UNESCO and UN Cares Indonesia organised it first learning session on discrimination and disability. The session was hosted by UNESCO Office in Jakarta on 8 April 2015. It was well attended by more than 35 participants from UNDP, ILO, UNDSS, and UNESCO.
The session was opened by Mr. Shahbaz Khan, Officer in Charge for UNESCO Office in Jakarta. Mr. Khan emphasized the importance of mainstreaming disability and inclusion of persons with disability in UN programmes and projects. He also underlined the importance of refreshing the UN Staff knowledge on HIV/AIDS.
During the learning session, Ms. Ailsa Amila, Programme Assistant at UNESCO, shared her knowledge on disability rights and elimination of discrimination towards persons with disability. Her presentation focussed additionally on what individuals can do to eliminate discrimination towards persons with disability.
In addition to Ms. Ailsa’s presentation, Mr. Philipp Klotz, a Carlo Schmid Fellow, presented and highlighted the most common definition of discrimination and the reasons behind discriminatory practices.
To refresh knowledge on UN Cares Ten Minimum Standards for HIV/AIDS in the UN Offices, Ms. Joyce Sinaga from UNDP presented the underlying principals. She also conducted an interactive quiz for the staff members. In her presentation, Ms. Sinaga particularly emphasized the non-discriminative approach.
Mr. Tolhas, an officer from ILO, was also present during the event and shared the challenges that he faced as a person with visual impairment He provided comments and input for the UNDSS mandatory online security training,which is principally based on graphic content like images and videos. These forms of information are not readily accessible for a person with visual impairment. In the future, he expects that the UN Agencies will improve their level of inclusiveness.
This is the first UN Cares learning session and the next session will focus on HIV and AIDS and will take place in Menara Thamrin on 29 – 30 April 2015.
For more information about this initiative, please contact:
Ms. Ailsa Amila, Programme Assistant for Social and Human Sciences, UNESCO (a.amila@unesco.org)
Ms. Grace Halim, National Programme Officer for HIV/AIDS, ILO (grace@ilo.org)
Source: UNESCO office in Jakarta