Human Rights Education

Theory, Research, Praxis

Monisha Bajaj, Monisha Bajaj

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780812293890
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Over the past seven decades, human rights education has blossomed into a global movement. A field of scholarship that utilizes teaching and learning processes, human rights education addresses basic rights and broadens the respect for the dignity and freedom of all peoples. Since the founding of the United Nations and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, human rights education has worked toward ensuring that schools and non-formal educational spaces become sites of promise and equity.Bringing together the voices of leaders and researchers deeply engaged in understanding the politics and possibilities of human rights education as a field of inquiry, Monisha Bajaj's Human Rights Education shapes our understanding of the practices and processes of the discipline and demonstrates the ways in which it has evolved into a meaningful constellation of scholarship, policy, curricular reform, and pedagogy. Contributions by pioneers in the field, as well as emerging scholars, constitute this foundational textbook, which charts the field's rise, outlines its conceptual frameworks and models, and offers case studies from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. The volume analyzes how human rights education has been locally tailored to diverse contexts and looks at the tensions and triumphs of such efforts.Historicizing human rights education while offering concrete grounding for those who seek entry into this dynamic field of scholarship and practice, Human Rights Education is essential reading for students, educators, researchers, advocates, activists, practitioners, and policy makers. Contributors: Monisha Bajaj, Ben Cislaghi, Nancy Flowers, Melissa Leigh Gibson, Diane Gillespie, Carl A. Grant, Tracey Holland, Megan Jensen, Peter G. Kirchschlaeger, Gerald Mackie, J. Paul Martin, Sam Mejias, Chrissie Monaghan, Audrey Osler, Oren Pizmony-Levy, Susan Garnett Russell, Carol Anne Spreen, David Suárez, Felisa Tibbitts, Rachel Wahl, Chalank Yahya, Michalinos Zembylas.

PART I

Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations of Human Rights Education

CHAPTER 1

Symbol and Substance: Human Rights Education as an Emergent Global Institution

Susan Garnett Russell and David F. Suárez

Introduction

In early 2014, Human Rights Education Associates (HREA), an international nongovernmental organization (INGO), hosted an online forum to discuss the progress of the World Programme for Human Rights Education. The Programme is an ongoing, multiphase initiative of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) that “seeks to promote a common understanding of basic principles and methodologies of human rights education, to provide a concrete framework for action and to strengthen partnerships and cooperation from the international level down to the grass roots” (OHCHR 2014b). Building on the UN Decade for Human Rights Education, which took place from 1995 to 2004, the first phase of the Programme (2005–2009) emphasized human rights education (HRE) in primary and secondary school systems. The second phase (2010–2014) expanded to tertiary education and to training for professionals in fields as diverse as education, law enforcement, and the military. The third phase (2015–2019) reinforces developments from the first two phases and expands training to journalists and others in the media. In accordance with the goal of strengthening partnerships, the OHCHR solicited input from civil society organizations regarding the draft plan of action for the third phase, relying on an NGO with a long history of facilitating discussions about human rights programming in formal and informal educational settings (Suárez 2007a).

The forum consequently presents an opportunity to reflect on many striking and important developments in HRE over the last few decades. Human rights education is an emerging global institution that has made many inroads and continues to garner support from diverse actors. NGOs, nation-states, and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) all have played salient roles in the promotion and elaboration of human rights education (Ramirez, Suárez, and Meyer 2006; Suárez, Ramirez, and Koo 2009). As the World Programme suggests, human rights education applies to both formal and informal settings, and HRE is relevant for primary, secondary, and tertiary school systems. With the growing institutionalization of human rights education at the global level, theoretical accounts of how and why human rights education emerged and expanded merit further elaboration. Building on world polity theory, we argue that HRE gained traction at the global level because the broader social movement reflects widely held cultural scripts about progress, justice, and the individual. Furthermore, we suggest that the world educational revolution interacted with the human rights movement, bridging the social movement with informal and formal schooling (Ramirez et al. 2006; Suárez et al. 2009).

