Lessons Learned from ... Sri Lanka: A Survey of Human Rights Education

In Sri Lanka as in other parts of Asia, human rights education is undertaken by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in both the nonformal (community-based) and formal (school-based) sectors. It is a response to the political and social turmoil that has enveloped the country since 1971. The increase in the cost of living, unemployment, and the use of political patronage to get jobs were among the causes of the youth unrest that precipitated the 1971 Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP, or People’s Liberation Front) insurrection. In the 1980s, the State, the Sinhalese nationalist forces, and Tamil nationalist groups came to regard armed confrontation as the only way to resolve ethnic antagonisms.1987 saw the second JVP insurrection. The democratic institutional environment came under pressure as the government cracked down on all opposition. Civil society found its negotiating space severely restricted. Even at the beginning of the 1990s, it was unsafe to talk in public about democratic principles of governance and human rights. The involuntary disappearance and killing of persons suspected of antigovernment activities became an ordinary occurrence, pushing NGOs to raise public awareness of human rights.

The 1980s witnessed the growth of NGOs, which may be divided into two major communities:

* development NGOs, whose work focuses on justice and equity issues; and
* human rights NGOs, which emphasize issues related to liberty. NGOs working on women, children, peace, and ethnic issues are the emerging third bloc, although they move between the two sides of the continuum depending on their programs’ emphasis.

Human rights NGOs are different from development NGOs in the sense that they usually operate at the national level and within the State’s judicial structure. Most human rights NGOs are located in the capital Colombo and other cities. Consciously or not, they emphasize civil and political rights. Lawyers dominate them, making the human rights approach legalistic and litigation oriented. It cannot be denied that legalism has its merits in pressuring the courts to lay down legal parameters for State action with respect to fundamental and human rights. However, the limits to this approach became apparent when the groups started to embark on massive human rights education programs for the formal and nonformal sectors.

In-depth interviews with human rights education practitioners and activists reveal that they see their activities as a process of teaching human rights concepts and values to the general public to arm it against violations.

Human rights education programs in Sri Lanka may be characterized as formal, non-formal, and informal. Formal human rights education programs are found in school, either integrated into ordinary-level (O-level) classes, particularly in social studies and history, or offered as a choice for individual projects required of advanced-level (A-level) students.

Informal human rights education is usually unstructured and ad hoc. It is directed at a much larger audience through the use of theater, public campaigns, radio programs, or informal conversations. This method is not yet fully used. Nonformal human rights education is usually undertaken by NGOs to reach grassroots communities. Target groups are more diverse and often sectoral. Workshops and trainings are usually organized for diverse audiences.

Sri Lanka initiated its human rights education in schools as early as 1983 through the efforts of the Sri Lanka Foundation (SLF). Almost all human rights NGOs have human rights education programs in schools, with identified school centers. They have penetrated schools in cooperation with either the Ministry of Education or its respective provincial offices. The ministry itself identified the participating school centers, the  principals, and teachers who will coordinate the project.

Nonformal human rights education began as legal education in the aftermath of massive human rights violations in the 1980s and early 1990s. Recipients of human rights education vary from human rights activists or professionals (who have gone through the diploma course of the Institute for Human Rights, for example) to community leaders (who trained under the Centre for the Study of Human Rights-University of Colombo and Lawyers for Human Rights and Development, for example). Other target groups include government officials, public servants, and gramaniladharisthe elected village leaders. But the lectures are not at all like the long-term community needs-based education programs of developmental NGOs. It is also worth noting that human rights NGOs are criticized for not reaching the interior because most of them are situated in Colombo and other cities.

In summary, both the nonformal and formal human rights education programs use lectures and discussions to teach human rights. Lectures and discussions are enhanced by field visits and role playing. The schools also use informal methods such as campaigns, quiz bees, Human Rights Day celebrations, and the like. Nonformal human rights education uses other strategies such as radio and theater. A small portion of the human rights NGO community is calling for more specialized human rights education to address the psychosocial trauma of those whose rights have been directly violated.

In schools, apart from the non-curricular NGO human rights education activities, the teaching of human rights is integrated into history and social studies subjects in Years 6-11. Textbooks have been revised to enlarge human rights content. However, most of the chapters on human rights appear at the end, and teachers often fail to cover them. In 1995, the SLF sponsored and supported the preparation of the Teachers Manual for Human Rights Teaching, which is made up of 29 teaching modules for grades 5 to 10. Teaching human rights is not yet part of the regular curricular programs of teacher training colleges.

The definition of human rights education as merely a process of teaching human rights concepts and values to enable the general public to become aware of human rights is flawed. Psychological, cultural, and systemic factors contribute to human rights violations, implying that human rights education must go beyond raising awareness to fostering values and skills that will change both individual beliefs and organizational systems that infringe on human rights. Human rights education is not, therefore, merely the teaching of human rights concepts and values but rather a life-long process of reflection and critical analysis of personal and social experiences using the ideals and concepts of human rights as standards to evaluate them.

Sustainable and regular human rights training programs for teachers are generally lacking. Of the programs’ shortcomings, the most glaring are:

* not including teacher training colleges in activities to institutionalize human rights in the schools and
* not treating teachers’ unions, parents and teachers’ associations, and school administrators as strategic partners.

It is also important to note here that human rights programs in schools are best introduced at the ordinary-level rather than the advanced-level, considering that only 26% of those who take the advanced-level exam actually hurdle it.

Community Based Organizations (CBOs) should be approached by human rights NGOs for help in reaching the communities. It is probably about time that human rights NGOs employ non-lawyers such as educators, community development practitioners, social workers, and the like, and train them as animators, community developers, or organizers.

Using lectures and discussions to deliver human rights education is not bad per se, but the assumptions of human rights education practitioners should be reexamined. Integrating human rights into the curriculum without changing the basic philosophical and theoretical assumptions of the whole educational system would reduce human rights to another subject matter to be “learned.” If NGO workers enter the school system armed only with their “expertise” in human rights as a body of knowledge but without an appreciation of the dynamics, science, and theory that underlie the school system, human rights education itself will be engulfed by the malaise that plagues the school system. Enhancing the school curriculum with human rights concepts and values without enriching educational and learning processes will have limited effect down the road.

In nonformal human rights education, educators have more room to maneuver because there is no curriculum to follow. However, lawyers often adopt a very structured lecture-and-discussion method, and the banking method discussed above is often replicated in nonformal human rights education.

It is disheartening that transformative educational programs are fragmented. I can only conjecture that such fragmentation may be traced to weak coordination among peace, environmental, development and human rights, and women’s NGOs themselves. Strikingly absent is some semblance of systematic analysis of Sri Lankan society. Why are there human rights violations? Why is there conflict? Why is there underdevelopment? Why are there gender inequality and a long list of other whys? What is the thread that links all these issues together? Perhaps it is the absence of a theory.

Felicia I. Yeban is a staff member of the Center for Peace, Gender and Human Rights Education, Philippine Normal University (Philippines). She is a member of HREA's International Advisory Committee. This is a summary of an article that was just published under the title "The Human Rights Education Situation in Sri Lanka" in Human Rights Education in Asian Schools. Volume Four, recently published by the Asia-Pacific Human Rights Information Center (Osaka, 2001). The full text of the book is available at the HREA web site at: 
http://www.hrea.org/erc/Library/curriculum_methodology/hurights01.html
The article is based on a survey commissioned by The Asia Foundation in September 1999.