Human Rights Education: a Literature Review between Legal and Normative Dimensions

During the past three decades, human rights education (HRE) has emerged as an important component of the broader human rights movement, as well as a field of scholarship and practice on its own. While there are many approaches to and variants of HRE, the article aims to show that there is broad agreement about certain core components which include both content and process related to human rights. Indeed, the main argument of this article is that HRE has both legal and normative dimensions. The legal dimension deals with content about international human rights standards, treaties and covenants to which countries subscribe; the normative dimension looks at HRE as a cultural enterprise and a process intended to provide skills, knowledge and motivation to individuals to transform their own lives and realities so that they are more consistent with human rights norms and values (Tibbitts and Fernekes, 2011). Starting with a contextualisation of HRE within the United Nations (UN) human rights framework and a dedicated focus on the UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training, the article further explores the twofold dimension of HRE through a critical literature review, the analysis of HRE models (Tibbitts, 2002 and 2017) and some related criticisms (Keet, 2012 and 2015; Vlaardingerbroek, 2015). The article finally reiterates the importance of keeping together the legal and normative dimensions of HRE in order to live up to its ultimate goal: empowering persons to contribute to the building and promotion of a universal culture of human rights.