[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are it behooves you. This Reader focuses on how to redirect what we teach about HR. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
The view from the top: Relying on teaching the covenants?
1. Everyone has the right to know, seek and receive information about all human rights and fundamental freedoms and should have access to human rights education and training. (UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training). In December 2011, the United Nations General Assembly adopted this Declaration that articulates everyone’s right to know his or her internationally protected and inalienable human rights (HR).
2. But what is the point of the international HR system if the people who need it most do not know how to use it to make their voices heard to demand their fulfilment? (Lizzy Wilmington)
3. Despite the fact that laws must be interpreted consistently with treaty obligations, international HR are infrequently brought to the attention of judges and knowledge of international HR law is generally poor amongst them, as well as among lawyers. There is no coordinated strategy to make international HR law known to: teachers and students within school systems, or known to police and law enforcement workers, civil servants, lawyers, judges and interested citizens (and much less to people rendered poor!).
4. We cannot thus say that all people have rights that are universally recognized and accepted in contexts where the people, in fact, have no rights and no way to assert their rights. (Gill Gott)
So, we have to start from the other end.
The view from the bottom: Building the infrastructure for the fulfillment of human rights
–In human rights learning (HRL) it is not enough for the participants to recount their (sorry or sad) experiences; it is about focusing on what really counts in people’s experiences to then formulate action plans based on them.
5. The first task in ‘HRL 101’ is to allow claim holders to realize that they are rights-holders. Even though there is an ever-growing HR system in place to work towards the realization of Article 1 of the UDHR, people who are continually and consistently marginalized often do not realise that HR are inalienable to them.
6. When HR activists explain that all human beings are born with HR, and that HR cannot be taken away from them, too many claim holders respond: “Well that’s the best fkng kept secret in the whole world”. Therefore, HRL is about training activists to equip the most marginalized communities with the skills and tools necessary to break vicious circles and cycles of powerlessness, stigmatization, discrimination, exclusion and material deprivation by guiding them to claim the rights that are theirs on account of them being human. (L. Wilmington)
7. Because HRL requires mobilizing claim holders to fight and win political battles on issues that strongly impact their livelihoods, their education needs to reinforce their capacity to demonstrate to vulnerable actors that the alternative practices being promoted too lightly just sustain the capitalist market economy. (Nora McKeon)
8. The aimed-for outcome of HRL thus is to center communities’ knowledge and lived experiences in shaping the evidence on economic, social, and cultural rights to be used to remind states’ duty bearers of their responsibility to implement community demands that respond to realities on the ground. As this work deepens, claim holders are to move to proactively demand their rights. Communities are not ‘sources, of such a reality; they are knowledge producers, strategists, and authors of their own futures’.
9. When communities define their own realities and generate their own evidence, power begins to shift. Receiving resources to carry communities forward and enabling them to connect their struggles, build shared analyses and shape their political strategies is to deepen their understanding of these means of organizing and resisting at the local level –as well as to amplify their political significance by, early-on, engaging in power-mapping exercises. (ESCR-net)
As one of the Roman philosophers exhorted his students: “Cease not to learn until you cease to live”
—Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity. Instruction does much, but encouragement (to act) does everything. (Johan W. Goethe, 1749 –1832)
The advocacy now needed is for decolonizing the HR education curriculum
–Aim not only to stimulate reflection, but also to provoke actual, positive, critical and constructive responses from the participants.
10. Yes, simple concepts have less than simple implications. For too long, the voices calling for decolonizing HRL have not been heard and acted upon. The first challenge we face thus relates to changing what we teach. What is so far taught in HR training needs to be challenged and changed. We can start by reaching out to social and political movements that are already focused on antiracism and antidiscrimination struggles for them to add HR subjects in their teachings. We note it is not only about changing what we teach, but also how we teach it. This means including learning by reflection and the use real examples to help participants develop new inclusive action strategies.
11. Research shows that training often avoids covering diversity awareness ranging from deliberate avoidance to not denouncing official government policy ignoring multicultural issues. We must teach these subjects and issues within a decolonizing context including exposing the white power block in the development discourse.*
*: Only a critical pedagogy of whiteness will produce a counter-history grounded on the deconstruction of a whitewash in racial history. We then need to contextualize experiences from black, asian and indigenous communities to make curricula more contemporary and relevant for our participants.
12. The training also has to show how genocide, slavery and colonization are the key foundation stones upon which the West was built: a system we still live with today. We also need to challenge ourselves trainers to transform, and not only change, what we teach and how we teach it. There is a continued need for activists and, therefore, activism at all levels must call for action, as the only path that will lead to the transformation of the sorry HR situation the world over. (London Review of Education)
De-learn to re-learn
–Do we have the humility to unlearn?
13. Several aspects are important in the unlearning process; among other:
- In the fight against patriarchy, the political education of men has to include aspects that regard to women, youth and diversities’ sensitivities.
- Education is needed on why and how to act together to change UN governance.
- Sharing coherent values during the training of participants is strategically crucial.
- Also needed is to share information on the negative impacts of TNCs highlighting all false solutions proposed and why/how they emerged.
- Political education is needed to apply it both to intra-civil-society-organization politics, as much as for outside use.
- knowledge that already exists in communities in different regions must be socialized.
- Do not overlook that the priority of political education is for the youth and, last but not least,
- Education in preparation of the topics of upcoming national and international gatherings/conferences/summits is key to be prepared to participate meaningfully.
Bottom line
14. The trouble with people is not that they do not know, but that they know so much that ain’t so. We have not yet invented the way to rid the mind of false knowledge.** We, therefore need a new HRL, because too many people have built mental latrines half full with garbage.
**: The moment you are born, they plant around you mills that grind lies, lies that last you a lifetime. (Nazim Hikmet, Turkish poet, 1902-1963)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com