How to Teach Children’s Rights?

It is not sufficient that children’s rights learners only know about children’s rights, they also need to be able to act upon that knowledge to claim their rights and respect and defend the rights of others. To achieve this, learners need the skills to apply, promote and protect human rights, and the supporting values & attitudes to do so.

Thus, it is important that teachers and schools acknowledge children’s rights as more than a topic that students should learn about in certain subjects. Children’s rights also need to be practised and reflected widely in the teaching methods that teachers apply, in the learning environment of the classroom, and in the school’s work environment. This may also be described as, through respecting human rights in the classroom teachers work for strengthening learners to enjoy and exercise their own rights and respect those of others.

These learning dimensions are described in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (2011) Article 2, 1 & 2, stating that human rights education and training are about: 

“...providing persons with knowledge, skills and understanding and developing their attitudes and behaviours, to empower them to the building and promotion of a universal culture of human rights. 

...encompasses: (a) Education about human rights, which incl. providing knowledge and understanding of human rights norms and principles, the values that underpin them and the mechanisms for their protection; (b) Education through human rights, which incl. learning and teaching in a way that respects the rights of both educators and learners; (c) Education for human rights, which incl. empowering persons to enjoy and exercise their right and to respect and uphold the rights of others.”

In figure 1 you can find an illustration of the relation between these learning dimensions.