scholarly journals By addressing life trajectories and political violence, human rights education can overcome radicalizing narratives

Author(s):  
Frank Ubachs

As the needs and interests of young people are shifting under the influence of demographics and other social developments, 'new stories' have started to attract many that undermine the human rights narrative and nurture radical attitudes. This has consequences for human rights education (HRE). As competing narratives have gained a foothold in major target audiences of HRE, the latter has to realize it is facing an uphill battle. The evidence suggests that HRE can no longer rely on the mere transfer of knowledge and that the 'story of human rights' needs to be told in completely new ways. If HRE aims to change attitudes to be more inclusive and respectful, and to promote a struggle for justice, it has to make its story heard and win people over. Here HRE faces a central dilemma: how to promote fundamental freedoms while including the freedom not to subscribe to these same values? Instead of conceptual persuasion, emphasis should be put more on the affect, and relate to people's lived experiences. Crucially, HRE has to be prepared to make room for the discussion of the paradoxes of political violence. By making clear that it has vital relevance for its audience and can better answer the question of what someone should meaningfully do in life, HRE can change the narrative.

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 04-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Lundy ◽  
Gabriela Martínez Sainz

Human Rights Education (HRE) emphasises the significance of children learning about, through and for human rights through their lived experiences. Such experiential learning, however, is often limited to instances of enjoyment of rights and disregards experiences of injustice, exclusion or discrimination.  By neglecting the ‘negative’ experiences, including breaches of their human rights, HRE fails in one of its fundamental aims: empowering individuals to exercise their rights and to respect and uphold the rights of others.  Drawing on a range of legal sources, this article identifies a number of violations of the human rights of children in schools, categorised under five themes: access to school; the curriculum; testing and assessment; discipline; and respect for children’s views. It argues that for HRE to achieve its core purpose, it must enable children to identify and challenge breaches of rights in school and elsewhere. To do so, knowledge of law, both domestic and international, has a fundamental role to play.


Author(s):  
Alison E.C Struthers

This article brings together two distinct but interrelated fields: human rights education (HRE) and safeguarding. It endeavours to show that the former can be beneficial for the efficacy of the latter. By extending an argument put forward recently that for HRE to be effective it must enable children to recognise and respond to lived human rights injustices, the article places this important issue within the existing framework and processes associated with safeguarding young people in formal education. It attempts to both elucidate and consolidate the connection between HRE and safeguarding, arguing that if HRE were to become an integral part of safeguarding training and delivery, children may be better equipped to recognise and speak up about violations of their human rights, rather than relying on a passive system of adult observation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 104 ◽  
pp. 55-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marissa A. Gutiérrez-Vicario

“….What makes somebody an American is not just blood or birth, but allegiance to our founding principles and the faith in the idea that anyone from anywhere can write the next great chapter of our story.”-U.S. President Barack Obama, January 2013 I am most interested in exploring the idea of the construction of global citizenship and engagement around human rights education of young immigrant youth through the arts, particularly public art in the form of muralism. I will use some of the work of Art and Resistance Through Education (ARTE), an organization that engages young people around human rights through the arts, as a case study. Some questions that may be explored include:How can educators break down unfamiliar human rights jargon and demonstrate the relevance of human rights on both a local and global level to young immigrant youth?  How can young people be galvanized into exploring the human rights of their home countries and the countries they have immigrated to, utilizing the arts?How can art be used to cultivate global understanding and human rights education among young people, most specifically through public art?In efforts for communities to construct more democratic public spaces, one often finds that these spaces manifest themselves as murals or similar forms of public art. What are more creative ways of building a more democratic form of community art? What are more creative ways for young immigrant youth to develop a sense of belonging through the arts?  Overall, this proposal seeks to explore the intersection between public art, human rights education/global competency, and immigrant youth empowerment. The proposal will discuss the involvement of immigrant youth, predominately from Latin America, in various art projects, as they explore their own sense of identity and belonging in New York City. 


Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Duncan Light ◽  
Remus Creţan ◽  
Andreea-Mihaela Dunca

Memorial museums are frequently established within transitional justice projects intended to reckon with recent political violence. They play an important role in enabling young people to understand and remember a period of human rights abuses of which they have no direct experience. This paper examines the impact of a memorial museum in Romania which interprets the human rights abuses of the communist period (1947–1989). It uses focus groups with 61 young adults and compares the responses of visitors and non-visitors to assess the impact of the museum on views about the communist past, as well as the role of the museum within post-communist transitional justice. The museum had a limited impact on changing overall perceptions of the communist era but visiting did stimulate reflection on the differences between past and present, and the importance of long-term remembrance; however, these young people were largely skeptical about the museum’s role within broader processes of transitional justice. The paper concludes that it is important to recognize the limits of what memorial museums can achieve, since young people form a range of intergenerational memories about the recent past which a museum is not always able to change.


2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Kopeliovich ◽  
Judy Kuriansky

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-24
Author(s):  
Yvonne Vissing

This article suggests comprehensive implementation of child and human rights education is a strategy to reduce risk and increase benefits to children, yet there are barriers to its implementation. This article explores the current condition of human rights education (HRE) and child rights education (CRE) in the United States. It compares it to CRE implementation benefits globally, particularly in Wales. Exploratory pilot studies indicate that the way rights education is structured in the US does not allow young people to benefit from its potential capacity. Students lack of rights knowledge is explored in this article. Teachers identify obstacles to rights implementation in schools. Recommendations on how to improve HRE are provided.


2019 ◽  
Vol 02 (01) ◽  
pp. 39-61
Author(s):  
Mehek Naeem ◽  
Fariha Gul ◽  
Zaheer Asghar ◽  
Naeem Zafar ◽  

As per international obligations, Human Rights Education (HRE) should be imparted to all. In Pakistan, teacher training institutes and Bachelors in Education (BEd) programs provide a platform for promoting and ensuring the teaching of human rights to prospective teachers. Hence, the purpose of this study was to assess the extent of the transfer of knowledge about human rights to pre-service teachers during their BEd courses. A case study approach was used in qualitative paradigm to study the BEd programs of three education universities in Lahore, Pakistan. The study used document analysis and survey with pre-service teachers for the collection of data. Content analysis was used to analyze the scheme of studies given by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan and the subsequent curricula used by the universities under study. A survey was conducted with 150 pre-service teachers in order to determine their overall knowledge, attitudes and practices as prospective teachers towards the teaching of human rights. The results revealed that an overall positive attitude towards teaching and learning of HRE was found among the respondents of the study. However, no specific module, course or topics in a course focused on HRE in the curricula. The study reflects the need of integration of HRE in teacher training curriculum and recommends that HRE should be a mandatory part of teacher education curricula.


2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alain Clémence ◽  
Thierry Devos ◽  
Willem Doise

Social representations of human rights violations were investigated in a questionnaire study conducted in five countries (Costa Rica, France, Italy, Romania, and Switzerland) (N = 1239 young people). We were able to show that respondents organize their understanding of human rights violations in similar ways across nations. At the same time, systematic variations characterized opinions about human rights violations, and the structure of these variations was similar across national contexts. Differences in definitions of human rights violations were identified by a cluster analysis. A broader definition was related to critical attitudes toward governmental and institutional abuses of power, whereas a more restricted definition was rooted in a fatalistic conception of social reality, approval of social regulations, and greater tolerance for institutional infringements of privacy. An atypical definition was anchored either in a strong rejection of social regulations or in a strong condemnation of immoral individual actions linked with a high tolerance for governmental interference. These findings support the idea that contrasting definitions of human rights coexist and that these definitions are underpinned by a set of beliefs regarding the relationships between individuals and institutions.


2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Saaltink ◽  
Frances A. Owen ◽  
Donato Tarulli ◽  
Christine Y. Tardif-Williams

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