NHRC signs pact with IGNOU to run rights awareness programme for police personnel

New Delhi, Dec.30 (ANI): The National Human Rights Commission and the Indira Gandhi National Open University today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly develop and conduct three types of courses on human rights awareness for police personnel at cutting edge level.

This will include basic course for Constables/Sub-Inspectors, advance course for middle level police officers and trainers' training course. The courses will be available through distance learning and internet aided online mode.

Secretary General, NHRC, A.K. Jain and Vice-Chancellor, IGNOU, V.N. Rajasekharan Pilllai signed the MoU at Faridkot House, New Delhi in the presence of NHRC Acting Chairperson, Mr. Justice G.P. Mathur and Member, Mr. P.C. Sharma.

To begin with a basic course of one week duration will be developed and conducted. This will broadly cover introduction to human rights, protection of human rights, police and human rights, custodial justice, best human rights compliant practises in policing and case studies.

The development of course curriculum, design, contents, delivery and review mechanism will be done by IGNOU in consultation and with the concurrence of NHRC. IGNOU will hold the tests/examination and award the necessary certificates to the successful participants. Arrangements for launching the portal, providing free online access to and downloads of the course material to all participants free of charge will be looked after by IGNOU.

NHRC will provide the material available with it to IGNOU to develop course contents and also bear cost for preparing printed, audio or video copies of the course material. The cost involved in running a training programme will also be borne by NHRC. The places for conducting the training programmes will be selected jointly by NHRC and IGNOU.

There will be one or two days counselling sessions at the end of each basic course for clarifications and explaining the issues. The counselling sessions can be either in class room or through web conferencing. The counsellors shall be arranged by IGNOU.

The MoU will remain effective for a period of two years w.e.f. the 30th December, 2009 and it can be extended both in terms of its scope and duration by mutual agreement. (ANI)