Human rights and religious education in the contentious context of conflict-troubled societies: perspectives from human rights education

Abstract

This article explores some of the tensions that are created from the entanglement of religion and human rights and offers a possible response to these tensions in the context of religious education in conflict-troubled societies. It is suggested that a historicised and politicised approach in religious education in conjunction with human rights education perspectives can promote three important aims: taking power relations between peoples, societies and cultures as sources of problematising the meaning(s) and consequences of both religion and human rights; developing a teaching and learning process in and through which the emphasis is not on identification with religious or cultural identity, but rather a process through which new and productive ways of relationality with the ‘other’ are developed; and, encouraging students to interrogate moralistic discourses of religion or human rights that often prevent the enactment of friendship, compassion and shared fate.

Keywords:

• human rights education
• religious education
• citizenship education
• conflict-troubled societies
• politics

Notes

1. ‘Human rights’ has multiple meanings: there are human rights standards (e.g. treaties and other legal norms); human rights values (e.g. principles of equality and non-discrimination); philosophy of human rights (e.g. natural rights); history of human rights (e.g. key events and promulgations, such as the development of UNHR) (Zembylas 2014). This article adopts a broad understanding of ‘human rights’ unless a particular meaning of human rights is specified in the text.