Human Rights Education Techniques
That Challenge and Transform Attitudes and Behaviors

Introduction

Although I have been involved with human rights since 1991 it was not until I served as a Human Rights Specialist for the United Nations Volunteer (UNV) program in Central Asia’s Kyrgyzstan that I began to grapple with issues of how a human rights educator transforms human rights from the international legal stratosphere to meaningful concepts in people’s daily lives.

During my time in Kyrgyzstan, 1996-1997, I had the opportunity to develop and teach the first in-depth UN sponsored human rights course in Central Asia—Human Rights and International Law Summer Course [hereafter HRIL Summer Course]—sponsored by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). This course, targeting first year university students in the region, aimed to encourage attitudinal and behavioral changes and hoped to provoke a life long interest in human rights education/advocacy.

The following human rights education/advocacy techniques constituted the foundation of my design for the HRIL Summer Course. Tested by the course, they proved highly effective. All subsequent human rights training that I have conducted has been based on this original design. Unfortunately, most human rights education/advocacys do not have the luxury of the month that the HRIL Summer Course had. Thus, I created three human rights education/advocacy exercises, developed from other human rights education/advocacy training sessions in Kyrgyzstan and Uganda, where I attempted to capture Principle Number Two of the human rights education/advocacy Techniques: (2) Action/Implementation of Knowledge, in an abbreviated form.

Human Rights Education/Advocacy Techniques

Human rights education/advocacy trainings may achieve a more lasting effect if the following techniques form the base of the course design. It is the combination of these three principles that offers a structural design conducive to generating more comprehensive understandings of what human rights are and why they are important in improving the quality of life of the average person. The length of time dedicated to each technique is flexible.

• (1) Information/Knowledge: A knowledge base that student will draw on in later activities is created at the beginning of the course by preparation of a series of human rights education/advocacy Subject Sessions. These might begin with lectures on basic human rights topics and themes that are particularly relevant to local/region conditions. The Subject Session also includes corresponding national and international human rights laws. Each human rights education/advocacy Subject Session is also supported by relevant subject and legal readings provided to the students in total at the beginning of the course. This allows an opportunity for the students to read the materials prior to the Subject Sessions. A Subject Session lecture is provided by the instructor which is then followed by (a) a large group question and answer session (Q&A) and (b) small-group discussions. The small group focus examines how the lecture relates to the student's own life, family, community, and country. This combination of reading, listening, questioning, and discussing is essential in processing and testing new ideas. The HRIL Summer Course had three weeks of Information/Knowledge sessions with lectures and Q&A in the morning followed by small group discussions in the afternoon.

• (2) Action/Implementation of Knowledge: Immediately following the Subject Sessions an intensive "human rights retreat" is initiated. Thus, the students are provided with an opportunity to live "in role" of the various actors involved in global human rights issues. This technique provides a crucial opportunity for students to feel, think, process, and test the concepts they have been reading and discussion. Putting these, hereto, one dimensional ideas of human rights into a living framework allows the students to understand the complexities of the issues and the human emotion involved in human rights violations and advocacy. Role-playing provides the human dimension to human rights education/advocacy.

• (3) Legal Tools/Resolution: The last component is a moot court (a mock or role-play or a trial). This legal exercise concludes the Human rights education/advocacy and allows the students the opportunity to research and put into practice the legal reality of the human rights advocacy efforts that they created during the simulation. Indeed, the combination of simulation and moot court provides the socio-political realities of human rights coupled with the legal decision-making process and ramifications. Thus, the court case must reflect the results of the simulation.

Human Rights Education/Advocacy Exercises

As mentioned, not every human rights education/advocacy can devote an entire month to training. Thus, when I was restricted to a tighter time frame, I began to search for ways to obtain the same effect of the techniques that made the HRIL Summer Course so successful only in a more condensed fashion. The following three simple exercises represent my best efforts to replace a long simulation exercise. These exercises can also be used in addition to an intensive simulation. Since these exercises require no electricity, paper, or supplies they can be conducted anywhere at anytime.

The objective of the exercises is to promote critical thinking about human rights education/advocacy reality and to prevent students from harboring comforting, yet erroneous, thoughts that they would never allow human rights violations to occur. This should encourage an understanding that daily life, small decisions, and seeming insignificant actions are the factors that increase or decrease an overall culture of human rights. These exercises also emphasis the responsibility all humans have in the enforcement of human rights, a vital component of human rights education/advocacy that is often neglected.

If performed in a series, with significant time separating each, the power of each exercise increases, as students will often claim that they would not "fail" if given another chance. Yet repeatedly, most students remain silent. Overall student non-action serves to re-enforce to the students (a) the difficulty in preventing human rights violations and (b) to reduce the belief that while all these human rights violations they are reading about are horrible if they had a chance they would have acted to prevent these violations.

Because these exercises can be disturbing, like the simulation a significant amount of supervised de-briefing is required post-exercise by the trainer. This debriefing, again like the simulation, should be an opportunity for the students to talk about their feelings and actions or non-actions without fear of judgement or criticism. The trainers should realize that these exercises consist of the trainer actively challenging the students on their beliefs and actions. The exercises are design to make the students think and that can be disturbing. Some students may react with hostility toward the trainer (s). Thus the trainer (s) must be prepared for this and must handle any hostility gently and with good humor.

