National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) have a key role to play in promoting human rights through human rights education (HRE).
HRE is strongly anchored in international standards and norms, and the international human rights framework provides NHRIs with a broad range of responsibilities to monitor and promote the status of human rights, hereunder in relation to education.
However, the framework gives little direction on how NHRIs can plan their work in line with their specific mandates and thereby ensure the highest quality and effect. As a result, many NHRIs face a number of challenges in their HRE work.
These challenges include a lack of a common understanding and vision among NHRIs for the role and responsibilities of NHRIs in relation to HRE. Furthermore, we as NHRIs are challenged by an absence of common guidelines and quality standards and lack knowledge about strategic approaches to HRE. As a result, NHRIs often focus on their own face-to-face activities, and HRE initiatives risk being random and scattered.
In order to strengthen a systematic and sustainable approach of the global community of NHRIs to increase their overall impact and effectiveness on HRE, the NHRI Network on Human Rights Education has been created.
The Network will allow NHRIs working on HRE to share experiences of their HRE work systematically. Likewise, by improving the strategic skills of NHRIs in applying HRE in a systematic and sustainable way, NHRIs will to a greater extent be able to create sustainable human rights change through HRE. Lastly, by creating a space for developing best practice models, NHRIs can merge their learning with other NHRIs instead of solely gaining its own experiences.
