This article brings together two distinct but interrelated fields: human rights education (HRE) and safeguarding. It endeavours to show that the former can be beneficial for the efficacy of the latter. By extending an argument put forward recently that for HRE to be effective it must enable children to recognise and respond to lived human rights…

Epistemic injustice in human rights education (HRE) can be found in a colonial historical trajectory of human rights that rests on accounts of western agency only. Such narratives overshadow the legacy of Indian and Pakistani freedom fighters and Latin American feminists who negotiated human rights against colonial, patriarchal and racist…

This article reports on research in three secondary schools in England where students were engaged in deliberative discussion of controversial issues. The teaching resources used illustrated rights-based dilemmas and the data analysis focused on the nature of the talk and the types of knowledge the students drew upon to inform their discussions.…

The aim of this paper is to search for possibilities to change the terms and content of conversations on colonial/decolonial human rights education. The content of conversations consists of what we know about human rights. The terms of conversations are the principles, assumptions, and rules of knowing in human rights education. The terms and…

This article discusses democracy and human rights education (DHRE) in Finnish teacher education, drawing on existing literature, curricula and a survey of student teachers' perceptions. Earlier studies suggested that DHRE in Finnish teacher education is unsystematic, implicit, and dependent on the teacher's individual interests. These studies…

This paper evaluates a short school-based intervention run by Australian Red Cross, designed to reduce children's prejudice towards asylum seekers. A total of 121 children aged between 10 to 12 in four schools in Perth, Western Australia, completed questionnaires at Time 1 (pre-intervention), Time 2 (immediately after the intervention), and Time 3…

The Islamic Republic of Iran is obliged to respect the right to education under international human rights law and has made legal commitments to conform to the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Drawing on the framework developed by former Special…

Iran, as a United Nations member state, has made moral and legal commitments to conform to international human rights standards, including the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which address the right to education. This article reviews Iran's…

Human rights promotion continues to elude Nigeria, despite the many human rights instruments ratified and the various human rights initiatives taken. The key question behind this paper is: Why is human rights behaviour poor and human rights violations high despite numerous measures to address these issues? To examine this, the study investigates…

In this opinion piece, Abraham Magendzo and Audrey Osler discuss a range of challenges facing educators, many of which are thrown into sharper relief by the COVID-19 crisis. Both authors see the need for deep reflection within the community of human rights educators and recognise the crisis as an opportunity for informed dialogue among educators…

In 2020, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was incorporated into Swedish domestic law. In the proposals for new legislation, it is emphasised that steps be taken to develop knowledge of children's rights among professionals at all levels. This article explores the presence and status of children's rights in Swedish…

Based on a case study of verbal sexual harassment experienced by a young female teacher and her 17-year-old student in a Norwegian upper secondary school, this article addresses challenges and strengths of drawing upon negative experiences of 'lived injustice' in class, arguing that such experiences can serve as a resource for education about,…

This article offers an autoethnographic reconsideration of a primary school teacher's practice and children's interpretation of picturebooks in multicultural primary schools in England. It considers the balance teachers strike between respecting children's rights to freedom of thought and expression, and wielding their own power as directors of…

This article examines how some schools with ethnically diverse student populations are teaching "about," "for," and "through" human rights. The author conducted a secondary analysis of qualitative data from a multi-site study, which included secondary schools serving students from immigrant backgrounds in four…

The German integration programme teaches language and knowledge about Germany to newcomers and those with migration backgrounds. This article analyses the programme and course content from a human rights education (HRE) perspective to tease out some of the inherent contradiction between teaching 'German values', purported to be one of the…