TEACHERS WITHOUT BORDERS’

HUMAN RIGHTS DAY 2010 PODCAST SERIES

Episode 2: History and evolution of human rights education

Host: Stephanie Knox Cubbon, Peace Education Program Coordinator, Teachers

Without Borders
Guest: Nancy Flowers, writer and consultant for human rights education

PODCAST SUMMARY
In this podcast, Nancy Flowers discusses the evolution of the human rights education
movement around the world.

Human rights education: The early days

• Nancy was appointed the first human rights education coordinator for Amnesty USA.
• At first, it was difficult to find allies who were interested in developing human rights
education.
• Nancy’s first task was to define human rights education.

The global movement for human rights education

• Eventually Amnesty USA started collaborating on human rights education with
Amnesty in Britain and Canada.
• Latin Americans were the “real leaders” of human rights education. Grassroots political
movements in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil were trying to overthrow military
dictatorships and they started creating human rights pedagogies for teachers and
learners.
• Human rights education also began in the Philippines during the People Power
Revolution. University students inspired by Latin America went into slums and rural
areas, and taught non-violence and human rights education. The Philippines was the
first country to have a national human rights curriculum, and human rights education is
now mandatory for police and the military.
• Shulamith Koenig was extremely instrumental in advancing human rights education.
She was a major driving force behind the People’s Decade for Human Rights
Education, and organized the first International Human Rights Education Conference
in 1992.
• In the early 90s, the Cold War was ending; communist regimes were falling; and
people started thinking about how human rights education could help emerging
democracies.
• In Cambodia, the peace treaty that ended the civil war mandated human rights
education to try re-establish an elective democracy.
• In the same year the UN was working as a transitional authority in Cambodia, its
agencies started establishing human rights education divisions, and then other inter-
governmental organizations followed suit.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Stephanie:
You were involved in the human rights education movement from its early stages, how
did the human rights education movement get started, and how have you seen it
evolve?

Nancy:
I sometimes think of myself as an accidental human rights educator. I can remember
when I first heard the words, and it was almost exactly 75 years ago. The then director
of Amnesty Internationalʼs western region asked me if Iʼd be willing to go to a meeting in
Chicago about human rights education and I can remember I said, ʻwhat is it?ʼ and she
said, ʻIʼm not quite sure, but theyʼre having a meeting. And I went along because I was a
teacher, and had been a teacher for many years and I was also a human rights activist.

It was not that Amnesty said, ʻIn our long range plan we want to install human rights
education as an important part of our work. It was nobodyʼs pet project. It had come
almost by accident as a member resolution put to the national annual meeting of
Amnesty USA where members can put forward ideas and, if they pass, the bylaws
required the staff to do something about it. And so it happened in the last annual
general meeting and they were supposed to do something. And they had a meeting,
and the meeting was just about everybody there was saying this is a great idea, but
what is it? And there were university professors, there was a kindergarten teacher, a
librarian; we were educators who were invited because we were also educators who
were involved in Amnesty.

The long and short of it is I came home from Chicago as the first human rights
education coordinator for Amnesty USA. And it was a very good time in my life to take
this up, but it was also rather confusing because I had a budget and I had about one-
eighth of one staff memberʼs responsibility time. And I had a really great committee of
these people who would come to the meeting, but nobody was telling us what to do. We
really had to make our own mandate. Amnesty gave us some oversight and I might also
mention that Amnesty had a very strict rule that it would not collaborate with other
organizations because they might share certain goals and aims but they might conflict in
other ways. And Amnestyʼs credibility was so important, so they couldnʼt collaborate
except in the realm of education. We were able to go out and look for allies, for people
who were doing similar work. And there were allies but none of them were identified as
human rights educators. There was nobody around that we could find exactly interested
in human rights education. So the question, ʻwhat is it?ʼ, was part of our work, was to
sort of, define it.

Right away, it was clear that it wasnʼt going to be just be national undertaking, though
our particular mandate was for the United States. But a wonderful thing, to keep on the
Amnesty subject, a wonderful thing happened at that time internationally. That is, they
got a donation internationally of about 6 million dollars from Norway.

Our work in the US was enormously cut out for us. So we just began to look for people
and models but also to try to raise the level of information about human rights within our
organization. And then to collaborate with the British Amnesty people, with the Canadian
Amnesty people. And so we were highly experimental, from one hand, there was a lot of
creativity going on. We made some mistakes but we also were able to, a lot of energy
and excitement because we wanted to do this; had to figure out how to do it.

