Reclaiming and Reaffirming HRE:
Reflections from a Human Rights Educator

by Felice I. Yeban

Human rights education (HRE) is threatened these days. Apart from sectors within and outside the human rights community casting doubts about the power of human rights education programs to deliver their promise of building a culture of human rights and progressively contribute to containing violations worldwide, HRE is in a crisis of its own meaning.

I have encountered many educators who claim that what they are doing is human rights education. There are various forms of transformative education processes like peace education, gender education, civic education, etc. that claim to be HRE. I think there is a need to identify the distinct elements and traits of HRE to differentiate it from others and find points of convergence. To identify the essential elements of various transformative education programs, think of a situation where as an educator you are asked to design a lesson plan for just 30 minutes to 1 hour. What knowledge, values, and skills would you include in the lesson for it to be HRE, or Peace Ed., or Gender Ed., or Civic Ed., etc.?

In terms of content, for the lesson to be HRE, knowledge about human rights is essential. The treatment of the international instruments will vary depending on the readiness of students. Discussion on human rights violations and state obligations is equally important. In terms of values and attitudes, respect for the rights of others is almost always included. In terms of skills, students are usually asked to identify specific actions they can perform to respect and promote human rights. The more time, the more elements share the different transformative education programs.

Let us explore the entire configuration of what we call HRE. Within the context of the Philippines, human rights education is essential. There is a need for Filipinos to transform situations of indignity that they experience and to create a society where everyone has the opportunity to maximize one’s potential and well-being, achieve inner and outer peace, and appreciate one’s existence and humanity.

There is a certain knowledge, there are values and skills that we should ideally possess to participate either individually or collectively in transforming our society. First of all, a human rights educator assumes that knowledge of human rights is essential to providing individuals with a defined standard with which both personal and social situations may be assessed. While the universality of the international instruments is still being challenged, we cannot simply privilege a certain ‘culture’ to provide us with ultimate standards. Each culture has its own contradictions.

Personally, I believe in the universality of the human rights instruments. However, as an educator, I know that all I can do is provide students and learners with situations where they can experience the contradictions between those standards and a specific culture. Critical, strategic, and creative thinking skills are essential. Thinking tools are as necessary as the need for content. The standards themselves are not absolute truths that wouldn’t be subject to students’ and learners’ critical examination.

The object of HRE as an educative process is to assess the learners’ personal and social experiences vis-à-vis human rights textual experiences and vice versa and identifying personal, social, cultural, economic, and political contradictions which impinge on these experiences. In this particular kind of educative process, it is crucial to provide learners with the opportunity to make interconnections of their personal, social, cultural, economic, and political experiences. They are to gain the necessary knowledge, values, and skills to re-arrange existing interconnections into a new order that fosters their well-being as individuals and members of the community.

It is important to note that both personal and social transformation must go hand in hand. In this sense, I view HRE as an educative process that equips individuals with thinking tools, knowledge, values, and skills that facilitate their critical assessment of their personal and social experiences vis-à-vis human rights standards for the pursuit of individual and societal well-being.

The conduct of HRE is subject to different approaches the HR educator may use. The table is a summary of approaches I have appropriated in the course of more than a decade of doing HRE.

Human rights educators must be aware of their own approach to human rights and be prepared to discuss these experiences. It is only through a continuing dialogue that we may build our community. Where there is community, meaning is shared, if it is shared, the crisis of meaning within HRE may not be a threat afterall.

Index: Podium

Reflections from a Human Rights Educator
by Felice Yeban

in addition to this article: Table: Different Approaches to Human Rights Education

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