7 The Emergent Right to Human Rights Education in GCC States

Abstract

Human rights education and training (HRE) has been gaining greater momentum since the 1990s, emerging as a human right and setting the framework for relevant state obligations through hard law and soft law instruments. As such, it has been clearly articulated in the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (2011). In the GCC, where the project of modernizing education set off only in the 1950s, states have only recently started engaging with international human rights law in a more meaningful fashion. In this context, the development of human rights education has been facing a number of challenges. The paper explores the emergence of the right to human rights education in the GCC, outlining its origins and meaning in international human rights law. It also studies the implementation of the right in the six GCC states, examining their HRE obligations, as identified and articulated by treaty-based and Charter-based bodies through the monitoring process. To conclude, the paper argues that HRE requires greater engagement in the Gulf, not only as an international obligation, but, most importantly, as a reflection of a necessary transformation in the educational and human rights culture in the region, in line with a more sustainable, post-oil outlook.