The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. (Albert Einstein)
This Reader is about human rights learning
Human rights literacy has too often been achieved by applying pedagogies and methodologies that have tended to look like indoctrination. (Shula Koenig)
1. Until very recently, many among us were oblivious to human rights (HR). (We may have opposed torture and been in favor of the freedom of assembly, but economic rights?). Moreover, there has been confusion about HR due to a total lack of reliable relevant information on it for the majorities. (HR is not only about torture and freedom of speech…!) Nowadays, I’d say that most people who have some information –and do mind about HR– do not clearly understand the importance and urgency of the struggle for HR, particularly the fact that it is a political struggle. This struggle is actually of top importance since it can very effectively bring large masses to fight against injustice and undue authoritarianism. And then, there is the human rights learning (HRL) struggle that also is a political one. Why? Because the challenge in HRL is to have the participants to, first, switch from an active pessimism to a relative optimism. The rest then is easy. Once this is achieved, we will have it made: learners will see a clear path forwards.
2. In every social movement, the capacity building of social mobilization skills of the next generation of advocates is essential, but too often neglected. In our case, we have to train not only testers, but also protesters since HRL is not about creating more followers and passive subscribers, but about forming more true and authenticHR leaders.(AnwarFazal)
3. Given that the HR cause is an eternal one, HRL ought to be life-long.(A. Fazal, S. Koenig) Therefore, the inclusion of HRL must be considered as part of the civic education provided to all citizens.* (A. Fazal)
*: It is more. It is an imperative to educate our young to be better members of the board of directors of the planet. (R. Abraham)
4. Human rights learning is perceived by the Establishment as challenging the status quo; it is often considered a threat and, therefore, is not at all fostered. HRL is not only needed for the protection of those rendered most vulnerable by the Establishment (those rendered poor, marginalized, vulnerable and discriminated), but also needed for those who actively protect, promote and safeguard HR, i.e., HR defenders. It is key that all actual and potential HR activists are ‘reading from the same book’. This is why HRLmust eventually become a major rallying point for civic, as well as for citizen’s life-long learning so as to bring about much greater active participation in the democratic process. (M. Gulleth)
5. The essence of HRL is to make participants see what many of them do not the see (or negate they are really seeing) and to get them away from believing that that is the actual reality. HRL is about opening the eyes of participants to the HR reality that everybody can indeed see if sensitive to it. (J. L. Acuna) HRL requires a process of acquisition of consciousness, of listening, of learning, of comprehending, of reeducating oneself so as to change. It requires dis-covering the realities of the situation and process one is living-in. In short, it seeks a process of gaining true awareness.(E. Yentzen)
S/he who teaches human rights without emancipating learners, ends up with a bunch of submissive zombies (J. Ranciere)
6. To make learners recognize the centrality of the emerging HR paradigm is to make them wake up to the unheard cries of the marginalized people of our planet –of humanity excluded; it is to remove the homogenizing inertia the process of globalization creates; it is to remove and substitute the countless transnational experiments applied that ultimately belittle those rendered poor, reducing them to ‘bonsai human beings’ that accept and get used to their insignificance and lack of power.
7. By exposing learners to the emerging and critical HR paradigm, the intention is for them to become prime actors in the awakening of the unheard voices of those pushed to the margins of society through the veritable cultural-grinding-machine-of-globalization; it is to bring alive their cries dampened by patriarchy, by discrimination, by machismo, by corruption. This is then the (belated) time for a comprehensive, worldwide, massive HRL push aimed at awakening, enliven and activate that what is quintessentially human. HRL is, I think,one of the main roads(a political one at that) we have to travel to break the rigid and hierarchical molds that stand in the way of unleashing the human potential. If we do not deepen the ethical and political debate about our pedagogical imperative in HR, we will be left with nothing more than the dull, linear administrative route in development work. Bottom line here, we must ask ourselves how we are to understand the education, preparation and guidance of ethical subjects: Will it be for submission or for autonomy?(S. L. de Maturana)
A caveat
8. To confuse learning with training is actually disastrous. As much as these are often treated as synonyms, they clearly are not. Confusing the terms negates the natural inclination to learn and to teach of human beings –as small children spontaneously and limitlessly do. Any human being can learn well what s/he is taught provided that the mediator helps her/him to ask, to explore, to experiment, to systematize, to relate and to start the same process all over again, but adding different perspectives and contents each time. If the recipient was mistaken and changes her/his views, attitudes and actions, the experience and the reflection gained is worth every bit. The experience is like that of the housewife that must cook a meal with the rests of yesterday. In HRL it is all about the process of exploring all possible relations.(C. Calvo)
9. In conventional education, what does one learn when one learns? To be an educated citizen able to solve the social problems of this world?or To become a consumer with no concerns about social solidarity, with greed tainting one’s skin?**
**: People were created to be loved and things were created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used. Would you agree?
Human rights learning: an ideological education
10. The HR framework is of great political value and thus requires a different type of learning: a political learning. The HR framework offers a realistic alternative to address the worldwide development crisis. The solutions to it reside in HR, i.e., more widelyunderstanding them and applying its principles and standards will help reach those solutions. The term HR itself is not important for HRL, what is important is having debates on the term and its actual content and practical meaning, because the concept should grow from the practice of participants. It is not worth giving a strict definition to begin with; instead, it should be a process of elaboration that never finishes.
11. There can be different cultural conceptualizations of HR (not negation though), but this fact does not have to result in an internal conflict. We can construct unity using emotions, but never leaving out the concept and the sense of social class as it relates to HR. We must understand that, for communication, emotion is fundamental since it is comprehensible in all languages. (La Via Campesina)
12. Most UN agencies, government institutions and civil society organizations are diligently working to defend and promote HRfor the people and very little with the people. They see HR mostly as a legal paradigm and not as a value system to improve people’s lives. (They talk of rights, and not always of human rights). One can say they work mostly on addressing symptoms and not often enough addressing the causes of HR violations and, most importantly, they do not devote the necessary time to the transfer of HR knowledge to claim holders to enable their full participation in the decisions that affect their lives thus bringing human rights to the fore.
13. In short, an ongoing process of HRL at the community level throughout the world –to actually have people adopt the human rights’ political culture– must be the immediate purpose without which the changes called for by applying the HR framework will never become a sustained reality. What I am saying is that it is HRL-in-community-work that importantly(but not only) leads to the needed threshold in critical thinking and systemic analysis by people as they empower themselves to identify ingrained inequalities, articulate their needs, and participate as equals in the decision making process. In a nutshell, HRL puts a powerful tool for positive action in the hands of the learners, thereby strengthening their ability to live within diverse cultures in trust and respect of the humanity of others. HRL should thus focus less on regretting and endlessly describing instances of the absence of HR, but focus more on ways to realize them. (S. Koenig)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org