Youth for Human Rights

Transnational Human Rights Education (HRE) Mapping

Table of contents

Intro

“Youth for Human Rights”

Policy context and impact

This transnational HRE mapping

HRE in YiA -Erasmus+

Quantitative thematic analysis

Training of trainers

Brief description of courses

Analysis and lessons

Further needs and what is missing

Training of youth workers

Brief description of courses

Analysis and lessons

Further needs and what is missing

Educational resources

Brief description of the resources

Analysis and lessons

Further needs and what is missing

Final remark

Intro

“Youth for Human Rights”

“Youth for Human Rights” is a project developed in the frame of the Erasmus + Programme[1] of the European Commission.

The project partners are eight National Agencies (NA)[2] of the Erasmus + Programme; Foundation Archimedes - Estonian NA (Leading Partner), “JUGEND für Europa“- German NA, Agence du Service Civique - French NA, Interkulturelles Zentrum - Austrian NA, YIA-BEFL – JINT- Belgian/Flemish NA, IUVENTA – Slovak Youth Institute - Slovak NA, Agency for Mobility and EU Programmes Agencija za mobilnost i programme Euopske unije -Croatian NA, and Jaunatnes starptautisko programmu aģentūra - Latvian NA.

The project stems from the need to promote social inclusion and to mainstream HRE in the field of youth fully using the potential of youth work – and of HRE in the context of youth work and young people’s non-formal learning.

To be able to do that, the project aims to make sense of its already existing abundance of HRE resources and educational concepts/modules, and benefit from the exchange of HRE actors and networks to develop meaningful and efficient educational modules.

The project pursues the following three objectives:

  • To improve understanding of HRE in the field of youth and supporting young people’s acquisition of social, civic and intercultural competence
  • To support youth workers, trainers and other practitioners in the field of youth in using HRE to address issues that directly affect social cohesion, such as inclusion and diversity
  • To improve the quality of youth practice, and of activities undertaken as part of young people’s non-formal learning (such as, volunteering), through networking and capacity-building

The foreseen project outcomes are:

  • Gathering and analysing data about HRE state of play, key actors, concepts and resources in national and international context - 8 national and 1 transnational reports about HRE state of play, key actors, concepts and resources in national and transnational context
  • Adapting and developing HRE related training and education modules - 3 human rights education training modules developed for local, regional, national and transnational youth workers and youth leaders, and compilation of recommendations for human rights education curricula
  • Capacity building of actors in the youth field on HRE and support to thematic network development:
  • training of trainers - 32 trainers-of-trainers trained on HRE in the field of youth
  • training of youth workers - 320 youth workers trained on HRE in the field of youth,
  • training of Erasmus+ NA staff - 24 Erasmus+ National Agencies staff are trained on HRE in the field of youth

This outcome is supported by carrying through a RAY Network[3] survey “Competence development and capacity building on HRE in the field of youth”

  • Communicating and disseminating project results, and compiling of policy recommendations
  • Increase of number of Erasmus+ projects on HRE in the field of youth
  • 100 stakeholders participate in an European conference
  • Compilation and communication of policy recommendations
  • Project evaluation

Policy context and impact

The “Youth for Human Rights” project is being developed in a context in which Human Rights (HR) and Human Rights Education (HRE) in the youth field are important in the political agendas of the European Union and of the Council of Europe.

In the European Union the2012 strategic framework on human rights and democracy[4]was designed to make EU human rights policy more effective and consistent.

More recently the EU Education Ministers adopted in Paris on 17 March 2015 the “Declaration on promoting citizenship and the common values of freedom, tolerance and non-discrimination through education“. This declaration defines common objectives for Member States and urges the EU to ensure the sharing of ideas and good practice with a view to:

  • Ensuring that children and young people acquire social, civic and intercultural competences, by promoting democratic values and fundamental rights, social inclusion and nondiscrimination, as well as active citizenshipEnhancing critical thinking and media literacy, particularly in the use of the Internet and social media, so as to develop resistance to all forms of discrimination and indoctrination;
  • Fostering the education of disadvantaged children and young people, by ensuring that our education and training systems address their needs;
  • Promoting intercultural dialogue through all forms of learning in cooperation with other relevant policies and stakeholders.

