The value of law in human rights education scholarship: A call for legal engagement

The right to education is recognised in international human rights law, underpinned by guidance for human rights education to assure the goals of the UN Charter. While this vision for human rights education has been around since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, recent developments at UN level have galvanised interdisciplinary scholarship, drawing pedagogical frameworks from education studies, sociology, development studies, psychology, and philosophy into the teaching of international human rights law generally situated within law schools in higher education. Yet scholarship on the pedagogy of human rights education is in its infancy. Recent trends point to the transformative potential of utilising radical and critical pedagogies in furtherance of human rights education. Adding to the toolkit, this article presents a conceptually oriented framework for application to human rights educational practice. It builds on critical human rights education scholarship, interrogating how human rights education can tackle structural injustice, elucidating ways to infuse classroom learning with horizontal human rights principles, and examining the psychosocial factors in this kind of learning. The application of critical pedagogies to human rights education will be of interest to human rights educators and students of human rights everywhere.

The UN Decade for Human Rights Education began in 1995, and since that time many nations have reported activities and programs in line with the decade (United Nations 1998; UNHCHR 2005). While 1995 was a pivotal year in the history of human rights education, the curricular movement neither began nor ended with the UN Decade. Human rights education has been developing for several decades, and efforts to introduce human rights into formal school curricula have included diverse and ongoing activities by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and dedicated individuals throughout the world. Beyond advocating for human rights education in schools, the actors involved in promoting human rights education also have been involved in creating and developing a curricular movement. This article builds on previous comparative education research by analyzing the current discourse surrounding this emerging education model— human rights education. The first section provides a brief history of human rights education in formal education. The second section reviews research on international reforms, emphasizing analyses of processes in global diffusion and variation at national or local levels. Closely related, the third section discusses linkages and relational and associational processes that spread ideas and construct new models such as human rights education. The fourth section focuses on the current state of human rights education, ex-

The 1990s was the era of human rights awareness, democratic transitions, and growing involvement of international organizations and the nongovernmental sector in human rights education (HRE). The UN Decade for HRE from 1995–2004 was not only born out of the initiatives and pressures of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) but it also actively triggered many new private initiatives and commitments by governments to increase HRE. New information technologies, globalization, and the rise of civil society paved the way for new strategies and methods to disseminate the idea of human rights worldwide. With this in mind, two aspects will be discussed in this article. First, how HRE can become an integral part of all formal education systems. In this respect I will discuss the role of governments and state responsibility. Second, there were shifts and developments that made HRE an adaptable and coherent education concept oriented towards future challenges such as climate changes or migration. Coherent international concepts and a clear definition of HRE should help avoid the misuse of education in human rights for political or ideological reasons.

