Introduction to Human Rights' is the first course to be published which will be followed by 'Campaigning for Access to Information.

The OpenCourseWare Consortium   http://ocwconsortium.org/index.html is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware.

For more information on the courses please visit http://rightstraining.fahamu.org/ocw/learning-for-change/introduction-to-human-rights
Contact: info@fahamu.org
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