In order to expand and refine this argument, we provide an overview of world polity theory, and we clarify its relevance for explaining the diffusion of human rights discourse and practice. We then contextualize the role of education within the broader human rights movement and document the progression of HRE over the last few decades, highlighting the extent to which policy documents on education, curricula, and textbooks have become infused with human rights language. Finally, we offer an agenda for new research on HRE that addresses important gaps remaining in the literature on the impact of the reform and on sources of diversity. We discuss political and civil versus social and economic rights, regional variation, organizational strategies, and human rights within contexts of extreme violence.

Human Rights in World Society

World polity theory focuses on the role of the global environment in shaping the behaviors of actors such as nation-states and organizations. Blueprints about progress, justice, and the individual—often described as scripts or models—mold organizations in ways that are difficult to explain based solely on strategy, the technical task demands of work, or internal political dynamics (Ramirez 2012). Though many of the models are Western in origin, their diffusion intensified and globalized after the Second World War, greatly accelerated by processes of economic, social, and cultural exchange (Thomas et al. 1987). Empirical research has illustrated that these global models produce identifiable outcomes or consequences; one approach has been to show that countries frequently adopt similar policies and structures despite vast differences in national conditions and economies. For instance, much of the initial research in this tradition emphasized the emergence and growth of mass education, which occurred very rapidly and with a strikingly similar pattern across the globe (Ramirez and Boli 1987; Meyer et al. 1992). Subsequent studies have expanded to the school curriculum, secondary education, and tertiary education (Benavot et al. 1991; Kamens, Meyer, and Benavot 1996; Baker and LeTendre 2005; Schofer and Meyer 2005).

In addition to research on education, recent studies have demonstrated the role of global models in a wide array of fields and issues such as the environment, suffrage policies, and the growth of civic associations (Ramirez, Soysal, and Shanahan 1997; Frank, Hironaka, and Schofer 2000; Longhofer and Schofer 2010; Schofer and Longhofer 2011). To clarify the implications and effects of global models, a canonical paper elaborates an imaginary case or parable in which the modern world suddenly finds an undiscovered island with undiscovered peoples (Meyer et al. 1997). International consultants with diverse disciplinary backgrounds such as anthropology, economics, sociology, and political science descend upon the island and help the locals create a nation-state. Soon the island joins the United Nations, it develops a constitution, perhaps it gets a loan from the World Bank, and it establishes ministries or national-level offices (e.g., education, health, finance). International NGOs (INGOs) with professional staffs arrive and begin to implement social service programs and deliver humanitarian aid. These organizations also identify additional needs of the new citizens, they collect data on the race and gender of the citizens, and they even assist in developing a local civil society sector. Beyond showing how global scripts for justice and progress matter to nation-states, then, the parable draws attention to salient mechanisms and “carriers” of those scripts.

The island in the parable exists in a world of nation-states, a global field with dense patterns of interaction. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) identify three core mechanisms that produce isomorphism, or similarity across organizations in a field: coercive, normative, and mimetic. In a coercive form of isomorphism, countries or organizations follow global models because they are obligated to do so by more powerful actors. A donor country might tie foreign aid to a requirement that the recipient country provide education for minority communities, contributing to the coercive spread of education. Mimetic isomorphism refers to a more diffuse mechanism, the imitation of global models that occurs when actors scan the environment for “best practices” that will produce or maintain organizational legitimacy. When solutions to problems are unclear, nation-states frequently copy what successful or well-respected countries are doing, leading to the diffusion of global models. Finally, normative isomorphism refers to the spread of models via professional standards and networks of consultants—for instance, through international conferences and development experts—who offer templates for solutions based on their training and “unbiased” analysis (Chabbott 2003; Meyer et al. 1997).

These mechanisms also reveal some of the sources of variation and offer viable hypotheses. A country that is relatively closed or buffered from the global environment likely will be slower to adopt global models. As a formal argument, countries with stronger links to the world polity, as measured by ties to INGOs, should be more likely to adopt global norms and scripts. Similarly, countries should adopt global scripts at a faster rate as the world becomes more saturated with international organizations. Roughly paralleling the mimetic isomorphism mechanism, countries should be more likely to adopt global scripts as other countries in the world or in the same region adopt these models. Finally, aligning with normative isomorphism, countries should be more likely to adopt global models following major conferences that promote those ideas and practices. In many respects, all of these arguments are related to variability in the timing of adoption, with some countries never embracing a global model and others doing so very quickly. A different source of variability has to do with the enactment of the model itself. Not all countries will adopt a policy or reform in the same way, meaning that there is plenty of variation in terms of what a reform looks like in practice. World polity theory describes this as loose coupling, or a weak link between a reform and its implementation (Meyer and Rowan 1977; Bromley and Powell 2012).