Background/Context Human rights education has proliferated in the past four decades and can be found in policy discussions, textbook reforms, and grassroots initiatives across the globe. This article specifically explores the role of creativity and imagination in human rights education (HRE) by focusing on a case study of one non-governmental (NGO) organization's program operating across India. Purpose/Objective This article argues that human rights education can and should be creative and innovative in its approaches to ensure access and sustainability of programs that seek to transform the learning experiences of marginalized students. Evidence from India contributes to the discussion of HRE by presenting teachers’ and students’ experiences with one particular human rights education program in India that incorporates an array of strategies to secure support and contextually-relevant curricula and pedagogy for poor children. Research questions that guided the larger study from which data are presented here included (a) How have differentiated motivations for, conceptualizations of, and initiatives towards HRE operated at the levels of policy, curriculum and pedagogy, and practice in India? (b) What impact has HRE had on Indian teachers and youth from diverse backgrounds who have participated in one NGO program? Research Design The larger study from which the data are drawn is a vertical case study utilizing primarily qualitative methods. Participants in the larger study included 118 human rights education teachers, 625 students, 80 staff and policy makers of human rights education, and 8 parents. Observations of teacher trainings included hundreds more participants. The majority of student respondents came from ‘tribal’ (indigenous) or Dalit (previously called “untouchable”) communities, both comprising the most marginalized sections of Indian society. Design and Methods This study was primarily qualitative and was carried out from August 2008 to August 2010 (13 months of fieldwork during that period). Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 118 teachers, 25 students, 8 parents, and 80 staff and officials of human rights education in India. 59 focus groups were carried out with an additional 600 students. Observations were also carried out of teacher trainings in human rights and human rights camps for students. Follow up data were collected on subsequent, but shorter, field visits from 2011-2013. Conclusions/Recommendations The study found the following: (a) Human rights education that is creative, contextualized, and engaging offers a meaningful opportunity for educators, families and students to critique and interrogate social inequalities. (b) Non-governmental organizations can provide a unique perspective on human rights education by drawing on diverse creative approaches if they are able to engage effectively with students, communities, educators and schools. (c) Research on human rights education must attend to how local communities, activists, artists and educators make meaning of normative frameworks (like human rights) in order to understand how creativity, imagination and innovation are engaged and ‘indigenized’ in productive and transformative ways. Further attention to creativity and imagination in human rights education can illuminate how HRE influences—and is mediated by—existing community realities and societal structures. I started learning about human rights in class six. I first thought they are giving us more of a burden with yet another subject and more books. But the teachers were so different after they started teaching human rights: human rights teachers talk nicely to us, they don't scold and beat us. They encouraged us to try new things and cultivate different talents like dance, poetry, drama, singing, and everything. Other subject teachers would just teach their subjects and they beat us also. They put the pressure of other people on us. But the human rights teachers release us from that. Through this course, I started writing poems about women's rights and children's issues and my human rights teacher encouraged me to send it to the newspaper when I was in class eight. They liked it and even published it! I had never ever thought something like that would happen. My grandmother can't read–she is a sweeper in someone's home–but I showed it to her in the newspaper and she was so happy. I kept writing poems and made a collection of 125 of them. My teacher encouraged me to put them together in a book and she raised money from teachers and got the publisher to give us a discounted rate. They are putting all the proceeds of the book sales in a bank account under my name so that I can go to college. I can't imagine what my life would be if this human rights class would not have been there. When I grow up, I would like to do a lot more in the field of human rights. —Fatima, 16-year-old human rights student in India1

The position and the validity of the Declarations on Human Rights (1948) accepted by the United Nations (UN), and the subsequent declarations on Human Rights Education and Training (2010) are questioned by many scholars in their respective fields. These discourses manifest around the universality of human rights and its applications in human rights education suitable for global, contextual, diverse and particular societies. The proclamation of the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education (1995–2004) (Resolution, 49/184), the World Programme for Human Rights Education (2004/71), the reassessments of UN Declarations on Human Rights Education (March, 2011) and UNESCO publications on human rights education (2011), illustrate the need to infuse shared values into every sphere of society. However, scholars are questioning the ontology and epistemology of human rights as a universal declaration and as the only means for legitimising human rights education for its transformative competencies and to offer its shared values for a sustainably just society. The legitimacy of this ideal of a universality of human rights as a binding factor drawn from a Western liberal philosophy, is arbitrary and limited. These limitations of human rights expose the ideal of an interconnectedness between human rights and human rights education in multilayered and multicomplex social environments. Human rights literacies and its new languages on human rights is a progressing nexus between human rights and human rights education and offers an epistemology in understanding human rights in human rights education.

The current study analyses the behaviours of US state actors in engaging in international human social rights practices. In particular, through citation count analysis, we examine the citation patterns of US federal and state courts in utilising international human rights instruments, such as international human social rights treaties, in facilitating human rights-based education rights. The empirical findings indicate that US federal and state courts are not engaging the global judicial human rights networks in promoting human rights-based education rights as a type of universal human social right. Theoretical and empirical implications are presented in the concluding section.

