Education is a concern of the international community, in particular with regard to human rights, equality of opportunity, cultural diversity, i.e. issues of education in multicultural societies. Since 1948, several international legal texts have been adopted which contain references to the promotion of intercultural education. For the most part, these texts belong to the category of human rights instruments that have been drafted within the framework of international organizations such as the United Nations, UNESCO and the Council of Europe. These texts are probably well-known to human rights lawyers. The public at large, professionals working in the field of (intercultural) education and politicians, however, tend not to be familiar with this kind of written legal material. In national legislation and official policy papers there is hardly ever a reference to international norms that pertain to this subject. This chapter seeks to trace the legal character of international documents on intercultural education in order to answer the question: how important are these texts to the cause of promoting intercultural education? The following legal questions will be answered: at first, what obligations, if any, do these documents imply for governments? And secondly, what is their value at the grass-roots level, i.e. for students, parents, teachers, schools, universities and non-governmental organizations? In section 2 a number of relevant international human rights texts are briefly analysed from the perspective of intercultural education. Section 3 discusses the legal character of international instruments with special reference to treaties, recommendations and so-called “political” documents. And lastly, in section 4, some concluding remarks on the practical value of these documents for the grass-roots level are made.
