Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) in partnership with the European Union EU) on Monday, April 29, launched the ‘Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in Jamaica’ project geared towards educating Jamaicans about their human rights.

The three-year project will be funded through a $52-million grant from the EU and will focus on the key areas of advocacy, education and legal processes.

“The purpose of this grant is for us to get excited about human rights. Sometimes when we hear about human rights we think that this is some high-level thing that should elude us all, but I wish for a Jamaica where our children can say I have the constitutional right to this, I have the right to that. That’s what we want from our Jamaican citizenry: excitement for human rights. When we talk about the promotion of human rights in Jamaica, that is what this grant seeks to achieve,” said Mickel Jackson, executive director of JFJ.

“We are going to be along the corridors in Jamaica telling people about their rights but, importantly as well, when we talk we talk about understanding our rights, we need to understand the responsibilities that comes with those rights,” she continued.

Among the target groups for the project are adolescents and children who come into contact with the law, citizens from marginalised communities, law enforcement officers, judiciary members, parliamentarians, key decision makers, and civil society leaders.

Programme coordinator at JFJ Vanessa Parkinson said the project will allow individuals to become more aware and involved in the democratic process and demand change with exposure to human rights and social justice training.

“Throughout the life of this project we will be conducting these training sessions which will include a speaker bureau training that will target at-risk youths. The objectives include strengthening communication skills, recognising and challenging human rights violations, and strengthening their reporting and writing skills,” she explained.

“We will also have at least 20 informal community leaders trained as justice advocates; capacity building and strengthening initiatives with civil society leaders. We will also be conducting training of Justices of the Peace and restorative officers; and the continuation of law enforcement officers in human rights training, particularly the in-service officers, with a focus on the use of force, police diversity policy, dealing with the vulnerable population, for example, our children, to see how best we can play a role in reducing the crime rate but in human rights approach,” she added.

The project will also include community interventions that will be conducted in the targetted parishes of St Ann, St Catherine, St James, Westmoreland, and Kingston. It will target 2,500 high-risk students within primary and secondary schools with the aim of improving their knowledge of the constitution and their rights and responsibilities.

“We will be developing a know your rights mobile app that will provide user-friendly, easy access to stories and news and key videos from the JFJ YouTube channel. This app will ultimately serve as a free human rights learning app that aims to educate users on topics such as freedom of expression, digital security and indigenous people’s rights,” Parkinson added.