[hr-education] Understanding Human Rights -- a new HRE manual

Dear colleagues,

Please find below the announcement for the new manual on human rights
education "Understanding Human Rights", elaborated by the ETC Graz for the
HSN with the support of the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Thank
you for the distribution.

Kind regards

Wolfgang Benedek and Minna Nikolova

--------------

UNDERSTANDING HUMAN RIGHTS
A new manual on human rights education

A new Manual on Human Rights Education entitled Understanding Human 
Rightshas just been published. The Manual has been elaborated by the 
European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (ETC) 
for the Human Security Network (HSN) on the initiative of the Austrian 
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Benita Ferrero-Waldner as the chair of 
the HSN during 2002/2003. Its objective is to assist human rights education 
efforts worldwide and to be used in different cultural settings, by human 
rights educators and learners, looking for a basic understanding of human 
rights hence the title.  The manual has been endorsed by the 5th 
Ministerial meeting of the HSN in Graz, Austria, from 8-10 May, 2003.

Experts from Argentina, Austria, Canada, Greece, India, The Netherlands, 
Mali, South Africa, Switzerland and the United States contributed to the 
manual, edited by Wolfgang Benedek and Minna Nikolova from ETC Graz. The 
ICRC provided a module on human rights in armed conflict and the People's 
Movement on Human Rights Education (PDHRE) and its network helped with 
general advice and enabled contributions, in particular from the South.

The manual intentionally is an open-ended work on which human rights 
educators and learners can base their efforts to further develop it and 
adapt it by introducing additional elements (modules) relevant to their own 
social environment and needs. For this purpose, the structure of the Manual 
deliberately allows for its very flexible use.

After an introduction to the system of Human Rights, which deals with a 
series of issues from the concept and nature of human rights and the 
different regional systems of protection of human rights to initiatives in 
the cities, there are 13 modules on selected human rights issues, ranging 
from the prohibition of torture and the freedom from poverty to the human 
rights of the child and human rights in armed conflict as well as 
democracy, which allow the educator or learner to start with his or her 
main interests.

Each module is structured in the same way, starting with an Illustration 
Story and continuing with a Need to Know section, which introduces the 
substance and context of the right and the instruments of implementation, a 
Good to Know section, which, inter alia, contains good practices, trends, 
inter-cultural perspectives and a chronology, and a Selected Activities 
section, which offers proposals for games, role plays or debates to be 
organized with learners, and finally a section on References and sources of 
further information.

A third part contains various additional resources like an overview of the 
most important literature and internet sources on human rights and human 
rights education and contact information for international and regional 
intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations active in the field of 
human rights, as well as other useful materials.

For convenience the Universal Declaration on Human Rights has been included 
as well as an introduction into the methodology of human rights education, 
a glossary of main terms and an index, which make this a manual which can 
also serve as a handbook for human rights educators and learners. The 
methodology specifically developed for this manual and the fact that in the 
introduction and in all the modules the relationship between human rights 
and human security has been given special consideration make it a unique 
contribution to its field.

Thanks to the support of the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs copies 
will be available from Austrian diplomatic missions, other distributors 
still to be defined like the OHCHR and the ETC. The conditions will be 
published on the ETC website soon. The manual, which has 336 pages, can be 
downloaded from the websites of the Ministry (www.bmaa.gv.at) and the ETC 
(www.etc-graz.at).

Translations are being prepared into the French, Spanish and German languages.

The editors welcome feedback and comments to: <office@etc-graz.at>.

__________________________________________________

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Benedek
Institut für Völkerrecht und Internationale Beziehungen
Universität Graz
Universitätsstr. 15/A4
8010 Graz
Austria
Tel: +43 316 380 3413
Fax: +43 316 380 9455



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