It is time: Critical Human Rights Education in an age of counter-hegemonic distrust

Abstract

Propelled by the global dominance of human rights discourse and the well-established international consensus on its importance, Human Rights Education (HRE) has proliferated from the mid-1990s onwards. Instead of advancing criticality as a central purpose of education, HRE, as co-constructed within the agencies of the United Nations, became the uncritical legitimating arm of human rights universals. Thus, it has ultimately contributed to the counter-hegemonic distrust in human rights that we experience today. Popular and dominant formulations of HRE, I argue, lack the conceptual and practical resources to be transformative, let alone emancipatory. Steering my reasoning through the historical development of HRE, I contend that the time for Critical Human Rights Education has arrived.