Since in 2010 the charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights [5]was adopted as a text that supports the prevention of human rights violations by strengthening the culture of human rights, the Concil of Europe has developed an intensive agenda in relation to human rights education. In the youth field the elaboration of Compass, the multiple training courses at european and at national level, the 1st and 2nd HRE fora were crucial for a very important development of HRE. In the last two years the education for democratic citizenship and human rights educationwas marked by the following initiatives:

  • In the 25th Conference of Ministers of Education (Brussels, 2016), the ministers undertook to support the development of a long-term strategy for education for democratic citizenship and human rights at European level. The Ministers also endorsed the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture and requested the Council of Europe to consider ways of increasing the impact of the charter.
  • The 3rd Compass Forum on Human Rights Education (Budapest, 2016), provided initial input and proposals from non-governmental partners and governmental experts and called for the continuation of the Human Rights Education Youth Programme.
  • The „Learning to live together“ Conference on the future of Citizenship and Human Rights Education in Europe, in June 2017, explored the current challenges and opportunities, shared examples of good practices and lessons learned, and proposed recommendations for future action, including specific criteria and mechanisms for evaluation of progress, in particular in the framework of the Council of EuropeCharter on Citizenship and Human Rights Education.

In this very briefly described European policy context “Youth for Human Rights” aims to have an impact at policy level and contribute to strengthen, tocontribute to further develop and to contribute ensure the implementation of the current initiatives of the European Union and the Council of Europe in the field of HRE.

At national level “Youth for Human Rights” should contribute to the design and implementation of HRE strategies in the youth sector, to the inclusion of HRE as part of the education and further training of youth workers and to the current work of the Eramus+ NAs for promoting HR through youth work.

This transnational HRE mapping

The overall aim of this transnational study is to gather and analyse data about HRE state of play, key actors, concepts and resources in international context. Its objectives are:

  • To identify the best practices of existing training concepts of (1) training of trainers, and (2) training of youth workers, as well as (3) educational resources on HRE on transnational level
  • To identify the further needs and what is missing (e.g. resources or training needs of key actors) from the ‘current menu’ of existing concepts, approaches, actors, and educational resources on HRE in the field of youth on transnational level, through mapping and focus groups of experts

The scope of this mapping (see in the intro of the following sections) was set in consultation with the project coordinator, the Estonian national agency for the Eramus+ programme. In the first section there is a quantitative analysis of the YiA Erasmus + project in relation to Human Rights. In the following chapters there is a qualitative analysis (as case studies) of the most relevanttraining of trainers and training of youth workers courses and of educational resources. Their analysis in depth allows the exploration of their differences and complementarities and the identification of what is missing in HRE at transnational level.

Miguel Ángel García López, author of this transnational synthesis is an experience consultant, evaluator and trainer in the field of Human Rights Education at European level.

HRE in YiA -Erasmus+

HRE, as such has not been an explicit priority of the YiA – Eramus + programme. Just a very detailed analysis of the YiA – Eramus + programme activities could reveal until which extend participants and organisations made or not a clear and intentional link to HR. But a simple analysis of their titles now show that in almost all casesthey were activities related with HR issues.

Certainly it is not enough exploring HR related issues for an educational activity to be considered a HRE activity. But they are in all cases activities for young people run by young people and the methodologies are active, participatory and action oriented. Additionally quite often youth workers, trainers are participants and/or leaders of those activities and a big number of educational materials are produced during those projects dealing with HR related issues.

Therefore, without automatically concluding that YiA – Eramus + projects are HRE projects a brief analysis of some key tendencies can help us to better understand the specific interests of young people and their needs to gain competences on HR issues.

Quantitative thematic analysis

In the following table we can see the statistics of the typology of the Erasmus + projects in for the eight NAs participating in this project since 2014. The projects at times, explored more than a single topic. That is the reason why the sum of percentages is higher than 100%.

