Utrecht University and women's organization install first Dutch Professor in Human Rights Education
The new Dutch government wants to strengthen civic education, with an emphasis on the rule of law. Here, a professor jointly put in place by Utrecht University and the Soroptimist women's organization might be of help.
Inaugural lecture
In her inaugural lecture (pdf) this week, prof.dr. Felisa Tibbitts spoke about the importance of human rights education, but also about its nature and objectives.
“Human rights education locates itself within struggle, beginning with the personal but often linking up to wider social change processes”. According to Amnesty International, it can be considered a “deliberative, participatory process aimed at empowering individuals, groups and communities…Its goal is to build a culture of respect for and action in the defense and promotion of human rights for all”.
Chair in human rights education
The very first chair in human rights education in the Netherlands has a special history. It is funded by the Soroptimists, a women’s organization with over 3000 members and 100 clubs in the Netherlands, through the legacy of Carla Atzema-Looman. Prof. Tibbitts is based at SIM (the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights) within the Department of Law, Economics and Governance at Utrecht University and is also affiliated with University College Roosevelt.
In her inaugural lecture, professor Tibbitts recognized the efforts of the Soroptomists to promote girls’ and women’s empowerment for over nearly a century through over 1200 clubs. Today, this illustrates many of the ingredients of a successful social movement: leadership, courage, self-education, stamina, strategy and solidarity. Such efforts have brought about changes on the legal front, the work front and the home front.
Developments in human rights education
Professor Tibbitts said that through riding “the surf” of the international human rights movement beginning in the 1990s, Human Rights Education (HRE) has “proliferated, experimented, differentiated and has also come to be localized in thoughtful ways.”
HRE is recognized in United Nations policies, is a part of school curriculum in 83 countries and is expanding in different areas of professional training, including law enforcement officials, civil servants, teachers and other professional groups. Wherever HRE is implemented it needs to pay attention to ideology, context, constituency and locale (Bajaj, 2011).
Tibbitts believes that HRE can serve as a strong pillar for upholding the international human rights movement. She proposed specifically that HRE can help to support, or “reclaim”, human rights in certain inhospitable environments. She recounted the critique of human rights in the Global South as being “Western in origin, in denial of local cultures, hegemonic in its approach and hypocritically used by leaders in the Global North.”
Disputes around the human rights project have influenced critiques of HRE as well. Some scholars from the Global South, such as Keet (2012), have critiqued a ‘declarationist’ approach to HRE as promoting the values embodied in international human rights standards as absolutist, negating the possibility of genuine “dialogue” with learners about their existing value systems.
Tibbitts related that HRE theorists have responded by embracing the critical pedagogy approach—established by Paolo Freire. “The infusion of the critical approach within HRE means not only critically reviewing the social and cultural environments in which learners live and work but also the human rights framework itself.”
Citizenship education in the Netherlands
In the Netherlands, a renewed opportunity to promote human rights education is presenting itself through the revision of the curriculum aims of citizenship education. Dr. Tibbitts is cooperating with the College voor de Rechten van de Mens in providing positive examples of HRE in curriculum to the Ministry of Education. She will also be cooperating with researchers at Utrecht University, University College Roosevelt, Stichting Leerplan Ontwikkeling and other members of the HRE Platform in studying the whole-school piloting of “The HRE Toolbox” which has just been released.
In her inaugural lecture, Tibbitts also noted the exemplary efforts of the Working Group of Social Work Trainers in the Netherlands, which issued a Manifesto in 2015 and has a strategy for strengthening HRE in schools of social work. She foresees research in this area, collaborating with researchers in academia and practitioners in the NGO sector.