Program Learning Outcomes
The Human Rights and Social Justice programme has been a revelatory process to me, as it has enabled me to expand and substantiate my field experience under the complex paradigm of theory and critical analysis. As an activist with a high degree of passion for social justice and a firm believer in advocacy strength, I discovered that the programme was a refreshing ground. It has also provided me with intellectual frameworks to comprehend the intricacies of social problems more effectively. It has strengthened my desire to bring about a positive change in the world. I have been involved in grassroots mobilization of voices on matters regarding human rights, more so in training the youths on leadership, advocacy and peacebuilding. This course has made me take my work up to date more seriously.
My primary program learning outcomes include the following:
- Demonstrate knowledge, through experiential learning, of key human rights and social justice issues locally, nationally, and/or globally.
As a Nigerian arriving in Canada, what unfolded during my academic journey was both a personal awakening and an education in the deeply embedded, often hidden injustices of settler colonialism, particularly the mistreatment and erasure of Indigenous peoples. My social justice issue understanding was primarily influenced by my experience before coming to Canada; issues of homelessness, access to housing, and the struggle of health care, issues of women’s rights and unemployment, and it did not feel the same, depending on local context and past legacies. The perception of Canada in the world today can be described as a multicultural, equal society that has solid legal foundations and a high standard of living. However, in those situations, even there, critical gaps do exist, and some groups are left behind, and their realities are not taken into account.
After coming to the Canadian academic and social life, I soon realized the continuous challenges many Canadians are going through: trouble accessing affordable housing, lapses in healthcare systems, and challenges in getting decent jobs. These are known grounds, and yet the processes of exclusion and marginalization, institutional racism, red tape, and budgetary reductions appear in the unique ways of the Canadian tale. Indeed, each nation possesses its history.
However, the most shocking thing of all was the discovery that Indigenous people do exist in Canada, and their histories have been systematically refuted or swept under the carpet by dominant histories. In Nigeria, the term indigenous is usually used to denote the people of certain ethnic categories based on both land, languages, dialect and tradition, such as the indigenes of a given state or tribe, and most of the time they are the majority. However, in the Canadian context, Indigenous peoples refer to a marginalized group where their historical experiences and rights have been consistently suppressed despite having their territories, traditions and destinies determined by the practice of settler colonialism.
The initial experience of the legacy of residential schools was extremely shocking. It was a sobering experience to visit a former residential school site and see the names of institutions and realize that many children could have been buried and forgotten literally. This was more than any theoretical discourse or media coverage that challenges the names and places of loss, making the cruelty of forced assimilation that was so excruciatingly real, compared to other Nations where the British colonized, the policy of assimilation was not so dramatic.
It was an eye-opener to learn how the Canadian government, via the Indian Act, the assimilation policy and the formation of Indian Bands, worked systematically to destroy the identities of the aboriginal people, their autonomy and their land rights. The Indian Act had a coercive hold over the status of the Indians, over their rule, and over their resources, and the residential school aimed at killing the Indian in the child, not only by destroying the language and culture of the Indians, but also by bringing in a generational trauma. It is disconcerting to learn about these injustices; it is life-changing to be exposed to their physical manifestations in experiential learning.
My overall experience in the halls of the former residential school, reading the plaques and memorials, or listening to the stories of the survivors, complexified and enriched my academic knowledge with empathy. What I have learned to realize about justice in Canada is that it will need more than policy changes or funding; it will require telling the truth, reconciling, and breaking down colonial institutions, which still influence everyday life. This experience has made me question what it takes to exercise solidarity, justice, and human rights advocacy at home and in a foreign country. Homelessness and unemployment are just some of the Canadian issues that cannot be separated and tied to the historical contexts of land dispossession and continuing marginalization of the Indigenous peoples. The interconnectedness of the social justice problems in any environment implies that global models are not enough: local histories and experiences have the most tremendous impact in imagining a significant transformation.
To a Nigerian who has been used to perceiving indigeneity as usual, the Canadian reality redefines the notions of minority, majority, history, and belonging. These teachings have contributed to my devotion to research, activism, and discussion based on humility, learning, and reflexivity. This experiential learning has helped me to question not only social policies, but also the narratives that societies have about themselves and to critique those narratives when they facilitate erasure, exclusion or injustice.
