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OSSREA Deputy Executive Secretary Elected Chairman of Executive Committee of IHRE
At the invitation of the International Human Rights Exchange (IHRE), the Deputy Executive Secretary, Dr Alfred G. Nhema, attended an executive committee meeting of the IHRE in Durban from 17-19 January 2002. During the three-day meeting, the IHRE Executive Committee elected the Deputy Executive Secretary as its chairman.
IHRE is a collaborative project founded on a commitment to genuine international exchanges, inter-institutional cooperation designed to create and support an annual intensive undergraduate course in human rights for senior undergraduate students. The 75 students annually enrolled from Southern Africa and the United States spend time in classroom discussions, lectures and field work, over the course of four weeks, thus taking the equivalent of a semester-long course. Students and faculty are drawn from a consortium of 14 Southern African universities and US liberal arts colleges. The IHRE also publishes an annual academic journal.
Plans are underway to include other students from other regions in Africa. An Ethiopian who works for an NGO based in Addis Ababa has already been accepted to the program to be held at the University of Cape Town and the University of Western Cape, South Africa, from 21 June to 22 July 2002.
A Southern African Secretariat runs the IHRE jointly with the United States based Secretariat. The Project Manager operates from the University of Cape Town while the United States Secretariat is based at Bard College, New York. The Secretariat, in turn, reports to the Executive Committee composed of the following: Alfred G. Nhema, OSSREA; Susan Gillespie, Director, Institute for International Liberal Education, Bard College; David Chidester, Chair of Religious Studies, University of Cape Town; Nasila Rembe, Oliver Tambo Chair of Human Rights, University of Fort Hare; Michael Allan, Bryan Mawr College; Michelle Parlevet, Centre for Conflict Resolution, University of Cape Town; and Federico Settler, IHRE Project Director.
OSSREA, with the support of IDRC under its PLaW Programme, conducted a research methodology training workshop in Khartoum from 19 to 31 December 2001. Twenty-five young researchers, including 14 women, from various organizations and institutions in the Sudan participated in the training programme. The host in Khartoum was the Development Studies Research Centre of the University of Khartoum. Prof. Shibru Tedla, the PLaW Coordinator of OSSREA, managed the training programme.