Purpose– There has been a lack of human rights education for a long period since New China was founded. Human rights education appeared at the university level in the 1990s, and has developed quickly over the past decade in mainland China. The purpose of this paper is to argue that human rights education in mainland China has had its own characteristics and problems during its development, and intends to identify and solve its problems in order to achieve sustainability.Design/methodology/approach– First, this paper surveys the development of human rights education in mainland China. Second, it summarizes its characteristics and problems objectively, and then gives some ideas and suggestions for its future sustainable development.Findings– Human rights education in mainland China has seen great improvement, although it also has its own characteristics and has had problems during its development. The ideas about and approaches to human rights education development in mainland China should be adjusted. Ensuring and promoting the respect of human rights in society is the main goal of human rights education. Balanced development, independent development, the encouragement of and investment by the government and society in the subject and the high quantity and quality of available human rights teachers are the guarantees for a sustainable model of human rights education in mainland China.Originality/value– This paper studies the history and current situation of human rights education in mainland China, summarizing its characteristics and existing problems completely and objectively. This paper states that human rights education in mainland China should change its theories and its approaches to development.

South Africa’s higher education landscape mirrors its history of its relentlessly discriminatory past along racial, gender, social, political and class lines. Within this setting teacher education aims to cultivate its teaching and learning toward the fostering of moral persons who are caring towards the other and concerned with social justice and transformation. In this sense we explored the relationship between human rights education and human rights literacies and how these can be called upon to create one avenue to drive this agenda. In this chapter we use evidence-based findings to unpack the (im)possibilities for human rights literacies as revealed through student-teachers’ views of human rights education. As students’ views may reveal what and how they learned and what the curriculum offered them, we may unlock (im)possibilities for reviving human rights education and supporting human rights literacies through teacher education. We concentrated on the human rights education section in two surveys (S2013_RSA and S2015_RSA) to see how findings might shed light on future directions for teacher education to support human rights literacies, dynamically fluid, and that are continuously developing in response to the South African context. In response to critique against human rights education as stagnant, declarationist and as having lost its critical and transformative edge (Keet et al., South African Journal of Higher Education, 31, 79–95, 2017; Spreen and Monaghan, Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis, 2017; Keet, Human rights education or human rights in education: A conceptual analysis, 2007) we argue that for human rights literacies and human rights education to be supportive of one another, human rights education programmes in teacher education should regard human rights literacies as a disposition toward thinking and practising human rights that occupies the spaces that emerge when one transcends the division between what is legislation (written) and what is lived. For this reason, we recommend transformative pedagogies be included in teacher education programmes for human rights.

This study tried to empirically verify the relationship between adolescents' experience in human rights education and human rights abuse experiences such as hate discrimination. Human rights education among teenagers can have a positive effect not only on understanding the concept of human rights or improving human rights sensitivity, but also on recognizing and respecting differences from others through human rights education. While research on human rights education is centered on educational measures or effects that need to be improved, little research has been conducted on the effect of the results of education and the behavior of adolescents' human rights violations. Therefore, this study selected the second data of the “Children and Youth Human Rights Survey” conducted by the Korea Youth Policy Institute from 2018 to 2020, and used data from 9,017 in 2018, 9,240 in 2019, and 8,346 in 2020 for the final analysis. Descriptive statistical analysis, frequency analysis, cross-analysis, and logistic regression analysis were conducted year by year using the statistical program SPSS 28.0 ver. According to the study, the three-year human rights education experience exceeded 70% in 2018, while less than 50% in 2019 and 2020, but the results of the study showed that it was a positive (+) influence on the human rights violations of adolescents with human rights education experience. In other words, based on the research results, it is necessary to check the actual institutions and programs of youth human rights education based on the internalization of actual human rights education contents and operational methods to expect the effect of education. In particular, school violence is caused by mischief, and the beginning of the mischief can be caused by acts of human rights violations such as discrimination and hatred. Therefore, it is expected that human rights education that can contribute to preventing such acts of human rights violations will be used as basic data for the implementation of human rights education.

