First meetings for classes! Friday February 3, 2012

Today was the first meetings for some of the courses I will be taking at the university. The courses I’m taking are: Biome Ecology, Drawing, Human Rights in Peacemaking, Public Theology in Post-Apartheid South Africa, and Global Health: HIV/AIDS.

I was also really planning on “engaging myself in the community” at Kayamandi, a local township where I would be working with elementary school children doing arts and crafts or other fun activities. Volunteers aren't spending time to help those less fortunate, but rather engaging themselves in the community and giving to them just as much as we’re receiving in time, ideas, friendships, etc. Unfortunately, I have class both times when groups leave for Kayamandi so I need to talk to the coordinator to arrange something so I can still get involved. 

The other first meeting I attended today was for Human Rights in Peacemaking. This is the one course I’m taking that I don’t need for any sort of major or core requirement – I’m taking it just to take it and to learn. The professor who will be teaching Human Rights in Peacemaking is Tyrone Savage, a very worldly man who has just come back from working as a member of the United Nations negotiating peace transitions in Nepal. The course will be very discussion-based and its description is as follows:

Negotiations to end violent conflict frequently flounder on a single problem: what to do with serious violations and abuses of human rights perpetrated by the conflict. The initial reasons for the war may even be virtually forgotten as grievances about the worst of acts - acts that are an affront to what is to be human - dominate peace talks and threaten to hold belligerents, indefinitely, in highly emotive patterns of hostility.

While the emerging field of "transitional justice" seeks to respond to this question, historically it is done so cheifly only once an interval of peace has already been established. A growing awareness is emerging among numerous practitioners in this field of the necessity of taking a step back from that interval and honing in on the human rights dilemmas that emerge during negotiations: for it is here that frameworks are established that will have far reaching implications for any and all future initiatives. "Human Rights in Peacemaking" introduces students to the indispensability of human rights in peacemaking efforts. Beginning with a critical overview of the dilemmas and strategic options that emerged in South Africa during the negotiations from apartheid to democracy, the course exposes students to basic concepts in peacemaking (such as the differences between conflict management, resolution, and transformation) as well as the United Nations human rights system and its role in conflict and peace in several major contexts.The course is taught chiefly through comparative analyses of peacemaking efforts in these, and other contexts. Areas to be examined include, among others: South Africa, Nepal, Balkans, human rights in the United Nations system, Zimbabwe, and Cambodia.The course is taught by Mr. Tyrone Savage, a former UN consultant who has just returned from negotiating transitional justice in Nepal. The course will include readings to be read before most classes as well as a number of papers and class discussions.

This is the Sasol Art Museum, which used to be a primary school! I'll be taking my Human Rights class here every Wednesday from 9 - 12.

Monday will start the first week of real classes, and I can't wait!
But first, I have quite the adventurous weekend ahead of me...