KA1 / KA2 / KA3
TOPIC / Nr / %of projects / Nr / %of projects / Nr / % of projects
Disadvantaged young people / 2.513 / 13,1% / 87 / 6,9% / 60 / 6,8%
Disabilities / 1.471 / 7,6% / 36 / 2,9% / 21 / 2,4%
Enhance social inclusion, equal opportunities and participation in sports / 174 / 0,9%
Environment and climate change / 2.110 / 11,0% / 44 / 3,5% / 25 / 2,8%
Ethics, religion and philosophy (incl. Inter-religious dialogue) / 494 / 2,6% / 6 / 0,5% / 9 / 1,0%
EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy / 5.731 / 29,8% / 115 / 9,2% / 408 / 46,2%
Fighting discrimination and intolerance, usage of drugs/doping, match fixing, violence in sports / 71 / 0,4%
Gender equality / equal opportunities / 820 / 4,3% / 28 / 2,2% / 42 / 4,8%
Home and justice affairs (human rights &rule of law) / 365 / 1,9% / 11 / 0,9% / 29 / 3,3%
Inclusion - equity / 4.109 / 21,4% / 159 / 12,7% / 92 / 10,4%
Integration of refugees / 497 / 2,6% / 33 / 2,6% / 12 / 1,4%
Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning / 4.043 / 21,0% / 69 / 5,5% / 36 / 4,1%
International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation / 2.209 / 11,5% / 99 / 7,9% / 42 / 4,8%
Migrants' issues / 487 / 2,5% / 34 / 2,7% / 10 / 1,1%
Post-conflict/post-disaster rehabilitation / 174 / 0,9% / 1 / 0,1% / 1 / 0,1%
Romas and/or other minorities / 631 / 3,3% / 13 / 1,0% / 12 / 1,4%
Social dialogue / 1.841 / 9,6% / 44 / 3,5% / 157 / 17,8%
Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) / 9.194 / 47,8% / 475 / 37,9% / 667 / 75,5%

Logically, youth participation - youth work – youth policies are of the highest interest for young people. After it the highest percentages are for Democracy-Citizenship and Social Inclusion. Those are topics directly linked to the classical civic, political and social rights and are the expression of a holistic understanding and concern for HR.

Intercultural education follows them as a basis/approach in international projects. And then, there is a big diversity of issues and target groups. Those could be considered “specialised” projects responding to the specific HR challenges that young people want to overcome in their contexts.

Young people and youth organisations are sensitive and attentive to the emerging HR issues in society and at policy level. An example of that would be Germany were around 20% of the projects are linked to the Paris Declaration on promoting citizenship and the common values of freedom, tolerance and non-discrimination through education.

From this brief analysis we can conclude that among the actors and beneficiaries on the Eramus + projects there is a consistent practice on educational activities that could be related to HR. There is no “evidence” on how generalised, intentional, deep or explicit the link with HR was. But certainly it could be. There is at the same time a big diversified interest in relation to HR issues. All those elements could indicate that there is an adequate broth for HRE activities within the YiA programme.

Training of trainers

After considering the objectives of this mapping the training of trainers’ courses on HRE for this mapping are:

  • Training of Trainers on Human Rights Education (ToT on HRE)
  • Advanced Compass Training in HRE
  • Training course for trainers on working with the manual on counter-narratives to hate speech

Both are organised by the Directorate of Democratic Citizenship and Participation CoE. The CoE has a long tradition of training of trainers and was pioneer of them in the field of HRE at European level. Other courses, promoted by other organisations and NGOs, have trainers as well as participants and they consequently contribute to their professional development but they were not specific, not just for trainers.

These two selected ones are very relevant at European level and they fully incorporated in their design and implementation, in two different ways, the overall logic of “training of trainers”. The ToT on HRE is a generic one

Brief description of courses

For the purposes of this transnational HRE mapping theconsidered fields for the descriptionof these two training of trainers’ courses are:

  • The objectives
  • The target groups
  • The main contents
  • The overall methodology with a particular attention to the links between practice and theory, face-to-face conduct to online, mentoring to peer-learning

Training of Trainers in HRE with young people[6]

Dates: Two editions: 2004 and 2006

Objectives

This course aimed to develop the competence of trainers in working with human rightseducation at national and regional level and to enable them to act as trainers ormultipliers for human rights education, especially through national or regional trainingcourses organised by partners of the Directorate of Youth and Sport and in usingCOMPASS.