Loose coupling, which occurs for a variety of reasons, is expected when countries adopt progressive global models or practices (Ramirez 2012). Some countries adopt a reform with every intention of implementing it faithfully, almost like an unmodified blueprint, but they might not have the technical expertise or the financial resources to do so. In other instances, there will be a temporal component in which policy and practice initially are loosely coupled, but over time the reform gradually becomes more aligned. A third possibility is that countries will take the reform and edit it to fit the cultural context, a process of “glocalization” or “externalization” (Schriewer 1990; Robertson 1992). Yet another possibility is that the implementation of policies at the local level will be uneven and not always aligned with the original intent of the policy, especially when countries are adopting global policies due to coercive pressures (Cole and Ramírez 2013). Finally, from a strategic perspective, countries may adopt a reform as an attempt to shield themselves from scrutiny through avoidance or concealment, creating a façade of compliance (Oliver 1991). In such circumstances there never is any intention whatsoever of implementation, creating extreme decoupling. Organizations may practice a form of hypocrisy in the superficial adoption of structures and ideologies to attain legitimacy (Brunsson 2002). In the following section we review the literature on human rights policy and practice, building on the core insights of world polity theory; we then focus specifically on human rights education.

Human Rights at the Global and National Level

The origins of a global rights consciousness can be traced back at least to discussions of human rights and racial equality during the drafting of the Covenant of the League of Nations (Lauren 2011). While ultimately the covenant (1924) did not explicitly reference “human rights” due to political constraints, the core ideas discussed laid the foundation for the international human rights regime codified in the post–World War II period.¹ The gross violations of human rights perpetrated by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust spurred the international community to articulate inviolable rights and freedoms in the drafting of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Donnelly 2013; Stacy 2009). The UN Charter (1945) mentioned “human rights” and “human dignity” for the first time. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR; 1948) and the subsequent elaboration of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1966 formed the legal basis for the so-called International Bill of Human Rights and the foundation for human rights as a global institution.

The international human rights regime developed along with the United Nations, and thus human rights are infused within the mandates of post–World War II intergovernmental organizations. For instance, UNESCO was established in 1945 with the aim of “building peace in the minds of men and women” and was tasked with the promotion of human rights. The Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights evolved out of an office in the UN Secretariat and was mandated by a 1993 resolution to monitor and implement global human rights treaties. The same year, the World Conference on Human Rights was held in Vienna. The tenets of the broader human rights movement have been diffused in part through the expansion and influence of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) that promote global human rights norms. For instance, UNESCO and other IGOs serve as carriers of ideas and norms about human rights, influencing policies at the nation-state level (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Finnemore 1993). Table 1.1 documents the role of IGOs in promoting human rights awareness through the creation of human rights treaties and institutions, at both global and regional levels. IGOs that promote human rights have been established and elaborated since 1945 at the global level but also in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Complementing the expanding role of intergovernmental organizations in constructing human rights awareness, international nongovernmental organizations have also grown in number and influence during the past half century. Boli and Thomas (1997) document a quantitative increase in the number of nongovernmental organizations globally since 1945. Furthermore, there has also been a dramatic rise in the number of INGOs devoted specifically to human rights issues, from 96 in 1978, to 170 in 1988, to 499 in 1998 (Tsutsui and Wotipka 2004). Tsutsui and Wotipka (2004) analyze the growth in human rights international nongovernmental organizations (HRINGOs), finding that membership in HRINGOs is predicted by linkages to global civil society and international flows of human resources. Aligning with perspectives that stress the importance of the external environment, interna...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I. Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations of Human Rights Education
• Part II. Global Research in Human Rights Education
• Part III. Transformative Human Rights Education Praxis
• Afterword
• Appendix A. Sample Discussion Questions for Use with This Book
• Appendix B. Further Reading in Human Rights Education
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Acknowledgments