Human Rights Education

Welcome to the Human Rights Education section of Amnesty International’s Irish web site. These pages aim to tell you everything you need to know about Human Rights Education in general, as well as providing specific resources that can be used to implement Human Rights Education programmes and activities within the school environment.

What is Human Rights Education?

Human Rights Education is about knowledge: knowing that human rights documents exist and which rights they contain, and that these rights are universally applicable to all human beings and inalienable. Knowledge also involves understanding the consequences of violating human rights. It is knowledge helps children to protect their own rights, the rights of others and the rights of their community.

Human Rights Education is about skills: listening to others, critical analysis, cooperating, communicating and problem solving. These skills help us to analyse the world around us, understand that human rights are a way to improve our lives and the lives of others and to take action to protect the rights of individuals and the community.

Human Rights Education is about attitudes: such as that human dignity is important, that we all have equal rights and responsibilities, that cooperation is better than conflict, that we are responsible for our actions, and that we can improve our world if we try. These attitudes help young people develop morally and prepare them for positive participation in society.’

''The human rights ideal represents a global civilization gift which we can pass on to the future generation now in our schools...it draws upon all world cultures and constitutes a building block for a world in the next millennium based on the value of human rights dignity for every person, as well as the values of freedom, justice and peace in an inter-dependant world.''
Mary Robinson

Teacher Training Workshops

September-October 2006

Get Teaching, Get Learning, Get Active!

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Cross-Border Conference on Human Rights Education

Inspiring Practice: Human rights education in primary schools

Friday 20th October 2006

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Human Rights Education Team

Amnesty's Human Rights Education (HRE) Team works in a targeted and strategic way to ensure that human rights education is promoted in key sectors in education in Ireland. A key aim of the HRE team is to support teachers in their role as the primary human rights educators and to provide opportunities for them to get involved at a level that suits them, both inside and outside the classroom.

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Control Arms – Human Rights Education

Every year, throughout the world, more than half a million people are killed by armed violence - that’s one person every minute. Every government around the world is responsible. Their lack of control on the arms trade is fuelling conflict, poverty and human rights abuses - worldwide.

The Control Arms campaign is asking governments to toughen up controls on the arms trade. Our Million Faces petition is collecting photos and self-portraits from around the world to reach our goal of one million faces by June 2006. We will use these faces to send a powerful, global message of support to the world's governments for an International Arms Trade Treaty.

Be one in a million. Join us today.

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Cross-Border Human Rights Education Conference

A cross-border Human Rights Education Conference was held on 20th October 2005 in Dublin Castle. The conference, entitled Teaching, Learning, Living Human Rights, was co-hosted by the Lift Off initiative, the Irish Human Rights Commission and the Northern Irish Human Rights Commission.

The conference, which was attended by teachers, policy-makers, teacher trainers, curricula developers and staff of NGOs and children’s organisations, was a huge success and provided an exciting platform for the exchange of ideas and information about human rights education in Irish schools, North and South of the border.

The aim of the conference was to encourage and promote human rights education and to engage professionals in reflecting on the challenges and opportunities involved in integrating a human rights perspective in education policy and practice.

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Lift Off Project

The Lift Off initiative is an exciting-cross border human rights education project for primary schools in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

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Words on Human Rights

Quote from Mary Robinson

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Human Rights Education News

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Essential Documents on Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child can be accessed here.

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Teachers' Corner

This section is dedicated to primary and post primary education teachers who wish to access useful resources, articles and classroom activities on HRE.

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Links

Human rights education resources and links

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