Human Rights Education and Public Policy in the United States: Mapping the Road Ahead

Abstract

In the last fifteen years there has been a worldwide explosion of interest in Human Rights Education (HRE), an area of education that can be defined, very basically, as "all learning that develops the knowledge, skills, and values of human rights." 1 Most HRE is based on the three seminal documents that collectively are known as the International Bill of Human Rights: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and its optional Protocol, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). 2 Some HRE materials focus on other international declarations, such as the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child. 3