Freedom Circle

The trainer gathers all students together in a circle and asks them to hold hands. One student is separated and placed out of hearing range (I usually pick a woman making this exercise also about women’s human rights education/advocacy). The trainer instructs the circled students that the separated student will be placed in the middle of the circle and that under no conditions are the circled students to allow the separated student out. The trainer then tells the separated student to go inside of the circle and await instruction. Once inside the circle the trainer walks away, leaving time for the students to become slightly nervous, and calls out to the separated student to follow because the trainer forgot an instruction. The separated student has never (at least not yet in my experience) been let through the circle by his/her fellow students. The trainer should continue to call for the student several times, with the student increasingly forcefully trying to break free at different points.

Before the energy level gets too high the trainer stops the exercise, leaving the circle intact with the separated student inside and asks, "Does the student inside the circle still have freedom of movement in theory?" Yes, should be the response if the trainer has previously taught about the inherent nature of universal human rights. "Does this student have freedom of movement in reality, right now?" No, is the answer. "Why," the trainer asks. After listening to answers the trainer asks, "so who/what gives that student their rights? Whose responsibility is it to ensure this student has the right of freedom of movement?" "Was it not all of you who took away that right in practice?" At this point, a student may say, "but you told us to do so." (If this question is not asked, the trainer may proceed to the next step anyway). The trainer then says, "Yes, I instructed you to restrict freedom but all of you failed your first human rights test because no one questioned my authority to make the rules, no one allowed the student to have the freedom of movement that is legally his/hers. All of you were compliant in helping me denying this student his/her human right. Finally, since she is a woman you have also violated women’s human rights. I would like you to think about how freedom of movement, including women’s, is restricted on a daily basis in your family/community/nation and what you are doing to prevent these violations. If you are not doing anything then are you also responsible for a human rights violation?"

First They Came For….

Former German naval lieutenant and U-boat commander, subsequently arrested and imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp, and adamant pacifist and advocate of reconciliation, Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem provides an excellent framework for a human rights education/advocacy exercise about the problem of non-action or by-standers.

by Rev. Martin Niemöller, 1945

The poem by Pastor Niemöller is read out by the trainer. As the trainer reads the poem he/she stops and points to a large section of the group and says, "You all represent Jews (Communist, trade unions, Catholics, etc.). Please lay on the floor (or sit in the corner, side etc.) you are dead." This is performed section by section following the lines of the poem until there is no one left except the trainer. There is a moment of silence and then trainer allows the group to reconvene and asks why no one stopped the trainer from killing each successive group?

Silence and Speech

This exercise requires tape. The trainer assigns minority grouping to various sections, i.e. Jewish, black or white, women, gays, etc. and according to local prejudices. Then the trainer hands out piece of tape to everyone. The trainer then points to a few people and says, "You , you, you, you (etc.) place your piece of tape of the person’s mouth sitting to your right." Again the trainer says, "You , you, you, you (etc.) place your piece of tape of the person’s mouth sitting behind you."

When a significant number of mouths have been taped there is a moment of silence and the trainer says, "These people who have been silenced represent minorities, i.e. women, black or white, etc. Think about their participation and contribution in the course this week (day, etc.). Was it valuable? Would the course have been worse without their participation? Would you, as a person, lose out by their lack of participation? Think about how often these people participate in decision-making in your society. If they are not represented do you think you are losing a valuable contribution? If your parliament is mostly men, white, black, etc. is your society losing out due to discrimination and/or human rights violations?"

The trainer can then proceed to call for the rest of the mouths to be taped. Usually at this point, someone refuses. The trainer should insist for a credible length of time to determine the level of resistance. Then the trainer should stop the exercise and congratulate the person(s) who resisted. If everyone allows freedom of speech to be violated then the questions delivered in the first and second exercises should be repeated, "why have you all allow me to silence people?" Discussion questions should also include an examination of active repression of speech, i.e. restrictions on press, expression, etc. as well as passive issue of representation, i.e. a lack of equity in official decision-making positions of minorities, etc.

Conclusion

Many of the students that I taught during my time in Kyrgyzstan, the majority being women, have gone on to work as human rights professionals. As they advance their careers and education they often contact me and relate two things. First, the human rights summer course changed their lives because it changed the way they thought about human rights their own ability to influence their family, community, country, and the world. Second, it was not until the simulation and role-plays that they began to really understand the concepts, value, and practice of human rights. It was often during the simulation when they decided to impart human rights practice and promotion in their daily lives. This, for me, is a true mark of success because as Eleanor Roosevelt has said, unless concepts of human rights have meaning in the small places of the world, the home, school, community, human rights have little meaning anywhere.

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Author Bio: L.M. Handrahan is director of The Finvola Group (www.finvola.com) a human rights and gender consulting group. She is completing a Ph.D. on U.S. democracy assistance and gendered ethnicity in Kyrgyzstan at The Gender Institute of The London School of Economics and Political Science. She can be reached at: L.M.Handrahan@lse.ac.uk for questions or comments.