Turkey – Women’s Human Rights Education Program – WWHR

TURKEY: WOMEN FOR WOMEN’S HUMAN RIGHTS
(WWHR) – NEW WAYS

When we first began our work as an independent women’s
organisation in 1993, one of WWHR-New Ways’ first activities was to
conduct a field research on women’s human right in Turkey and
violence against women in Ankara, Istanbul, Eastern and Southeastern
Anatolia (1994-1996). During the course of this research we came
across the fact that women are unaware of the rights granted to them
by the law. Another fact was that there was almost no women’s
grassroots organising and networking other than those in the big
cities of Turkey. Research has confirmed that women’s lives in
Turkey are shaped by patriarchal practices, traditions and customs
that govern all social zones, rather than the legal rights obtained
on paper. Additionally, the patriarchal practices did not take into
consideration the needs and the expectations of women, including
sexual and reproductive rights. The Human Rights Education Program
for Women (HREP) was developed in 1995 by WWHR-New Ways to meet the
needs outlined in this context as a non-formal holistic human rights
training to equip women with necessary knowledge and skills towards
the full enjoyment of their human rights and mobilization around
their own needs towards social change and democratization as free
and equal individuals.

HREP has been implemented in the field on an on-going basis since
1995, and as a result of this uninterrupted implementation has
nation-wide outreach reached over 5000 women in 33 provinces located
throughout all seven geographical regions of Turkey up to
date.  As a result of this uninterrupted implementation, HREP
now has nation-wide outreach through the Community Centers located
in 30 provinces spread throughout all seven geographic regions of
Turkey, and up-to-date over 3000 women have participated in the
program. The actual outreach, however, is much wider than the number
of participants, considering that each participant becomes a
resource person within her community on women’s human rights, and
also given the concerted focus of the program on facilitating the
emergence of grassroots organisations working to advocate women’s
human rights at the local level.

Since 1998, the program has been implemented in collaboration
with a State Agency, the General Directorate of Social Services
(GDSS) in Community Centers throughout Turkey. Community Centers are
typically located at socio-economically disadvantaged districts of
provinces receiving heavy internal migration. A unique example of
successful and sustainable NGO-state collaboration in Turkey, HREP
was recently chosen as a “best tactic” in the international “New
Tactics in Human Rights” project coordinated by the Center for
Victims of Torture (USA) and the Helsinki Citizens Assembly
(Turkey). Click here for the HREP tactical notebook prepared
within the scope of the project. 

The program consisting of participatory group workshops is
implemented in partnership with GDSS in two phases. In the first
phase, WWHR-New Ways provides trainer training to the social workers
in charge of the Community Centers of SHCEK, who then start to
implement the education with women’s groups at the local level. In
the second phase, the 16 module program is conducted through weekly
3-4 workshops over the course of 4 months. WWHR-New Ways provides
supervision and monitoring to the trainers, supplies training
materials, and organizes strategic planning and evaluation meetings
with the trainers, as well as networking and capacity building
activities with leaders of the grassroots organizing initiatives
emerging from the program. The education utilizes an extensive
collection of training materials developed by WWHR-New Ways,
entailing illustrated brochures for low literacy groups on selected
women’s human rights issues, documentaries, action-research
articles, a 330-page trainer manual, and an independent program
evaluation report among others. 

HREP entails 16 workshops on numerous topics:

1. Introductry Session and Needs
   Assessment
2. Human Rights and Women’s Human
   Rights
3. Constitutional and Civil Rights
4. Violence against Women and Domestic
   Violence
5. Strategies against Violence
6. Women’s Economic Rights – Section 1

7. Women’s Economic Rights –Section 2
8. Communication Skills –Section 1
9. Communication Skills –Section 2
10. Gender Sensitive Parenting and Rights of
    the Child
11. Women and Sexuality –Section 1
12. Women and Sexuality –Section 2
13. Reproductive Rights
14. Women and Politics
15. Feminism and the Women’s Movement
16. Women’s Grassroots
    Organizing

The Human Rights Education Program for Women (HREP) remains to be
the most widespread, sustainable and comprehensive non-formal human
rights education program in Turkey. One of the most distinctive
features of HREP is that the program is not implemented in a vacuum,
and while participants change and gain awareness of their rights on
the individual level, they also become active agents in advocacy
efforts and organize on the local and national levels. The program
is designed as a tool for women to devise their own strategies to
realize their rights, while also becoming active agents for social
change.

According to the External Evaluation Research on HREP conducted
by an independent research team, the impact of HREP on participants
is:

• 93% of them have improved their self-confidence;
• 63% have stopped domestic violence while 22% have reduced it;
• 88% became resource people in their communities;
• 74% started participating more equally in decision-making in
  the family;
• 43% started participating actively in the labor market;
• 72% their husband’s attitude and behaviour towards them
  changed positively;
• 54% restarted their interrupted formal or non formal
  education;
• 90% gained knowledge on their political, civil and economic
  rights.

The study also finds that the women have become more active
participants in the public sphere through participation in local
government, advocacy campaigns, undertaking of initiatives such as
organizing meetings/conferences, opening sales stands at local
bazaars, setting up of businesses and so on. After participating in
HREP, women in Ankara, Antalya, Aydin, Canakkale, Diyarbakir,
Edirne, Istanbul (Gazi, Okmeydani, Umraniye), Izmir, Izmit, Samsun
and Van have mobilized to initiate indedenpent grassroots women’s
organizing initiatives around their own needs. Click here to read the Evaluation Report.