The Future of Human Rights Education

Please join us for a two day webinar workshop hosted by the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex.

The field of human rights education is wide and is conducted in a range of different settings, formal and informal, at many different levels. All human rights educators and students of human rights have an interest in human rights education. The critical importance of human rights education as a conduit for human rights and in securing global peace was first recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

The World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993), reaffirmed obligations on states to provide education that strengthens human rights and fundamental freedoms, and emphasised the importance of human rights education programmes in promoting tolerance and friendly relations between states, as well as racial and religious groups. Indeed, the UN Decade on Human Rights Education from 1995 to 2004, and an associated UN resolution stipulated that human rights education involves more than just the transmission of information, but is a lifelong process by which people ‘learn respect for the dignity of others and the means and methods of ensuring that respect in all societies.’

Several other initiatives for human rights education followed, such as the establishment of the World Programme for Human Rights Education in 2005 (2005-ongoing), culminating in the adoption of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training in 2011.

The Human Rights Centre’s Future of Human Rights Education event gives educators, students, and activists a unique opportunity to reflect on the meaning of human rights education. The first panel of the Future of Human Rights Education event will feature the Human Rights Centre Clinic and the Digital Verification Unit, where through social justice projects students develop their professionalism for human rights advocacy and work in the field.

An underexplored element of human rights education, ‘education through human rights, which includes learning and teaching in a way that respects the rights of both educators and learners,’ will be discussed in the second panel led by the UNESCO Chair in Human Rights in Higher Education, Felisa Tibbitts. This panel will raise the question of how human rights educators incorporate human rights principles and values, such as equality and non-discrimination into the classroom? How do asymmetries of power in human rights learning environments affect participation? The panel will examine human rights education as a pedagogy that can build more inclusive and peaceful societies.

The final panel takes feedback from Essex alumni who are established human rights practitioners. It is important to note changes both in the human rights employment landscape and the requisite skillsets required of graduates – changes that may have commenced before 2020, but have been expedited by the coronavirus pandemic. Students and educators alike will be keen to know what is on the horizon for human rights education and how can we be best equipped to defend human rights into the future? How can human rights education contribute to a politics of hope into the 21^st century?