Forward
The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, being established in 1996, could be named as the leader
in protecting, promoting and providing human rights education in Sri Lanka. In 2005 the HRCSL took
a significant step concerning Women’s Rights protection through initializing the “Policy Against Sexual
Harassment in the Work Place”.
Ensuring women’s rights has enormous socio-economic ramifications. Women’s rights including equality and non-discrimination are articulated and promoted in numerous international human rights
conventions, programmes of actions and policy frameworks. However, it could be said that gender is the
next basic factor in the construction of a person’s identity. It is also the strongest. It is the social/cultural
meaning and values given to sexual differences. In Sri Lanka the economic and social changes combined with the three-decade conflict and the natural disastrous situations have impacted negatively on
the life of the women and girl child.
This Training Guide will be initialized in the form of several modules and sessions conducted through
several training programmes. Namely : Module One -Knowledge Building -Concepts Relating to
Gender, Module Two – Rights, Module Three - Law, Legal Rights and Mechanisms, Module FourCapacity Building Making Rights. The main reason behind the execution of a training guide is to fill the
lacuna created and pragmatic issues faced in conducting training programmes relating to protection and
promotion of Women’s rights and gender issues. Thereby, the said guide will be acting as a manual to
the trainer guiding him/her through process.
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