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Iraq tries to improve human rights through education

Although the Ministry of Education and the Commission on Human Rights in Qadisiyah province are working to introduce human rights principles in schools, the project lacks much-needed support from the state.
Students attend class in the Nafit 1, a modern school built with the aid of a grant from Kuwait, in Basra, southeast of Baghdad November 2, 2014. A country that used to have one of the finest education systems in the Middle East is struggling to provide school students with the basic opportunity to learn. In the southern port city of Basra, many school buildings are in a dilapidated state. Large numbers of children are attending schools that lack even basic water or sanitation facilities, have crumbling wal
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In a society where conservative religious trends and the rule of tribal law are on the rise, the dissemination of human rights principles is a difficult task. Often, interpretations of religious and tribal customs contradict with basic rights as stated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), such as the freedom of opinion, the freedom of religious belief and other personal rights.

Since 2006, the Iraqi Ministry of Education has been trying, to no avail, to include human rights-related vocabulary into school courses, namely the constitution’s articles on women's and children’s rights.

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