Understanding and Using Human Rights for The Parent Action Committee

This workshop was given as part of CESR's activities in the United States. It focuses on the right to education, and is meant for advocates and organizers who work on education.

Introductions

Have participants introduce themselves, sharing briefly about themselves and what motivates the advocacy and organizing they do.

What Human Rights Mean in the United States

Outline quick history to illustrate that the struggle for economic rights are not alien to the United States and can be reclaimed.

• The Civil Rights Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., was also very much a struggle for economic rights including freedom from poverty, the right to work and to education for all people.
• President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke about the Four Freedoms that the United States must provide which included the Freedom from Want - “the right of every family to a decent home [and] the right to a good education.”
• Eleanor Roosevelt led an international team in the drafting of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) at the United Nations which included economic, social, cultural, civil, and political rights, and the right to education.
• Today, almost every state constitution in the US includes the right to education, including the New York State Constitution.

Discuss Human Rights and Underlying Values

Discuss the following questions:
* What does human rights mean to you? - such as, values like dignity, freedom, equality, justice, respect for difference, participation, etc.
* What is the purpose of human rights? – such as, shared ideas about how people should live together, voices for those who are unrepresented, and rights that the government must protect and provide for people.
* What rights are economic and social human rights? – education, housing, work, food, health, and social security.

The Right to Education

What does a right to education mean? Discuss the components of the right to education:

• The right to education requires that governments meet the basic learning needs of all our children. The World Declaration on Education for All says that governments must teach all children to read, write, speak well, do math, and solve problems. Children must also be given the knowledge, skills, and values they need to participate in society. The goal is to help children to survive, to develop their abilities, to live and work in dignity, to be part of their community’s growth, to make their lives better, to find information and make decisions.

The right to education has four main components. Education must be:

• Available—There must be schools, trained teachers, books and other materials for every child. In rich countries, like the United States, schools should also have libraries, computer rooms, and other information technology.
• Accessible—All children must be able to attend schools. Costs related to education, like transportation or books, must be made affordable for all children. School buildings must meet the needs of all students.
• Acceptable—Teachers must be well trained, and teaching materials must be of good quality. Cultural differences must be respected. The health and safety of children must be protected. Discipline must respect the dignity of the child.
• Adaptable—Schools must adapt or change to meet the needs of children from different communities, children who do not speak English in their homes, and children with disabilities.

The right to security and a safe school environment:

• Children have the right to a school environment that is safe, healthy and that enables children to learn.

• There must be adequate standards enforced in schools to guarantee the safety and health of children, including sufficient numbers of competent staff in all school settings.

• The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has said that “Children do not lose their human rights by virtue of passing through the school gates.” Schools must respect the inherent dignity of the child and enable children to learn in an environment where they feel safe and free to express their views.

Governments are responsible for what they do and do not do. They are also responsible for the educational achievements of students. Governments must:

• Guarantee equity and non-discrimination in the right to education. Non-discrimination protects the same opportunities for all children. Equity means that students in different communities enjoy the same quality of education and thus achieve the same level of results.

• Continue to improve education. Providing education to every child is only the first responsibility of the government. The government must continue to use the money and other resources of society to make education better. This includes meeting the special needs of each child and increasingly making adult education and college available and accessible to all persons.

• Monitor or check on the right to education. Provide ways for people to seek justice when the right to education is violated. Make sure that parents, students, community members, and organizations are helping to make decisions about education.

• Guarantee that parents and communities can participate in education decision-making and access schools – use the Civil Society report

Talk about the international documents where the right to education is found and what obligations the US has:

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
• Convention on the Rights of the Child
• American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man

How Do You Use a Human Rights Framework?

What are the potential benefits of an economic human rights framework?

• Empowerment and Participation. Economic human rights offer a language of empowerment, recognizing the dignity of every individual. Rights are not a matter of charity. Affected persons are placed at the center of the rights movement because of the right to participation, the right to non-discrimination, and even the right to self-determination. Persons have a right to be heard by the government and to have a voice equal to big business and government in community decisions.
• Documentation, monitoring and reporting: Using human rights to document problems allows people to categorize violations in strong and clear language. Additionally, UN special rapporteurs, ombudspersons, and NGOs can help to pressure governments into implementing changes.
• Education and awareness-raising: Although governments are to have a role in promoting the awareness of human rights, families, teachers, religious institutions, and NGOs have an important role to play in informing their communities of their economic human rights.
• Shaming: Using the media, protests and letter-writing, individuals, community groups, and NGOs can pressure governments to adopt new policies or end violations.