Human rights education is critiqued for being traditionalist and conceptually imprisoned. This view stems from the distrust in its ability to transform deeply rooted injustices and inequalities etched within South Africa’s society. There is therefore an outcry to reimagine human rights education. For this article it is important to understand how and why human rights education discourses in South Africa have come to be framed by some scholars in this way and to contemplate where the discourse might be heading in the future. We reviewed doctoral theses in the field of Education which claim to engage with and make contributions to human rights education research. We found that human rights education discourses have been (and are being) shaped in South Africa in terms of three distinct phases: inception, growth, and cynicism. It became evident from the findings that human rights education research is predominantly school-based and fundamentally descriptive and uncritical. To conclude, we reflect on these findings so as to put forward future considerations for human rights education research.

Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine and relating human rights violations, a heightened emphasis on human rights education is pivotal both inside and outside of Ukraine. Since teachers have an enormous influence on the young population and, consequently, on society in general, it is crucial that they are capable of fostering students’ human rights competencies. Therefore, human rights education is essential in teacher training, so prospective teachers can positively impact future generations. With this article, we aim to analyse the current state of human rights education both in Ukrainian society and its formal education system. On this basis, we create a model for developing teachers’ capabilities to foster students’ human rights competencies. Ukraine has ratified the majority of international normative legal documents on human rights education. The accomplishment of the concept of the New Ukrainian School as well as changes in legislation have created a foundation for the implementation of human rights education in the formal education sector. This article analyses the Ukrainian program of human rights education by focussing on the sociological research study “Human rights in Ukraine” (2016) and the survey “Human right in school” (2016). The results show that Ukraine does not have a national strategy in form of an integral system of human rights education. Moreover, educational methods in human rights education remain a ‘terra incognita’ for a significant number of teachers because there is a lack of effective tools for teachers to foster students’ human rights capacity. However, Ukrainian teachers in general understand the need for human rights education. Therefore, we suggest a model for developing teachers’ capabilities to foster students’ human rights competencies.

This article provides a theoretical foundation to argue for an effective and meaningful realization of human rights education in school curricula and beyond. Despite emerging research on a content-related basis and large-scale initiatives, the practical realization of human rights education is mostly still a desideratum. By analyzing relevant documents by the United Nations (UN), particularly the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNGA, 1948), this paper shows that human rights education is a human right itself. Upon joining the UN, member states pledged to provide human rights education to all citizens. However, the question what it means to ensure the right to human rights education is complex because the concept of ‘right’ is ambiguous. Thus, this manuscript logically analyzes the right to human rights education by means of Kanger’s theory of rights that encompasses a classification of all possible types of right. The analysis shows that the right to human rights education consists of two complex types of right that contain both a claim right as well as service rights. The author concludes that in order to meet the obligations of the UN Charta, UN member states are required (1) to provide mandatory human rights education in compulsory education and (2) to grant access to human rights education to all citizens.

This article examines how the U.S. government’s stance on human rights and human rights education has shifted from leading the creation of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights through the United Nations Human Rights Commission, with Eleanor Roosevelt as chair of the Commission, to one in which human rights education has only a minimal presence in the U.S. schooling system. It explores the trajectory of human rights education’s inclusion in curriculum standards, drawing comparisons with other countries. Based on interviews with 32 members of the national volunteer network, Human Rights Educators USA, some of whom have been working in the human rights education field since the 1980s, the article addresses barriers to implementing human rights education in the present day and how they might be overcome.

Labor brings big effect on human life. Therefore, if we hope people live with human dignity, the whole human rights must be applied to labor. But, in now, the whole human rights is not applied to the current labor related human rights education. For example, in the current labor related human rights education, human rights in labor is limited to article 23, 24 of universal declaration of human rights, and political rights is not applied to labor. And the current labor related human rights education focus on civil rights rather than human rights, and the content of the current labor related human rights education is a little abstract. Therefore, the current labor related human rights education need to be reconstructed in perspective of the whole human rights. The Alternative labor related human rights education have to make contributions for students to has well being (eudaimonia) based on human rights, and to examine labor history critically in perspective of the whole human rights, and to examine the structure of labor in the contemporary society critically in perspective of the whole human rights and to make labor to be human rights friendly. And The Alternative labor related human rights education must teaches laborer’s political rights as well as labor’s three primary rights. And The Alternative labor related human rights education must make much efforts for youth’s labor and labor in future to be well-being(eudaimonia) based on human rights and make much efforts for the whole human rights to be applied to labor. Labor must not be performed only for economic logic. It must be performed for all people’s well-being and human dignity.