The objectives of the course were:

  • To develop the trainers’ knowledge and competence in key concepts of human rightseducation with young people;
  • To familiarise the participants with the approaches and activities of COMPASS (the manual on human rights education with young people) and with how best to use it andadapt it to local contexts and realities;
  • To review and address the essential competencies, skills and attitudes for trainersworking with human rights education;
  • To design modules for training trainers and multipliers at national level;
  • To explore the specificities and points of commonality of the non-formal and the formaleducation contexts in relation to human rights education;
  • To prepare activities for disseminating COMPASS at national and local level;
  • To contribute to the development of a pan-European network of trainers on humanrights education with young people.

Profile of participants

  • Active as trainers or facilitators in non–formal education, especially within youth organisations and associations, in youth work activities and in other NGOs concerned with human rights education;
  • Teacher trainers with a multiplying role within formal education systems and are interested in introducing non-formal learning methodologies in their human rights education activities.
  • All participants should:
  • Already have experience in working as trainers and educators with young people;
  • Be able and committed to act as multipliers or trainers for human rights education;
  • Be motivated to develop their knowledge and competence in human rights education

and to share their experiences with other participants;

  • Be able to work in English, French or Russian;
  • Be committed to attend for the full duration of the course and be supported by anorganisation, institution or service.

Main contents

  • A review of the evolution of human rights education in Europe and the presentchallenges that it faces;
  • An introduction to the approaches and structure of COMPASS, the manual on humanrights education with young people;
  • An introduction to the key instruments and activities of the Council of Europe in thefield of human rights and human rights education;
  • An analysis of the competencies, skills and values of trainers working with human rightseducation;
  • Opportunities to share experiences and challenges of developing human rightseducation in formal and in non-formal education settings;
  • Practical workshops on skills and attitudes essential to human rights education;
  • Opportunities to experiment with and to evaluate different methods and activities foundin COMPASS.
  • Opportunities to design possible training modules for national and regional courses tobe run by participants.

Methodology

The course was designed to give participants the opportunity to experience and reflect upon activities and concepts central to human rights education based on experiential learning approaches. The course is also designed as a mutual learning situation, where participants can compare their approaches to training and to human rights education across Europe in a dialogical intercultural approach and environment. Contributions from experts in the field of human rights establish a theoretical framework and a common reference point for learning and communication, and there is an opportunity to try out and evaluate some of the activities in COMPASS. Towards the end of the course, multicultural groups of participants design modules for training courses at national or regional level. A diversity of working methods is used for learning about human rights and the approaches proposed in COMPASS. The previous experience of participants, as trainers or educators, is the starting point of the programme and of the learning process.

The training process consists of three phases:
E-learning phase – around 1 month
Residential training seminar of 10 working days
Follow-up activities, including e-learning of around 2 months

Advanced Compass Training in HRE[7]

Dates: December 2005 – June 2008

Objectives

The Advanced Compass Training aimed to further the quality of training in human rights education with young people across Europe and to consolidate and multiply the achievements of the Human Rights Education Youth Programme from the European to the local level.

The objectives of the course were:

  • to extend and deepen the participants’ competence in addressing and giving training in human rights and human rights education in different environments and to different target groups;
  • to enable participants to review and reflect critically upon the essential competences required for training in human rights education;
  • to train participants in critical thinking skills in HRE and how to integrate non-formal educational approaches into HRE practices;
  • to enable participants to develop holistic approaches to human rights education and to integrate human rights education principles into other youth work fields;
  • to develop participants’ competence and autonomy in learning to learn and give training on human rights education;
  • to enable and motivate participants to advocate and contribute towards the promotion, recognition and validation of human rights education in both formal and non-formal education sectors;
  • to develop innovative methodologies and approaches for training in human rights education;
  • to further develop Compass, its activities and dissemination across Europe and across different target groups;
  • to sustain and further develop the existing network of trainers in HRE with young people;
  • to secure the long-term impact of the Human Rights Education Youth Programme and its contribution to European citizenship, global education, intercultural learning and human rights education projects;
  • to contribute to the quality and recognition of training in youth work at European level;
  • to integrate e-learning features into European training programmes and develop associated quality criteria;
  • to contribute to the programme of activities of the ’all different – all equal’ campaign on Diversity, Human Rights and Participation.

Profile of participants