Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 04/2011

Human Rights Education in Peace-building: A Look at Where the Practice Has Come from, and Where It Needs to Head

Tracey Holland

December 2010

Human Rights & Human Welfare (University of Denver)

Abstract

The world’s peace-building and development organizations increasingly are incorporating human-rights frameworks into the myriad of activities now under their purview. Slower to develop, however, are the capacity-building programs designed to impart knowledge about human rights to citizens and communities. Field-workers throughout the world indicate that the lack of such guidance-giving education hinders them when it comes to monitoring activities, helping to rebuild public institutions, setting up and organizing electoral politics, building an unfettered media, protecting human security, setting up transitional justice mechanisms, and the myriad of other peace-building activities and democratization challenges they face in post-conflict situations. This paper not only explores this emerging field of the study and practice of human-rights education within the cross-national peace-building sphere by sharing the perspectives of educators around the world, but also considers a host of ideas that should help to advance the human-rights agendas of present and future post-conflict planners.