THE ROLE OF ARAB UNIVERSITIES IN THE EDUCATION, PROMOTION AND PRACTICE OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Notre Dame University, Louaize – Lebanon (20 to 22 May 2010)
RATIONALE AND CHALLENGES OF HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION (HRE) IN UNIVERSITIES
Dr. Elie Abouaoun
Lecturer (Human rights & Citizenship) at Saint Joseph University, Beirut Lebanon
Member of the board – “Association Libanaise pour l'Education et la Formation” (ALEF- Act for Human rights)
A- Overview of HRE
In 1993, the UN World conference on Human Rights held in Vienna declared that HRE is “essential for the promotion and achievement of stable and harmonious relations among communities and for fostering mutual understanding, tolerance and peace”. In December 1994, the UN General Assembly proclaimed the UN Decade for HRE (1995-2005).
In theory it is the responsibility of governments to inform their citizens about the Human rights instruments. However, this minimum obligation is not generally taken seriously by governments; for various reasons ranging from financial, technical but also political and security considerations.
But can HRE be boiled down to the sole “dissemination of information to the citizens”?
HRE is a long term endeavour aimed at establishing a culture where human rights are understood, defended and respected. Accordingly, this implies expanding HRE at all levels, including the formal education. In general there is much less attention to the university level compared to the focus put on the secondary school level; because a lot of HRE initiatives assumed that the pay back from the focus on schools and popular education is much greater if compared to the one from formal HRE in the universities.
In this context, the universities took more the direction of establishing training and/or research centres and it was only at a later stage that human rights curricula started to be developed in the formal education set-ups. To the best of my knowledge, no specific studies are available on HRE initiatives in the Arab world but it is evident that the presence of human rights courses has increased over the last 10 years. It is worth to note however that most, if not all HRE initiatives in the Arab region, were started and are still lead by NGOs and to a lesser extent by Academia. The involvement of the NGOs is crucial to the success and sustainability of HRE programmes (this will be explored further in the course of the article). Nevertheless, this involvement needs to be in the framework of a collaborative and balanced approach between both the Academia and the NGOs.
B- Rationale & linkages to active citizenship
The contemporary societies in which we are living, and in particular the youngsters, are increasingly confronted by violence, social exclusion, religious/ethnic issues and by the challenges resulting from the globalisation. HRE addresses these important issues and contributes to shape the different perceptions, beliefs, attitudes and values of a modern multi-cultural society. In brief, it helps (or at least strive to help) individuals to find ways of using such differences in positive ways.
Young people are often criticised for being apathetic and uninterested in politics. They remain nevertheless an important actor in today’s society, mainly in the labour market and civil society. Based on an ongoing interaction with youngsters in Lebanon and the region, it is not difficult to state that their main concern, right after their worries over employment opportunities, is to see their rights better protected. This could be the reason why youngsters put energy and commitment to causes related to human rights if they are involved in what they do/learn, and how they do/learn it. So the key to involve them is participation.
If HRE is the long term endeavour aiming at establishing a culture where human rights are understood, defended and respected, these notions are better conveyed if they are dealt with at many levels. In this context, the formal, non-formal and informal HRE systems are complementary and mutually reinforcing elements of a lifelong learning process. They are therefore of equal importance and interdependent. At the core of HRE is the development of critical thinking and the ability to handle conflict and take action as well as the encouragement of solidarity-based activities; and the average age of university students is ideal to develop these attributes. Young people can make a direct difference to the world around them. Therefore, HRE should become part of the educational strategies and policies (when they exist of course)
C- Challenges in the Arab World
In fact, the opportunities and challenges related to HRE (as for all other things) are quite different from country to country but some of them could be common to many of the Arab countries. The existence and development of HRE depend pretty much on the political, security, social…contexts in a given country. Non-restrictive political contexts do create specific opportunities to establish and develop HRE programmes, including at the university level.
According to the pioneer of HRE in Lebanon (Dr. Wael Kheir), establishing a stand-alone HRE programme without linking it to a NGO is like having a school of medicine without linking it to a hospital. Thus, the difficulty to bridge the gap between the NGO and the Academia in the Arab world delayed the development of such programmes in the region. This difficulty is not only related to the absence of cooperation platforms between the academia and the NGOs, but rather to the few number of rights based groups in some countries, (sometimes, they don’t even exist) and the limited scope of their work in many cases.
When some activists tried to establish HRE programmes in Lebanon, they had to overcome a firm perception that such programmes should be confined exclusively to law schools and lawyers. Fifteen years later, it is much easier to find inter-disciplinary HRE programmes located in a number of faculties. Yet, HRE remains undervalued by most of the universities, the professors and the students in most of the Arab countries.
HRE is not about studying merely the legal framework of human rights, but considering the implications of this ethical framework to any professional practice. Therefore, it is needless to say that there is still a huge need to support the expansion and sustained institutionalization of HRE within the Arab universities. This includes amongst other things:
o Finding the right balance between the theoretical and practical parts of HRE programmes including field components
o Linking HRE to the professional practices of the students
o Finding training opportunities for faculties’ staff
o Developing research programmes
o Production of resources adapted to the context of the region
It is sad to realize that HRE is generally underfunded compared to other human rights conventional interventions and this hinders the process of expansion and institutionalization.
D- Students & Professors
Students are the link between HRE at the university level and the human rights movement. The integration of human rights themes into university courses will help these same students to mainstream human rights values into their professional careers
On another hand, the stakeholders of the labour market need to recognize HRE as a valuable component of university education and further more as a factor in career development. This will have a positive impact on the perception of HRE at the students and popular levels.
The other link between HRE at the university level and the human rights movement are the professors. If there are increasing numbers of HRE courses and programmes, then it is fair to assume that there are higher numbers of professors involved in this sector. This brings back the necessity to establish linkages between the academia and the NGOs to overcome the challenge of the scarcity of resources for university professors; resources that they can draw upon in designing the elements of HRE programmes, including syllabi, textbooks, networks, trainings and scholarly publications. One indispensable element at the level of the Arab region is the absence of university-to-university cooperation. This type of bridges will contribute to the support and personal nurture required for the faculties’ staff so that they can come up with creative ideas.
E- Impact and sustainability
At this stage, there is little or no information about the impact and sustainability of HRE programmes, namely the impact of these programmes on the students’ knowledge and attitudes. The assumption is that effective human rights education needs to be, above all, learner-centred: it has to begin from the needs, preferences, abilities and desires of each person, within each society because no one educational approach will suit all individuals, groups, or societies.
A learner-centred educational approach recognises the value of personal action and personal change and also takes into account the social context of the learners. However, this does not mean that educators have to work in isolation, or that they cannot learn from others who may be working in different contexts. The growth of HRE programmes at the university level coincides with the institutionalization of HRE at the international level. Unfortunately, nothing similar is happening at the regional level. The most pressing questions in our context are:
o What kind of HRE courses, degree programmes ... are currently available and to whom?
o What kind of teaching methods are being used?
o What about the changes that these programmes are inducing on the direct beneficiaries (students) and the indirect ones (the students’ families, friends, close community...)
Until very recently, all civil society initiatives, including human rights groups in the Arab Region were based on volunteerism. The problem is not volunteerism, but the prevailing perception that volunteerism leads definitely to poor performance, lack of accountability, unprofessional attitudes...etc. HRE needs to shift to a more professional level and for this, the HRE practitioners need to reflect, individually and collectively on a set of crucial questions with the aim of supporting the expansion and institutionalization of HRE.
