Comment from Richard Pierre Claude, editor or HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION FOR
THE 21st CENTURY (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998) and author of
EDUCATING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS; THE PHILIPPINES AND BEYOND (University of
Hawaii Press, 1997).
HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION FOR EMPOWERMENT
Non-formal education is used outside the school system by NGOs around
the world to assist people to develop knowledge and skills and to help
them meet their basic needs. Such programs often have empowerment as
their primary goal, but it may be blended with other objectives. Among
these purposes are those whereby NGOs attempt to:
* enhance knowledge about human rights, e.g., knowledge about the range of
constitutionally protected human rights as well as present-day
declarations, conventions and covenants.
* enable people to develop critical understanding of their life situation,
e.g., questioning the barriers and structures which prevent the full
enjoyment of their rights and freedoms.
* help in the process of value clarification, as thinking people reflect
on such values as fairness, equality, and justice.
* bring about attitudinal changes, e.g., teaching tolerance among and
between members of different ethnic and national groups.
* promote attitudes of solidarity, e.g., helping people recognize the
struggles of others both at home and abroad as our fellow human beings
seek to meet their needs and respond to violations of human rights.
* effect behavioral change, bringing about action that reflects people's
respect for one another, e.g., men behaving in nonabusive ways toward
women, government officials behaving respectfully toward citizens by
honoring everyone's human rights, etc.
When all or various combinations of these objectives have been met, the
achievement complements and helps to promote the most important general
goal of non-formal human rights education. That is empowerment which is
often the priority goal for NGOs concerned with community organizing and
grassroots programs of self-help.
A Definition and Example. Empowerment is a process through which
people and/or communities increase their control or mastery of their own
lives and the decisions that affect their lives. Empowering education
differs from most formal education traditionally designed to promote
knowledge and skills.
The scholarly literature on education for empowerment is not extensive,
partly because empowerment is seldom central to the concerns of
professional educators in the industrially developed democracies of the
"First World." It is best known and used with some exemplary results in
various "Third World" countries where the literature is philosophically
rich and politically grounded.
Pedagogy directed toward the goal of empowerment and seeking the
objective of reinforcing political efficacy on the part of participants
has been successfully used in various less developed and developing
countries relying on the methods of the late Brazilian scholar, Paulo
Freire: conscientization; dialogic teaching --discarding the role of
teacher as "know it all"; emphasis on student participation in the
defining of community needs; and reliance on the design of plans for
collective action to promote social transformation and to demonstrate
solidarity with those most in need. Perhaps paradoxically, Freire himself
avoided claims about the utility of his methods outside the cultural
framework of Latin American peasant populations in which he showed that
significant advances in literacy skills were possible in the context of
continual political-educational dialogue. In any event, Freire's
techniques have been adapted for use as empowerment pedagogies in other
Third World settings, most prominently in Asia where Clark, Dias, and Timm
have linked human rights education for empowerment to allied economic,
political and legal development objectives.
For example, empowerment is the stated objective of the non-formal
human rights educational work of PROCESS, a Philippine non-governmental
organization set up to help people learn and act upon their economic and
social rights, particularly in rural settings. The group's planning
usually takes place "on site" where they conduct community organizing
activities. They may typically target a small fishing village where
people are encouraged by PROCESS organizers to meet and define their local
needs and problems. At some point when maximum possible consensus is
achieved, the group introduces what they call their barefoot lawyers who
help to reinterpret needs in terms of rights, relating for instance, to
the unfair use of fishing licenses by absentee licensees. Having
conceptualized needs in terms of rights, the group then begins to talk
about, devise and select remedial strategies that include the systematic
collection of information, and action plans, e.g., the formulation of
petitions, the drafting of new legislation as well as litigation and
presentations by lawyers to administrative boards, etc. The open-ended
planning process involved in this example yields a bonus which formal
education too seldom does: it reaches the grass roots and involves people
in a community context in acquiring control over their own fates and
meeting their own needs on their terms.
Non-formal human rights education for empowerment does not treat
students simply as receptacles to be filled with useful ideas and
information, as if knowledge is an object to be received rather than a
continuous process of inquiry and critical reflection.
From the Participants' Point of View. Education for empowerment must
go beyond the acquisition of knowledge and operate from the premise that
humans not only have the ability to know reality, but they also have the
capacity for critical reflection and action. Therefore, education aimed
at developing this capacity must enable students to analyze the underlying
structures of an issue, action or experience, to unveil and apprehend its
causal relationships, and to discover the hidden motives or interests
which it conceals. To understand how any given policy benefits some and
harms others is an important step toward action. People need such
perspectives to deal with many issues, such as children exploited though
prostitution; farmers hurt by the diversion of water supplies; workers
toiling for 16 hours per day, not knowing the law that is designed to
protect them with maximum hours rules.
From the Facilitator's Point of View. Empowering education supplies
the means by which people deal critically and creatively with reality and
discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. To take
this goal seriously, HRE facilitators must use problem-posing techniques
whereby facilitators and participants are involved in a partnership of
mutual cooperation and in which the role of teacher as "know it all" is
abandoned.
The challenge for the facilitator is to accept an idea that is new
to many. That is the idea that the teacher/student dichotomy is dissolved
in a learning group in which all participate. Indeed, the teacher should
not even be referred to as such, but should adopt the role of a
facilitator who helps participants to do several things. For example, the
group members go through a process of consciousness-raising about their
needs as human beings and the circumstances in which they live. They
develop critical skills to assess their human rights and that of others.
They improve their abilities to analyze the obstacles and structures of
repression that stand in the way of enjoying rights and freedoms. They
develop the ability to analyze the causes of human rights violations and
to connect their learning with action. They become empowered to undertake
remedial actions. They become ready to learn more and acquire new skills
using law and human rights as instruments of change, development and
justice. They become empowered to share their learning with others and
"to pass on the word," echoing HRE for empowerment to ever wider circles
of participants.
Richard Pierre Claude, profclaude@aol.com
On Mon, 26 Jul 1999 Mori Minoru <mmforest@mxp.mesh.ne.jp> wrote:
> We had a conference in 1998 in Osaka entitled "International Conference
> on Human Rights Education in Asia-Pacific". During the conference we
> tried to formulate a human rights education strategy. Unfortunately we
> did not have enough time to finalize the document on the strategy and I
> want to introduce the draft of it. What do list members think about it,
> especially on the guiding principle of human rights education (2-b. of
> the following document)? I think that we need to develop such a kind of
>principle. If you have ideas or suggestions, would you please inform me?
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