Free2choose Tunis-Berlin
This initiative brought together young people who will continue to serve as peer educators, multipliers, and youth leaders in future years. These individuals, ten from Tunisia and ten from Germany, participated in a 6-day seminar in Berlin and Tunis to reflect on fundamental human rights in their societies and how they are incorporated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
The participants, chosen to represent the full range of cultural, religious, political, socioeconomic, and sexual orientation and gender identity elements in both societies, actively engaged in discussions on how the UDHR is rooted in history and how this declaration and the conventions that followed it impact their lives and their communities.
The partnership between the Anne Frank House (Amsterdam), the Anne Frank Zentrum (Berlin), and Ness el Fen (Tunis) helped the partners and participants foster the culture of democracy in our societies.
Free2choose and Free2choose-Create
With the help of professional human rights educators and professional filmmakers, the participants transformed some of the more abstract concepts of these conventions into short video clips. The films deal with concrete cases from their own communities where fundamental human rights may clash with the democratic principles and practices that underpin democratic societies. In the last part of the seminar, the participants worked on strategies to integrate the clips they made into their community work. This led to multiple implementation plans per country, where participants teamed up in pairs of two to organise three debates. By the end of 2014, 30 Free2choose debates had taken place throughout Germany and Tunisia.
The videos that were created dealt with various questions. For example, whether the media should give a voice to extremists, whether newspapers should be allowed to publish derogatory comments about refugees, and finally, whether it should be forbidden to burn flags. These clips can be seen on the Free2choose-Create YouTube channel.
Contact
For more information on the activities organised in Tunisia, please contact the Anne Frank House Project coördinator.
