[hr-education] Draft Plan of Action of World Programme for HRE

Dear colleagues,

I would like to return once more to the Draft Plan of Action for the first
phase (2005-2007) of the World Programme for Human Rights Education, since
it is still not adopted (as you know, General Assembly Resolution 59/113
"invites States to submit comments thereon to the Office of the High
Commissioner, with a view to its early adoption").

[***Moderator's note: The text of the Draft Plan of Action can be found in
PDF format at:
http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N04/570/51/PDF/N0457051.pdf?OpenElement
***]

In Annex, p.4 we can see that "Human rights are included both as an
educational aim and as quality criteria of education within key reference
texts such as the constitution..."

In my opinion, this statement is deeply incorrect and even dangerous since
it can be considered as an inducement to make changes in member states
constitutions. However, changing the constitutional acts is the sole
matter of the state sovereignty and the United Nations member states did
not empowered the United Nations to consider such issues (otherwise it
would be directly mentioned in the UN Charter). Even if we follow the
common logic, just the constitutional acts specify the place of
international law in the legal system of the particular state and the
bodies responsible for signing and ratifying international treaties, but
never vise versa. The subjects of international law are states, but each
state is based on its constitutional acts. So, constitutional acts are
initial and international treaties are derived. Therefore, it is
impossible for intergovernmental organizations to initiate or propose
constitutional changes in member states. It means, by the way, that the
current practice of CEDAW (which has recommended in its concluding
observations to the number of states to include the definition of
discrimination into their Constitutions) is out of international law.

Moreover, a lot of constitutions protect their chapters related to human
rights from any modifications, in case of such need the only way is to
develop and adopt a new Constitution (sometimes by a referendum). If the
right of United Nations to consider such issues is recognized, we can
receive the situation when a few number of UN experts can provoke a
constitutional crisis in any point of the world, in any time suitable for
them and only by their wish. Are we sure that we want such prospective?
Are we sure that this instrument will not be used for subjective purposes?

So, "the constitution," should be removed from the statement. No problems
with educational policy frameworks, educational legislation, national
curricula and programmes.

Well, 19 (c) (vi) of Annex: "Ensure that these resources conform to human
rights principles and relate to real-life situations by having them
reviewed by a specialized national team prior to publication".

It seems the preliminary censorship is proposed. Must human rights
education materials produced by NGOs (even for their own purposes) pass
such review? What is about distribution of powers between federal
authorities and parts of federal states in USA, Germany, Russia, Mexico,
Brazil and a lot of other countries? What is the principle of composing
the team? You know, Evgeniya Pavlenko and me have proposed such expert
examination in the draft Convention on Human Rights Education, but there
was no word that such examination should be preliminary and that it should
be an obligatory condition for publishing human rights materials.

In addition to that, the statement of p. 29 (c) of the Plan itself
("National, federal, local and state legislative bodies...") is not
correct. The word "states" is not applicable at least to federal parts of
Germany and Russia. It should be replaced by "all parts of federal States"
like in Article 50 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights.

Generally speaking, the draft Plan doesn't take into account the variety
of educational systems in the world. P. 29 (a) "Teachers' colleges and
faculties of education of universities;" cannot be applied to pedagogical
institutions of secondary professional education other than "colleges"
and/or to pedagogical institutions of higher professional education other
than "universities". It should be changed.

Sincerely yours,

Roman Sinelnikov




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