Human rights protection is a team work | Anna Gevorgyan | TEDxYouth@Sisian
Translator: Emma Dovlatyan Reviewer: Ellen Maloney Armenian writer Vardges Petrosyan said, “Nobody taught us the most important things at school”. In fact it is true. Nobody taught us how to fight for our rights, to appreciate them, and be different. Instead, we learned maths, but we could have learned it later. They let us learn the hard stuff about life by ourselves., or as we usually say, by getting hurt, after which, usually we have scars in our soul. Very often, we notice cruel behavior or aggression at schools, where a human’s personality is being formed. Here are some examples told by schoolchildren about this issue: "During the military training lesson, the teacher hits children with a ruler, and make them run up and down. Some children don’t even take their hats off to escape. Once, the teacher kept hitting one of the kids with a wooden ruler until the ruler was broken." Unfortunately, these kinds of things are everywhere now, but I didn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes: It was an ordinary day, when after classes, I just took my bag. I was going to leave the school, but I heard loud voices. It seemed like some people were fighting, I decided to find out what had happened. I was trying to find out where the screaming was coming from. To my surprise, it was the headteacher's room. If the door wasn’t half open, I wouldn’t know what really happened there. There was my classmate. His family was poor, and he was off a lot because he was working. The headteacher was beating him, not just hitting but beating. His rights were violated, but he didn’t think of protecting himself. I thought that the reason for him to behave like this is because he doesn’t know his rights. I tried to explain everything to him but my efforts were useless. He still didn’t stand up for his rights. I decided to solve this problem all by myself. I tried to speak with the headteacher, I even argued with him, but nothing came out of it. I started to apply to the people who are responsible for these kinds of things. All the details were discussed and the cruel headteacher had to pay monetary compensation. It is really good when there are people who can save us in such situations. But when there aren’t such people, we must stand up for ourselves and others like us, we must fight against injustice which is everywhere in life. I learnt to fight for myself and for my friends. And I didn’t learn it at school. I'm sure most of you want to know where you can learn these skills. About two years ago, I became a member of the youth group of a charity organization. The result was more impressive than I expected. And I called that period of my life “period of changes." Everything started to change in my life. My mentality, way of thinking, and problem solving methods. I realized that taking care of our environment is my responsibility too. But my family didn’t share my opinion at first. Now I remember all that smiling. I am happy that I could change, not only me, but my family. I am proud that I can advise my friends on what to do, how best to protect their rights. I think knowing our rights and defending them are under whatever conditions are available is important. A person who is volunteering, of course, learns some skills that we don’t usually study at school. Only during such practices do we realize that not only our problems, but also other’ people's problems should be solved. So let’s do at least the minimum, something positive for someone and we’ll see how our own life will change.