A House with Two Rooms - The Advocates for Human Rights

should provide for effective individual complaint mechanisms to ensure enforcement of
those measures.
• The Government of Liberia should ensure that indigenous African traditional knowledge
is a component of the national educational policy. The Liberian national educational policy
should provide for inclusion of local knowledge and practices into the framework of the
formal education system, 365 in compliance with international human rights standards.
• The Government of Liberia should ensure that educational materials, teacher recruitment
and training, and curricular development all promote intercultural education. 366
• The Government of Liberia must ensure that persons belonging to minorities have adequate
opportunities to gain knowledge of the society as a whole, have the right to all levels and
forms of education of the State without discrimination, and have access, when possible, to an
education in their own culture and provided in their own language. 367
Protection of Minorities: Land & Cultural Rights
• The Government of Liberia should ensure that commercial and development initiatives
conduct pre-implementation assessments of proposed projects’ impact on traditional land use
patterns and on marginalization of local communities. Where assessments indicate that there
would be a negative impact, project redesign should be undertaken in consultation with local
communities.
• The Government of Liberia should develop a national policy on protection of cultural rights,
including measures detailing how Liberia will provide resources, and take other affirmative
action to guarantee the exercise of cultural rights. 368
Potential Implementation Strategy: Using a Local-Knowledge Approach
Villages in both Guatemala and Bolivia take a local-knowledge approach in order to make learning
more accessible and holistic. In a Guatemalan village, Save the Children’s Early Childhood Development
project created lessons through the lenses of Mayan folklore, developing children’s cognitive abilities,
communication, and problem solving skills. 369 This encouraged respect for Mayan values, as well as for
nature and family. Women in Bolivia gain literacy skills in their indigenous language as they read about
relevant health issues. 370
Protection of Minorities: Linguistic Rights
• The Government of Liberia should take measures wherever possible to ensure that persons
belonging to minorities have “adequate opportunities to learn their mother tongue or to have
instruction in their mother tongue.” 371
467
Chapter Fourteen