scholarly journals Human rights teaching: snapshots from four countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-30
Author(s):  
Carole L Hahn

This article examines how some schools with ethnically diverse student populations are teaching about, for, and through human rights. The author conducted a secondary analysis of qualitative data from a multi-site study, which included secondary schools serving students from immigrant backgrounds in four countries: Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (England and Scotland). The author found that schools taught about the history of human rights, rights in terms of national constitutions, and violations of human rights in the Global South; she observed fewer examples of human rights discourse addressing national and local issues.  Across schools, students experienced respect of their human rights, through voicing their opinions and contributing to school-level decisions primarily on school councils.  Some students developed knowledge, skills, and dispositions for exercising their rights and respecting others’ rights as they deliberated issues and took civic action locally and globally. 

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley Cragg ◽  
Denis G. Arnold ◽  
Peter Muchlinski

ABSTRACT:We provide a brief history of the business and human rights discourse and scholarship, and an overview of the articles included in the special issue.


2003 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

The quite complex problems of human and group survival in Africa do not easily lend themselves to diagnosis or solutions within the human rights frame of analysis. There are several reasons for this. Some arise from the recent and not–so–recent history of the continent, others are associated with the foundations and formulation of the human rights framework itself, and the rest with the orientation of those governments, individuals, and organizations involved in or entrusted with translating the promises of human rights into human reality. The invidious dichotomies within human rights discourse between civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and collective (solidarity) rights or the so–called “categories” or “generations” of human rights, with the attendant and implicit hierarchy among these categories of rights, fails to resonate with most people around the continent for whom contact with the state is a frightening prospect that defies such convenient intellectual categories.


2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Blakely

Abstract Charles Taylor’s latest collection of essays, Dilemmas and Connections, is the most recent installment in his development of a grand history of the rise of a modern, secular age. In this review, I show how the historical narrative that defines Taylor’s late work is in continuity with his earlier hermeneutic commitments, while also allowing him to advance new inquiries into areas as diverse as secularism, religion, nationalism, and human rights discourse. I do this by not only providing a succinct summary of Taylor’s master narrative, but also by arguing that it resolves a number of philosophical dilemmas.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 110
Author(s):  
Tholkhatul Khoir

<p>This article deals with the Islamic legal thought of Abdullahi Ahmed an-Na‘im from the sociology of knowledge approach. According to this approach, knowledge (including religious interpretation and practices) is sociologically, economically and politically determined. This article aims to understand how an-Na‘im’s Islamic legal thought is determined by his existence within social reality. This article concludes that an-Na‘im’s thought is determined by (1) socio-political and legal reality in Sudan, (2) Mahmoud Mohamed Taha who influenced his ideas, (3) British milieu, and (4) American environment which is politically secular, Islamo-phobic, racist, discriminative and intolerant towards Afro-Americans. The maturity of an-Na‘im’s thought is particularly influenced by the history of British colonialism in Sudan and his academic training in England, a place where human rights discourse develops as the result of post-enlightenment humanism and some major revolutions in Europe.</p>


Somatechnics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-314
Author(s):  
Debra Bergoffen

The history of human rights is ambiguous and uncertain. Appeals to rights have been used to secure the privileges of the powerful and to legitimate the status quo. Appeals to rights have been used to expose the evils of cruelty and oppression. Given this muddied history we cannot assume that calls for human rights will operate in the name of justice. Cognizant of this history, I argue that human rights discourses can be a force for justice if: (1) we read human rights demands as an attempt to respond to the experience of the destabilizing, destructive and incomprehensible forces that Lacan calls the Real and that Adriana Cavero calls horrorism; and (2) if we use human rights discourses to respond to the trauma of encountering this horror by defining the human dignity and bodily integrity that human rights claims are intended to protect in terms of the dignity and integrity of the vulnerable body. I argue that if we persist in fleeing our vulnerability by using human rights discourse to insist on our autonomous sovereignty we will perpetuate the cycle of violence endemic to human history.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 229-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Keane

This short comment assesses the situation of cartoons, comics and human rights after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. It engages questions on the meaning and history of cartoons, as well as freedom of expression, to find a new pathway beyond the parameters of the current debate. In particular, it asks why the protection of freedom of expression on Europe became contingent on drawing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. Rather than assigning a role for law in preventing such cartoons, or for freedom of expression in protecting them, it argues that desisting from drawing them would have no discernible impact. It highlights other means by which cartoons and comics can advance the human rights discourse, including pioneering comics authors in this regard. In conclusion it argues for an end to the largely dysfunctional terms of the debate and envisages a more progressive horizon.


Author(s):  
Mziwandile Sobantu ◽  
Nqobile Zulu ◽  
Ntandoyenkosi Maphosa

This paper reflects on human rights in the post-apartheid South Africa housing context from a social development lens. The Constitution guarantees access to adequate housing as a basic human right, a prerequisite for the optimum development of individuals, families and communities. Without the other related socio-economic rights, the provision of access to housing is limited in its service delivery. We argue that housing rights are inseparable from the broader human rights discourse and social development endeavours underway in the country. While government has made much progress through the Reconstruction and Development Programme, the reality of informal settlements and backyard shacks continues to undermine the human rights prospects of the urban poor. Forced evictions undermine some poor citizens’ human rights leading courts to play an active role in enforcing housing and human rights through establishing a jurisprudence that invariably advances a social development agenda. The authors argue that the post-1994 government needs to galvanise the citizenship of the urban poor through development-oriented housing delivery.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Mariane Morato Stival ◽  
Marcos André Ribeiro ◽  
Daniel Gonçalves Mendes da Costa

This article intends to analyze in the context of the complexity of the process of internationalization of human rights, the definitions and tensions between cultural universalism and relativism, the essence of human rights discourse, its basic norms and an analysis of the normative dialogues in case decisions involving violations of human rights in international tribunals such as the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and national courts. The well-established dialogue between courts can bring convergences closer together and remove differences of opinion on human rights protection. A new dynamic can occur through a complementarity of one court with respect to the other, even with the different characteristics between the legal orders.


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