In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Understanding Human Rights: Educational Challenges for the Future by Paula Gerber
  • Felisa Tibbitts (bio)
Paula Gerber, Understanding Human Rights: Educational Challenges for the Future ( Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2013), ISBN 978-1-84844883-4, 261 pages.

The 2011 UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (DHRET) defined human rights education as “all educational, training, information, awareness-raising and learning activities aimed at promoting universal respect for and observance of all human rights and fundamental freedoms and thus contributing, inter alia, to the prevention of human rights violations and abuses.”1 Human Rights Education (HRE) has been carried out most arduously by civil society organizations. Yet it is governments that technically have the responsibility to implement HRE, according to international human rights standards.

The United Nations has been forwarding policies to endorse the role that governments have in carrying out HRE in conjunction with their treaty obligations since 1995. Paula Gerber’s book Understanding Human Rights: Educational Challenges for the Future investigates the ways in which the UN has sought to advance human rights education (HRE) with states over the past sixty years, and recommends strengthening such efforts. Dr. Paula Gerber is a human rights legal scholar and an advocate of human rights education as a tool for preventing human rights abuses. She is a rare scholar in the field of HRE as her body of work bridges both legal analysis and HRE policy. Her book is a unique and significant contribution to the HRE literature and will also be relevant to those with broader interests in international human rights norms and UN mechanisms.

Gerber uses empirical research to examine the policies and activities of six UN bodies to monitor and supervise states’ efforts to comply with international norms relating to HRE. The book provides a unique historical overview of HRE within the UN system and impressive analytical details in relation to international human rights standards and the operation of UN mechanisms.

In Chapter 1 Gerber establishes key policies within the UN that endorse HRE specifically as a tool for preventing human rights abuses. She begins with an overview of contemporary HRE policies—the UN Decade for Human Rights Education (1995–2004) and the World Programme for Human Rights Education (2005-ongoing), with associated Plans of Action—and brings in General Comment No. 1 from the Committee on the Rights of the Child (2001). The policies since the mid-1990s make use of the term “human rights education,” a concept that did not really gain traction until the 1990s. Prior to the 1990s, the relationship between education and human rights evolved in UN documents from a general validation of the importance of education in promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms (Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)),2 to a recognition of the right to education (Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)),3 and to human rights education as a practice in and of itself (with attention not only to thematic content but also to teaching and learning processes). Gerber’s methodology operationalizes these complementary [End Page 277] modalities within the singular framework of HRE.

It is perhaps worth noting that to this day, there can be confusion about whether HRE is referring only to schooling or whether it also encompasses non-formal education (e.g., workshops and activities carried out with youth or vulnerable groups by civil society), the training of professional groups (e.g., law enforcement officials, military and civil servants), and general awareness raising. The answer: all apply, though states’ abilities to deliver or support HRE will depend upon the sector. For example, we might expect governments to provide HRE in schools and higher education institutions that prepare civil servants, teachers, law enforcement officials, military personnel, and other representatives of the state. In other sectors, government guidance and support will also be essential but directed towards educational providers. The Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training was passed by the General Assembly in 2011—the title itself a clue that the drafters wanted to make clear that the declaration was not intended to apply only to the schooling sector.

In Chapter 2, Gerber identifies instruments within the international legal framework that she concludes are...

pdf

Share