This article argues that citizenship education and human rights education can be understood as educational responses to specific social and political challenges in different national, regional and global contexts. It outlines four cases: the early German response of civic education; the late British response of citizenship education; the response of education for democratic citizenship (EDC) within the European framework of the Council of Europe; the response of human rights education (HRE) within the global framework of the United Nations and UNESCO. The article aims is to contribute to the necessary clarification of what is shared and what is different of EDC and HRE in this ongoing process of cooperation and integration between the two approaches in Europe.
