Philippe Tunamsifu Shirambere
The freedom of speech or the freedom of expression, and what John Milton called liberty to argue freely according to conscience, is recognized as human right. The freedom of speech as human right has been provided and protected in the international, regional and internal legal instruments of Human Rights. Among those instruments of Human Rights, I can take the example of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10 December 1948. It provides the freedom of speech as a right under article 19 “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.
Indeed, the University for Peace was established by the resolution 35/55 of 5 December 1980 adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. The University for Peace has the mission "to provide humanity with an international institution of higher education for peace and with the aim of promoting among all human beings the spirit of understanding, tolerance and peaceful coexistence, to stimulate cooperation among peoples and to help lessen obstacles and threats to world peace and progress, in keeping with the noble aspirations proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations".
During the regular class time, Professor and instructor give space for students to interact and to share their life experience. Unfortunately, it seems like some students don’t like people to debate on wrongful act of their countries of origin. Sometimes, after the course, some bad message are sending like “…if you feel it is your only way to learn, I can’t stop you and I don’t even have a right to that so, but my feeling is that you will be opening a conflict door which you will not probably be able to re-shut at your own”.
However, the freedom of speech can be limited because it can causes offense. But, there are some of the issues that are locally and internationally known and documented in books and online that we don’t need to hide. To come to a conclusion, I have the feeling that the freedom of speech is guaranteed but people haven’t the same understanding. In an academic environment in which we learn from each other; the freedom of expression has to be encouraged.