Reviewed by: Human Rights and Schooling: An Ethical Framework for Teaching for Social Justice by Audrey Osler, and: Restoring Dignity in Public Schools: Human Rights Education in Action by Maria Hantzopoulos Nancy Flowers (bio) Audrey Osler, Human Rights and Schooling: An Ethical Framework for Teaching for Social Justice (Teachers College Press, 2016), ISBN 9780807756768, 177 pages; Maria Hantzopoulos, Restoring Dignity in Public Schools: Human Rights Education in Action (Teachers College Press, 2016), ISBN 9780807757420, 180 pages. Although written well before the Trump Presidency, Human Rights and Schooling gains new relevance as educators address a regime that seems to violate basic principles of human rights and to endorse discrimination, violence, disrespect for truth, and a narrow national if not nationalistic perspective. Audrey Osler sees in human rights the necessary principles for living together in multicultural nation-states and communities and a framework for realizing equitable and just learning communities.1 Her book is both aspirational and highly practical, offering an ethical framework as well as solid, concrete advice for education in a heterogeneous democracy. Informing the book is Osler's vision of human rights education (HRE) as "education for cosmopolitan citizenship," grounded in human rights and transcending the traditional "civics" course based exclusively on national history and legal frameworks. Such citizenship education would encourage young people to go [End Page 765] beyond exclusive identification with people like themselves to develop a sense of affinity with all humanity, recognizing the equal dignity of all people and the global community as interconnected and interdependent. Osler eloquently describes the potential of HRE to build democracy and social justice and to create a culture "whereby human rights violations are not simply addressed through legal mechanisms but are prevented."2 She emphasizes HRE as an essential component of the right to education, an enabling right that secures access to other rights. However, HRE is no political panacea. Human Rights and Teaching makes graphic the potential of HRE to be a tool for state manipulation and social control. At best HRE may encourage commitment to others' struggles for justice. At worst, when the dominant story taught in schools portrays an uncritical, sanitized version of "We the Nation," it can promote nationalism or feelings of moral superiority. HRE may be used for a "21st century civilizing mission" that reinforces the views of the powerful in the name of the nation or national values, by "managing student behavior and achieving compliance; insisting on blind obedience to the law or school rules; and encouraging students . . . to deny aspects of themselves, their cultures, and their languages, which distinguish them from the mainstream."3 Nor is HRE easy to implement in the real world of US educational bureaucracy with its fifty state departments of education and 13,506 school districts, each fiercely resistant to top-down mandates and threats to local autonomy. Because schooling systems are inherently conservative and national, they are necessarily in tension with HRE, which is based on cosmopolitan perspectives and agreed-upon international principles of human rights.4 Although this cosmopolitan vision may seem like a perfect counterbalance to the current shift towards isolationism and nationalism in the name of "making America great again," how is it to be achieved? Osler affirms Eleanor Roosevelt's famous assertion that human rights must begin "close to home." She states: "This human rights vision is not primarily about international politics but about everyday living. It is about challenging micro aggressions, overcoming everyday racism, and everyday sexism."5 She exhorts educators to explore universal human rights within diverse contexts. Otherwise, without dialogue and consideration of people's specific social contexts, human rights, which are designed to be liberating, can be "part of a hegemonic discourse, used instead to control."6 This wise book challenges all of us to persist in seeking new ways to bring human rights into US education so that both the curriculum and the culture of our schools reflect the multicultural nation that we are. ________ Maria Hantzopoulos's Restoring Dignity in Public Schools: Human Rights Education in Action provides a valuable [End Page 766] counterpoint to Osler's book. Osler provides the theory; Hantzopoulos shows the practice. While Osler establishes an ethical framework for HRE from a global...