The Dominant Discourse of Human Rights Education: A Critique

Abstract

Human rights education (HRE) is commonly viewed as imparting knowledge of human rights. This is problematic, because both human rights and education are multifaceted and the way that human rights are conceptualized will determine the types of educational practice and processes engaged in as a result. Using critical discourse analysis, this article unpicks the historical formation of human rights education, exploring how it has evolved and come to prominence; it examines the way that power relations shape the conceptions and practices of educators, which fail to capture diversity and complexity of knowledge. It shows how a dominant discourse of human rights education has been controlled through the global human rights framework and how this shapes a human rights education practice concerned with finding methods which make global human rights principles relevant and resonant in different communities. This is problematic because it ignores the way that power shapes and controls the formation of human rights education discourse and how practitioners and educators respond to that. Given this, the conclusion suggests how we should rethink human rights education discourse.