Challenges to Using Human Rights in the US

While civil rights are legally recognized and enforceable in US courts, human rights must rely on other moral and political strategies.

• First discuss why these rights are not legally recognized and enforceable and what challenges their may be to using them politically. Is it because the government thinks its two expensive to label economic needs as rights? Is it because of competing claims of national security?
• What attitudes and values in our culture might make it difficult to use human rights in our campaigns? Is it because human rights are seen as something foreign? Are there cultural reasons for not seeing economic needs as rights.

Examples of Rights-based Campaigns

• Deaf and Deaf-Blind Committee on Human Rights (DDBCHR): The DDBCHR is a group based in Ohio that uses international human rights to fight for the rights of the deaf and deaf-blind community. For example, they ran a successful human rights campaign to get a local hospital to provide deaf interpreters for patients. They developed recommendations for the hospital based on standards for the right to communication and the right to health found in UN human rights documents, held protests and arranged meetings with hospital administrators. They used documentation of human rights violations to shame the hospital in the press and to mobilize their members, and used human rights standards to develop their recommendations for the hospital. They succeeded in getting interpreters in the hospital.

• California’s Students’ Bill of Rights: Students, parents, teachers and advocates in California developed an Educational Bill of Rights for Students. The document is grounded in the right to education found in the California State Constitution which is broad and vague, but draws on human rights and civil rights documents to develop more specific rights. The Bill of Rights covers the full range of educational issues in public schools, including parental rights to participation.

There is a guide for teachers for how to understand and teach the Bill of Rights which includes using UN human rights documents, US civil rights documents, and the South African Bill of Rights. Teachers can attend seminars on how to use the Educational Bill of Rights in their teaching practices and on how to teach it to students.

Many teachers have begun to teach and implement the Bill of Rights. Teachers have reported that learning and teaching the Bill of Rights has improved respect and trust between teachers, students and parents.

Application of Economic Human Rights Strategy Session

Have participants choose an issue and develop a strategy for activism drawing on an economic human rights framework.

For example, we could use the issue of safety in the cafeteria. The questions below would be answered by the participants in an interactive session. Based on my initial understanding of the work you’re doing around safety, here are some examples of the answers we might come up with:

1. What are the concerns your group is facing?
   
   
   
   • Lack of safety and supervision in the cafeteria
     
   • Unwillingness by the administration to allow parents access to the cafeteria and to allow parents to volunteer to help the situation
   
   
2. What values and economic human rights apply to this situation?
   
   
   
   • The right to a safe and healthy school environment
     The right of parents to access the school premises and to a welcoming environment in schools
     
   • The right of parents to participate in decision-making around safety issues
   
   
3. Who can be held accountable?
   
   
   
   • School administration for violating students rights to safety and parents rights to access and participation
     
   • District or city school administration for not having effective policies and monitoring systems in place to ensure that school cafeterias are safe for students and that parents have access to schools and mechanisms to participate in school decisions
   
   
4. What do you want to achieve?
   
   
   
   • Safety for students in the cafeteria
     
   • Access for parents to school facilities
     
   • Programs for parents to volunteer in the school cafeteria and become a greater part of the school community
     
   • Mechanisms for parents to participate in school decisions and implementation around safety issues
   
   
5. Particularly, what are three to four different concrete steps that might be taken using the human rights framework?
   
   
   
   • Interview students and parents to document the conditions in the cafeteria, even if you can’t get in to observe directly yourselves, as well as the treatment of parents who have tried to access the cafeteria and determine what rights are violated under international human rights standards as well as local regulations
     
   • Hold workshops for parents in the school to discuss the rights they are entitled to
     
   • Use recommendations found in UNESCO documents on how to collaborate between school administrators and parents to create welcoming and safe school environments and demonstrate how other countries have used those recommendations