Human rights institutions to strengthen standards on Human Rights Education

Among national human rights institutions, there is a common understanding of the importance of human rights education in realising a universal culture of human rights. But there is less of a common ground on what the best approach to achieving results is.

“National human rights education interventions have the risk of becoming random and scattered and in the worst case of too low quality and impact. We NHRIs need to start to get together to set common standards on human rights education and to strengthen our strategic approach with a focus on long term impact. For that we need networks to share our best practice experiences in order to learn from each other and create synergies,” Senior Advisor at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Maria Løkke Rasmussen explains.

Symposium leads to action

The idea of stronger networking and cooperation was supported in Copenhagen in the winter of 2014 when 22 specialists among the Danish Institute for Human Rights’ partners and contacts from the community met. Among the participants were representatives from the national human rights institutions in Australia, Egypt, Denmark, Germany, Kenya, Mongolia, South Africa, Uganda and Ukraine as well as several key international actors.

A survey conducted prior to the symposium and the recommendation report coming out of the symposium underlines the appetite for common standard setting and greater cooperation. Hence, it is top priority to keep the momentum within the network.

“We will continue to facilitate the process in the coming years by supporting the development of human rights education strategic planning tools and methodologies in cooperation with sister NHRIs. The tools we will test and further develop in ongoing symposium workshops and through online networking,” Maria Løkke Rasmussen, who also organised the symposium, underlines.

That this is not just a fancy idea is evident in the commitment shown by all the participants from the symposium. This leads Maria Løkke Rasmussen to have high hopes for the future.

“In five years’ time it is my hope that NHRIs share a common vision for our national human rights education interventions and that a set of standards are in place. Then it will no longer be a dream that we share methodologies and best practices. Instead we can easily log into databases with interventions and tools already tested by sister institutions.”