Tekawa on the importance of making our voices heard

I really enjoyed the structure of the human rights weekend. I liked that we would all come together to learn human rights theories but then break off into groups to discuss how we would and could apply such theories. I appreciate structured learning paired with application. The exercise I found to be the most frustrating but that I learned the most from was the new planet activity. For this exercise we were divided up into groups, each representing a different African nation. In this scenario, we were told that we had depleted Earth’s resources and relocated to a new planet where there is one section of fertile land but the majority of the planet has no resources. Two of the countries had resettled on the fertile land and one on the infertile land. There was one more country that wanted to come to the new planet and our job was to decide if we should allow them on and then under what conditions (mostly deciding how we would distribute and share the resources).  I found it interesting that through this exercise most of us still saw things in the same terms and framework as we currently do on Earth; the idea that someone must control and own the resources, there must be some sort of hierarchy and nation boundaries etc. I thought it was ironic that we continued to think this way because it is this kind of thinking that would lead to us depleting our resources on Earth. It was only Burundi, the country we were deciding whether or not to let on, that came up with a system where no one nation or group controlled the resources but instead we all shared in the resources equally.

Tekowa (far left) answering questions during group presentation.

The other thing I found interesting was that I made the mistake of assuming that making decisions within our groups would be easy because we are all human rights minded. What I found was that how we apply those ideals in practical and realistic terms is very different, especially because we all come from very different backgrounds with very different experiences. I noticed that our experiences had shaped our perspectives and in turn effected our belief in what’s realistic and possible. What I walked away thinking was if it is this difficult for us to come up with solutions that benefit everyone equally and we are all here because we want to defend human rights- what about policy makers and politicians who do not have the same goal? It made me realize again how important it is for us to make our voices heard whether that’s through an NGO/ NPO, government, activism, etc.