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Understanding Human Rights

Manual on Human Rights Education

A new Manual on Human Rights Education entitled "Understanding Human Rights" has just been published. The Manual has been elaborated by the European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (ETC) for the Human Security Network (HSN) on the initiative of the Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Benita Ferrero-Waldner as the chair of the HSN during 2002/2003. Its objective is to assist human rights education efforts worldwide and be used in different cultural settings, by human rights educators and learners, looking for a basic understanding of human rights - hence the title. The manual has been endorsed by the 5th Ministerial meeting of the HSN in Graz, Austria, from 8-10 May, 2003.

Experts from Argentina, Austria, Canada, Greece, India, The Netherlands, Mali, South Africa, Switzerland and the United States contributed to the manual, edited by Wolfgang Benedek and Minna Nikolova from ETC Graz. The ICRC provided a module on human rights in armed conflict and the People's Movement on Human Rights Education (PDHRE) and its network helped with general advice and enabled contributions, in particular from the South.

The manual intentionally is an open-ended work on which human rights educators and learners can base their efforts to further develop it and adapt it by introducing additional elements (modules) relevant to their own social environment and needs. For this purpose, the structure of the Manual deliberately allows for its very flexible use.

After an introduction to the system of Human Rights, which deals with a series of issues from the concept and nature of human rights and the different regional systems of protection of human rights to initiatives in the cities, there are 13 modules on selected human rights issues, ranging from the prohibition of torture and the freedom from poverty to the human rights of the child and human rights in armed conflict as well as democracy, which allow the educator or learner to start with his or her main interests.

Each module is structured in the same way, starting with an Illustration Story and continuing with a Need to Know section, which introduces the substance and context of the right and the instruments of implementation, a Good to Know section, which, inter alia, contains good practices, trends, inter-cultural perspectives and a chronology, and a Selected Activities section, which offers proposals for games, role plays or debates to be organized with learners, and finally a section on References and sources of further information.

A third part contains various additional resources like an overview of the most important literature and internet sources on human rights and human rights education and contact information for international and regional intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations active in the field of human rights, as well as other useful materials.

For convenience the Universal Declaration on Human Rights has been included as well as an introduction into the methodology of human rights education, a glossary of main terms and an index, which make this a manual which can also serve as a handbook for human rights educators and learners. The methodology specifically developed for this manual and the fact that in the introduction and in all the modules the relationship between human rights and human security has been given special consideration make it a unique contribution to its field.

Thanks to the support of the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs copies will be available from Austrian diplomatic missions, other distributors still to be defined like the OHCHR and the ETC. The conditions will be published on the ETC website soon. The manual, which has 336 pages, can be downloaded from the websites of the Ministry (www.bmaa.gv.at) and the ETC (www.etc-graz.at).

Translations are being prepared into the French, Spanish and German languages.

The editors welcome feedback and comments to: office@etc-graz.at