Human rights education programs in the spectrum of international standards

Abstract

This thesis aims to explain the Human Rights Education (HRE) resources currently employed in educational system established around the world. As its starting point, this thesis examines the principles, methods and norms stated in the Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (HRET) and the World Programme for Human Rights Education (WPHRE). These manuals are equally divided into formal and non-formal education and were issued by the United Nations (UN) and the Council of Europe (CoE). The primary target group of these manuals are students of secondary school education, who are between 7 and 12 years old. There is also a secondary target group, which includes teachers and educators of HRE. Thus, the strategies and training of this target group is also analysed in the thesis. The themes addressed in the HRET and the WPHRE contain a series of norms and principles that together provide the basis of HRE. These themes explain with detail concepts such as school/classroom environment, knowledge/information of HRE, HRE skills, discipline and evaluation of the human rights teaching, and activities. The analysis of the four HRE manuals follows the different themes in the WPHRE and compares them to the way in which they were used when the four manuals were first created, asking whether the expectations of the HRE principles and the norms of the themes are fulfilled by these manuals and how they deal with the WPHRE themes in their application.