How Can Human Rights Education Mobilise Us for Peace?

This essay argues that human rights education is an important vehicle for securing the right to peace and an important riposte to the polarisation of public and political discourse that is often a precursor to militarisation and violent conflict. Rooted in the author’s experience of leading an international postgraduate programme in human rights and democracy, the paper reflects on the challenges and opportunities of education about, through and for human rights in the context of weakening multilateralism and increased violent conflict around the world. While acknowledging that conceptions of both human rights and peace are subject to contestation, nonetheless the essay argues that human rights education is an essential vehicle for nurturing the necessary cognitive and normative skills that are required to uphold the right to peace. Precisely because conceptions of human rights are contested, human rights education requires educators and learners to engage in deep thinking about what we mean, as individuals and as societies, when we invoke the term human rights. This in turn means that educators need to insist on the scholarly values of curiosity, rigour and criticality. However, education about, through and for human rights is distinctive because it grounds these scholarly values in a legal, normative and action framework. This means human rights education is a particularly rich vehicle for engaging in moral reasoning, critical thinking and complex problem- solving that are necessary in order to mobilise for peace.