Universal Human Rights Education for the Post-2015 Development Agenda

Abstract

Human rights education provides a unique approach to bringing the fields of law, education and international development together to work on the most important global human rights challenge of our time, the eradication of poverty. In the Charter of the United Nations (1945) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), nations around the world committed to promote education, human rights and social progress as means to eradicate poverty and achieve global peace. Since the turn of the Millennium, human rights scholars and practitioners have advocated specifically for the integration of human rights into the framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which set the international development agenda for 2001-2015. While they were largely unsuccessful in securing a human rights-based approach to the MDGs, the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which establish the 2016-2030 agenda, are more promising. In this context, this chapter proposes comprehensive universal human rights education during the compulsory years of schooling as an integral part of the SDG framework because human rights education is required by international law, it is effective in building a culture of respect for human rights and it will build bridges between law, education and international development communities toward the common aims of eradicating poverty, realizing human rights and achieving global peace.