[hre-asiapacific] Re: Pedagogy/methodology of HRE

Dear All,

I work with UN Office for Human Rights in Angola as Human Rights Assistant
in charge of formal and informal education of human rights. I would like to
seize this opportunity to share with you all some of my concerns about HRE.

Human rights education pedagogy shall be applied in other subjects, it is a
democratic approach which should strengthen the rights-based education
consisting of full participation and interaction of the involved students,
teachers, parents and school staff. This approach is very new within
Angolan teaching systems. As you may be aware, it has gone through
different constraints, democracy is not yet healthy, elections were held
once in more than fifteen years. Angola's civil war lasted more than three
decades, one may imagine the number of human rights violation in a such
long period of turbulence.

Luckily, we are in peace since April 2002. Angola is consolidating its
tender peace and is trying to catch up with international standards to
enforce rule of law, democracy, elections and respect of human rights. But
there is a long way to go. There are some civil society organizations
promoting human rights awareness, but the human rights is not a priority
within the Government officials some see it as opposite to them and their
interests.

The United Nations Office for Human Rights is trying to assist the Ministry
of Education in the inclusion of human rights education in scholar
curriculum. This is very challenging and for us, teachers require training
on human rights education approach and the curriculum need to be reviewed
as it reduces human rights action to private sphere emphasizing individual
duties - leaving outside the public responsibility. Sharing of experienced
people from other countries in this regard would be very useful. Materials
from Portuguese speaking countries could be an asset for teachers training
and school books.

Maria Antonio Borges Da Cunha
Angola
E-mail: <     >




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