Message by Mike Hayes, GC Asia-Pacific Director, for the first year of the UNTL Human Rights Centre

On the first year anniversary of the opening of the UNTL Human Rights Centre, we from the Global Campus Asia Pacific Regional Master Programme (APMA) would like to send our special thanks to the all those dedicated people working on this project. There has been a lot of labour involved in setting up this Centre and supporting it, including the students who have taken a great interest, the lectures at National University of Timor-Leste (UNTL) engaging with the education of human rights, the university administrators supporting these ideas, and the dedicated staff from the Global Campus who have built up the Centre over this time.

We look forward to continuing this cooperation and seeing the Centre, and its supporters from UNTL, build strong ties with the APMA Programme and universities from the region. Remarkable foundations have been built over a short time, such as the development of a bachelor’s course and the training of staff and lecturers. These kinds of developments would normally take quite some time in other countries, but they have been done effectively and quickly at UNTL. This is a credit to all involved. It also demonstrates that there is a deeply rooted interest in human rights and democracy in this country. This interest is something the Human Rights Centre, and the broader network it is part of, will continue to contribute to.

Dr. Michael George Hayes, Director of the GC Asia-Pacific at the Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies, Mahidol University (Thailand)

Find out more about this project here: www.gchumanrights.org/hrc-untl