But I want to mention at that time we found three really, really major influences. The first
was within Latin America. I think that time, the real leaders, and still perhaps, of human
rights education, were in Latin America. It had to do with those grassroots political
movements, who at that time, were struggling to overthrow military dictatorships,
especially Chile, Argentina and Brazil. These were the people who had been reading
and influenced by Pablo Freire, and his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. They really took
human rights education in general, but human rights education as a political act. And
they really innovated all kinds of critical and interactive human rights and pedagogies
that put teachers and learners into dialogue. And they were all about social change. I
think that has to be one of the corner stones of the movement, was the work that they
did there. That has been enormously influential everywhere.

A major influence, for example, was in the Philippines. Shortly thereafter came the
people powerʼs revolution in the Philippines. There, lots of university students were
inspired by what they saw in Latin America, inspired by Freire and they went out into
slums and into rural areas and they did non-violence and human rights education. I
think their work directly led to the nation-wide peaceful demonstrations against the
regime and eventually the restoration of democracy. I think that was about 1986. The
Philippines became, as far as I know, the first country, right after this revolution, to have
a national human rights curriculum across the boards. And I might just say that this
week I saw an announcement that the Philippines has made human rights education a
requirement for police and military. They have been leaders all along and continue to be
so.

The Philippines, in itself, turned into a model and an inspiration for what happened as
the Soviet Union began to break up in about ʻ89, ʻ90. And those former communist
regimes began to break away from the Soviet Union and write new constitutions and
reformulate their working principles.
The second influence that it think is just very profound, was the personal influence of
Shulamith Koenig. I think sheʼs done more than any other single individual to develop
the field. She founded the Peopleʼs Decade for Human Rights Education, before there
was a decade, and I think we have advanced because of Shula. She also organized
what I believe to be the first International Human Rights Education Conference in 1992,
and it was in collaboration with the Human Rights Centre at Columbia University. It was
right at the time that the Cold War was coming to an end, and people were really excited
about what human rights education could do to fill this values gap. This communist
regime, these regimes were falling, and what human rights education could do for
emerging and re-emerging democracies. One result of this was a major anthology
called Human Rights Education for the 21st Century, put out by the University of
Pennsylvania.

I canʼt say enough about Shulaʼs vision of human rights education. She really insisted
that we think of it not outside of the realm of formal education, which is where people
tend to think first. To think of it as a movement, not just a branch of education. And I
completely believe we got a UN Decade for Human Rights Education because of her
sheer persistence and energy and political know-how.

I want to go on to the third really important influence, and that was that institution. Not
just educators and not just NGOs, but institutions were beginning to think there was
something that human rights education could do. I think that the really interesting first
example that I can find, is what happened in Cambodia. The Cambodian civil war, as
you may well remember, went on for years. And then there were Paris Peace Talks in
ʻ91. And in the document that ended that civil war, there was actually mandated in the
peace treaty human rights education. The UN set up something called the UN
Transitional Authority in Cambodia, UNTAC, and they were supposed to sort of, for the
first time the US was going to run a country in transition for 18 months; from this
devastated country to try to re-establish some kind of an elective democracy. And during
that time there was something called the human rights component, and they were
supposed to go in and teach everybody about human rights. Well, in a way itʼs ludicrous
and if they had 18 months, the country was devastated, almost all the intellectuals had
either been murdered or had fled the country. So the kind of people who would have
served as leaders, as trainers, as interpreters, there were very, very few of them. But
they still undertook it, and they also had little time to plan it, little time to execute it, far
too little time. But it was important for lots of reasons, including the fact that it was at
least recognition that in this kind of transition, you need human rights education.

And I think that we still havenʼt learned a lesson that human rights education takes time.
You canʼt drop in for 18 months or even 5 years, and really see the kind of long term
growth that you want to plant, the kinds of attitudes and behavior changes that human
rights education aims to do.

But in the same year that they were working in Cambodia, the World Conference on
Human Rights declared the decade and made enormous changes. For example, UN
agencies, starting with the High Commission for Human Rights, established a person in
charge, or a division or office for human rights education. Other organizations within the
UN mandate also took up human rights education and called it that. They may have
been doing it before, for example, UNICEF really does wonderful human rights
education on the Convention on the Rights of the Child; UNIFEM really educates about
CEDAW - the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against
Women; and then other entities, other inter-governmental organizations, like the Council
of Europe, got with the program, so to speak, and started doing major, major human
rights education within Europe. There were lots of things that were written into what the
decade was supposed to do that didnʼt happen, a lot of governments did not participate
at all, including that of the US. But it really brought human rights education into official
recognition, it wasnʼt a sort of off-shoot.