Human Rights Education and Global Citizenship Education in UNESCO Policies: Past, Present, and Prospects

Abstract

Human rights education (HRE) has been at the core of UNESCO educational policies since the very creation of the Organization in 1945 and the establishment of its Constitution in 1946. However, in 2015 institutionally and conceptually HRE was integrated into the Global Citizenship Education (GCED) framework. The thesis discusses the reasons behind this approach, as well as the potential positive and negative implications for this move in terms of the theoretical, practical and monitoring issues. The work is based on the analysis of the conceptual compatibility of human rights and global citizenship, the historical overview of the development of the two terms over time and their evolution within UNESCO educational policies. UNESCO official documentation related to the development of HRE and GCED and the results of the semi-structured interviews with the specialists, whose expertise is related to UNESCO policies on HRE and GCED, became the foundational data for the study.