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Last December 10th, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution A/RES/59/113 proclaiming January 1st as the departure date for the World Programme for Human Rights Education. The first phase of this Programme will be expressed through the adoption of a 2005 – 2007 Plan of action project promoting human rights education in primary and secondary level education. This Plan will be submitted to the state members for final commentary and the final version will again be put to the Assembly General for adoption.
For the UN, human rights education considerably facilitates the realisation of these rights. Education in this area aims to establish each person’s responsibility to make human rights a reality around them and in society in general. In this sense, it contributes to the long-term prevention of rights violations and conflicts, to the promotion of equality and sustainable development and to the reinforcement of popular participation in the decision-making of a democratic system.
Again according to the UN, the 2005-2007 Action Plan takes its inspiration from an approach taken from the history of its orientation since its origins until today:
- The principles and orientations established by international instruments relative to human rights, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Declaration and Action Programme of Vienna of 1993 and the integrated Action Framework concerning peace education, human rights and democracy. It reposes equally on declarations and international education programmes.
- The Action Framework of Dakar on education for all is founded on the idea of quality education which, beyond the ability to read, write and do arithmetic, is based on rights and encourages democratic citizenship and solidarity.
- An education of quality founded on rights includes the idea of an education at the service of sustainable development such as was enunciated in the Implementation plan of the World Summit on sustainable development.
- One of the objectives of the Millennium for development adopted by the international community on the occasion of the Millennium Summit in 2000 is the promotion of universal access to primary education, an issue that is still unresolved. The present Action Plan aims at assuring the realisation of this Millennium objective for development by promoting quality education founded on rights.
- The Action Plan is equally set within the framework of measures adopted by the state members with a view to promoting the universal right to literacy, in particular in the light of the United Nations Decade for Literacy (2003 – 2012).
Objectives of the Action Plan
The UN has identified a certain number of objectives assigned to this Action Plan. They are enumerated as follows:
- to promote the apprenticeship of human rights in primary and secondary level teaching
- to support the elaboration, adoption and implementation of education strategies with regard to human rights which are ambitious, effective and viable, and to evaluate and adapt the existing initiatives in this area;
- to formulate directives of certain key components of human rights education in schools;
- to help regional, national and local organisations to propose their services to state members;
- to support the constitution of cooperative networks between local, national, regional and international organisations.
In this regard, the UN documents consulted are not very explicit. It is probable that the implementation of the Action Plan will be financed by voluntary contributions. In such a case, how will the Action Plan be applied in a consistent manner? The UN makes clear that human rights education can be financed by means of resources dedicated to the entirety of the national education system, in particular by optimising the funds already allocated to quality education in order to apply this Plan, by coordinating the external resources and their division in function of the measures enunciated in the Plan and by creating targeted partnerships between the public and private sectors. A notion that is apparent, in sum, in the notion of good governance. But will this be sufficient? Moreover the Plan foresees dispositions to support activities undertaken by non-governmental organisations. The resolution does not make clear the range or limit of these dispositions.
For EIP, the Plan of Action project is indispensable in light of the limited success of the Decade for human rights education that ended in 2004. This promising area also requires the obligation of the means and political will necessary in order to truly guarantee its realisation in the field.
References
”General Assembly Proclaims World Programme for Human Rights Education”
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/ga10317.doc.htm
”Plan of Action project for the first phase (2005-2007) of the proposed world programme for human rights education”
http://www.ohchr.org/english/issues/education/training/programme.htm