2. Demonstrate advanced knowledge of and competence in the application of research methods and techniques.
This course period was also a time that I was a research assistant to Dr Rochelle on a research topic – the relationship between animal abuse and intimate partner violence (IPV) among adults in Canada. This experience enabled me to apply the knowledge of Problem-Solving in the field to studying the issue of women’s human rights, as taught by Wilson Bell and Sarah Moritz. It was not only paid, but also an academic activity that allowed me to practice what I was studying in school. It offered the opportunity to pursue applied issues by using qualitative and mixed-methods research approaches to understand the complex interdependencies among IPV and social determinants of well-being.
Being raised in an environment where domestic and intimate violence is rampant on the rise, and the culture of silence prevails. Women are made to keep the secret of domestic violence, and some of them even lose their lives, simply to preserve the relationship they are in, as well as the reputation of the family. My concept of violence was based on shame, disgrace and fear of being labelled, not only to women but also to men. However, the deeper I became engaged in the methodologies applied in the research, including the choice of respondents, consideration of ethical aspects, organization of qualitative data, and discussion of themes, the more I understood that IPV could take many different forms, not just physical violence. The paper has revealed that both the psychological, relational, and structural damages are typical of the experiences of the victims and, thus, one must be sensitive to the apparent symptoms as well as the latent ones of the trauma. This experience taught me how to conduct research better, and several methods are as follows:
- Understanding Ethics, Consent, and Privacy in a Sensitive Case.
- Analysis application: the use of coding to get additional meanings in the narrations of the participants.
- Epistemic cross-pollination: connecting our findings with human rights, social injustice, and emerging research on animal-assisted help.
- Demonstrate a critical awareness and understanding of the past and present debates that have shaped human rights and social justice issues.
As a human rights and social justice scholar, it is essential to develop a critical consciousness of the historical and current discussions that have shaped these disciplines, to learn from their successes and setbacks. The history of human rights is an intricate process that is characterised by several, sometimes competing accounts that represent the larger societal, political and cultural processes throughout history. Human rights are anchored in the old ideas but constantly changing, being discussed in terms of Enlightenment theory, international law after World War II, or the grassroots movements against the injustices of today.
The high point for me in human rights discourse is historically the aftermath of World War II, in which the terrible atrocities of the Holocaust and World War II confirmed the urgent necessity of universal protection. This brought the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and the declaration stipulated the fundamental rights, including the right to life, freedom of speech, and equality before the law. A critical awareness, however, shows that these rights were not free to contest or even universally accepted. The history of settler colonialism, racial segregation and gender discrimination shows that these rights have frequently been withheld from the Indigenous people, racial minorities, people of colour and women, which therefore continues a process of structural inequalities despite laws on paper.
This marginalisation has sparked ongoing debates, such as those concerning racial justice. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States during the 1950s-1960s, led by figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., fought against the legalised form of segregation and established equality as a human right. However, the current issues of systemic racism, police brutality and economic inequalities show that this progress has not been entirely achieved, which has given rise to modern movements like Black Lives Matter. Likewise, the suffrage movement brought the voting rights of several women, yet internal conflicts and racial exclusions among the activists show the intricacies of the social justice movement and the necessity of the intersectional approach.
The controversial issues around human rights are also highlighting the indigenous rights debates. The indigenous people all over the world have struggled to establish representation of their sovereignty, land rights and cultural survival against the settler colonial states who forced legal and political structures that were foreign to the Indigenous governance. This strain places the mainstream conceptualisation of human rights in a straining situation to adapt collective rights and historical amnesty, beyond individualistic conceptualisations of rights as inherited in Western liberal conceptions.
The human rights discourse has also been completely restructured by gender and sexual rights movements, which have challenged the ideas of heteronormativity, violence against women, and structural discrimination against gender identity and sexual orientation. These movements propose the inclusion of rights protection to bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, and freedom from gender-based violence, which in turn confronts conventional legal frameworks and cultural practices.
Overall, a critical interpretation of human rights and social justice means appreciating their historical backgrounds and limitations as well as the ambiguity of their meaning. It involves knowledge that these notions are not fixed but are constantly being redefined with activism, research, and political warfare. Through the arguments that happened in the past and current debates on the abolition of the slave trade to anti-apartheid in South Africa and minor issues such as EndSARS in Nigeria and climate justice, students like me gain a better understanding of how rights are both aspirational and practical and tense and contradictory in practice. This is the critical lens that students need in order to participate critically in the ongoing struggle to broaden, enforce, and democratize rights in an uneven globalising world.