For immediate release
26 March 2004
On 25 March Felisa Tibbitts, Executive Director of HREA, presented at a special meeting in Vienna of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Ms. Tibbitts provided an overview of human rights education in school curricula throughout Europe. Other key note speakers during the first day of the meeting were Ambassador Christian Stroha, Director of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, and Professor Katarina Tomasevski, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is the largest regional security institution in the world. Headquartered in Vienna (Austria), the organisation now includes all European nations, as well as Canada and the United States, and members from Central Asia. One of the priorities of the 2004 OSCE Chairmanship is human rights education and training.
This meeting will consider examples from the OSCE region on the integration of human rights education in school curricula, including the interrelation between human rights education and tolerance/non-discrimination. It will look at the preventive role of human rights education as an indispensable element in a long-term strategy to prevent hate crimes and phenomena like anti-Semitism, xenophobia, racism, genocide, etc. Furthermore, it will discuss the creation of National Human Rights Education Action Plans as recommended by the United Nations.