ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) in cooperation with HREA Director Felisa Tibbitts organised an intensive two-day training on good practice for introducing human rights education in schools for human dimension officers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The workshop took place on 5-6 April 2005 in Warsaw (Poland) and brought together participants from over a dozen countries throughout the OSCE region. “It was extremely exciting to bring together OSCE staff and to hear about their experiences and interests in carrying out human rights education in schools. Across the regions represented – including the Caucuses, Southeastern Europe and Central Asia – we found many shared concerns and strategies”, observed Ms. Tibbitts.
The aim of the workshop was to build the capacity of the OSCE field missions’ staff in developing and implementing human rights education (HRE) projects/programmes on a formal level. Sessions addressed topics such as HRE content, materials development, teacher training, participatory methods, working with partners and sustainability. Ms. Tibbitts co-facilitated the workshop with Alenka Bregant (EIP-Slovenia).
The training was a follow-up to the March 2004 OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting on human-rights education and training in Vienna. The OSCE is promoting human rights education in schools in keeping with the human dimension of its mandate and the organisation’s special interest to promote minority rights. The training and ensuing activities will add to the aims pursued by the World Programme for Human Rights Education and the European Year of Citizenship through Education to promote human rights education in school curricula.