approached the matter from a human rights perspective.
Of course, our basic objective was recognizing the principle of equal opportunity for persons with disabilities as with other citizens. Also planned are two more workshops on civil and political rights of women and persons with disabilities this summer.
To have more experts in the field of human rights and for more awareness in society, we have planned to introduce a master’s degree and PhD degree in human rights. Through consultation with people experienced in the field of human rights and organizing meetings, now we have completed our syllabus for offering the master’s and PhD degrees in human rights next autumn and have sent it to the minister of science, research and technology for final approval. With these degrees we want to educate more experts in the field to consider comparative perspectives between international instruments and Islamic jurisprudence and law, which is very important in our society.
The other parts of this project have been translating and rewriting articles and books about human rights. As our language is Farsi and we have not enough Farsi books about human rights, we have selected some important books and articles in English and French and translated them into Farsi to use in universities and in different parts of society for more awareness about the human rights international instrument.
The other part of the project has been sending some young professors and PhD candidates to participate in different international institutions that are active in human rights—for example, the human rights center in Strasburg— and also to participate in the UN process.
In spite of the fact that in the project there were no provisions for establishing a center for human rights, we have established a center for human rights studies to institutionalize our activities. We thought, the project will finish after two years and maybe a center for follow-up is very important.
So in January 2001, we opened the center for human rights studies as affiliated to the faculty of law and political science. Of course, before it, we had established a center for human rights information but it was only a means for collecting and distributing information, with some capabilities for persons to use facilities. On the opening day of this center we had an international course on human rights, and young academicians, some NGOs, post-graduate students, and young professors participated in our course. From international institutions we had invited a Sterling Professor of Human Rights to teach this course. The lecture covered basic principles of human rights, economic, social, and cultural rights, and rights to development, political and civil rights, democracy and human rights, human rights from Islamic perspective, the concept of cultural relativism, women’s rights, a national institution on human rights, and human rights and criminal justice. We want, in the autumn, to organize a regional course with more participants from other regions.
In our objectives for the project it is very important for us to have a compromise between our international obligations, which are very important in the international sphere now, and our codes and our Islamic provisions, which