The Human Rights Center at Beirut Arab University, in collaboration with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Middle East, organized a celebration under the title “Human Rights and Social Media” that took place in Beirut Campus on 12 December 2011.
The event included showing short films about participating in social media.
The event was started with a welcoming speech given by Miss Maya Mansour, member in the Board of Human Rights Center at BAU. Miss Mansour praised the role of modern media as a key element in the struggle for freedom, justice, dignity and equality.
Later, Mr. Fateh Azzam, the regional representative of The High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Middle East, pointed out that modern technology for social media “places before us many challenges that are not necessarily related to authorities and their harassments, but to the responsibility we need to carry so we don’t become part and parcel of the problem of Human Rights violation instead of being solution providers”.
During the event that took place on the anniversary of the issuance of The Declaration of Human Rights, a video-taped speech from Nafy Belay, the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Middle East, was presented. During the presentation, discussions were held between the participating students and the discussion recorders about their own experiences with respect to the importance and the risks of social media in raising awareness about Human Rights, the importance of urging peoples to claim for their most fundamental rights and rejecting the culture of repression.
The discussion was based on numerous concrete examples taken from different regions, and live testimonies inspired from the “Arab Spring”.
.jpg)
.jpg)