IARF Human Rights Education

This short documentary records an IARF human-rights education programme with Adivasi women in Kerala, India. Participants describe discrimination experienced in everyday life, including exclusion from upper-caste social events and denial of access to shared wells and water sources. The programme creates space to identify such treatment as a question of rights rather than an unavoidable feature of social hierarchy.

The film also documents the religious and cultural context of the community, including nature-centred practices and the relationship between Adivasi identity, religion and social equality. Through group discussion, visual materials and community education, the programme links freedom of religion or belief with caste discrimination, Indigenous rights and women’s dignity. It is an early audiovisual record of IARF’s community-based human-rights education work in India.

This field recording documents a human-rights awareness programme held on 12 March 2013 in Enarau, a rural community in Kajiado district in Maasai country south of Nairobi. The event was organised by Adhengo Boaz of the Jahwar Amber Fund with support from Hiyoshi Shinto Shrine of Nagoya, an IARF member group.

Community discussion addresses minority rights, respect for cultural traditions and the need to distinguish cultural identity from practices that violate human dignity. Female genital mutilation is discussed directly, alongside the role of elders, schools and community education in changing harmful practices without treating Maasai culture itself as a problem. The film provides a compact record of IARF-linked human-rights education at community level in East Africa.

Bro. Albert Xaviour describes how IARF’s human-rights education work helped young adults in India move from learning about rights to carrying practical awareness into rural communities. Drawing on his own background in a fishing family and social work, he recalls confronting bonded labour, caste discrimination, honour killings, communal violence and other forms of exclusion before encountering IARF human-rights training in 2005.

The film follows the development of youth-led programmes in villages and colleges, with particular attention to Dalit, Adivasi and other marginalized communities, women and children. Xaviour presents human-rights education as a way to help people recognize their dignity, understand legal and social rights, and build peace and harmony across caste, religious and community divisions. The video was submitted to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ Division for Social Policy and Development.