Inclusive human rights education - a gateway to civic participation and common values of European citizens

<< Background >> It is generally recognized that human rights education is a key to human rights protection. As stated in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Education, knowledge of human rights empowers people and develop their competences to participate in democratic processes. These competences must be taught at early years of age and improved throughout one’s lifetime. Unfortunately, many states currently do not have a structural, thorough, and coordinated human rights education strategy at a governmental level, nor they education materials.By bringing together competences and resources, the project partnership aimed to provide free and equal access to comprehensive and qualitative human rights education resources to European citizens. The cornerstone of the project is the Human Rights Guide (HRG) – a universal, easy-to-use and open access human rights education platform online which serves as an information resource and self-help tool for society-at-large and professionals in understanding human rights and developing competences in applying human rights in specific situations. As a result of the project, the Guide was implemented in eight EU member states, making it a truly pan-European education platform.<< Objectives >>The concrete objectives of the project were:- To raise and consolidate the understanding of human rights as a common European value among European citizens and professionals by upscaling the HRG to new EU member states.- To provide qualitative, up-to-date and inclusive human rights education to European citizens on equal basis by expanding and improving the HRG’s content and learning methodologies by using the advantages of the digital domain.- To strengthen the efforts of the partner-organizations in providing human rights education by sharing good practices and contributing joint effort in further devising innovative approaches to both national and common European human rights challenges.<< Implementation >>The main activities of the project were centred around the creation of the project results, namely, the upscaling and the expansion of the Guide and the Online Knowledge Assessment Tool, as well as the creation of the Human Rights Case Box and the Rights Compendium. To create these intellectual outputs, the following core activities were implemented: the selection of the priority themes / cases in each partner country, the preparation of the content (research, drafting, testing, editing, translating), elaboration of the visual solutions based on the principles of visual education and the technical solutions.The partnership also implemented a series of promotion and exploitation activities: multiplier events in each partner country, public outdoor campaign of the Guide in France and Croatia, information sessions to introduce the Guide with strategic partners, roundtables and discussions with policy and decision makers to discuss strategic implementation of human rights education initiatives at a national level.<< Results >>As a result of the project, large number of European citizens have free and equal access to qualitative human rights education online. The Human Rights Guide is available for the first time in France and Croatia, and new expanded versions are available in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Slovakia. The Guide now features new themes illuminated by the Covid-19 crisis such as restrictions on human rights, health and democratic participation. The Guide is also supplemented by new learning functionalities. The Rights Compendium explains the human rights as contained in international conventions but placed in respective national contexts. The Human Rights Case Box allows to explore human rights through human rights case-law, bringing it to the forefront as a pivotal source in human rights development. The new upscaled Human Rights Guide Europe platform technically offers a significant expansion and transferability potential for a new content, languages and EU countries.The members of the target groups gained awareness of fundamental rights as core social and civic entitlements, acquired courage to participate in democratic processes and civic activities, and embraced human rights as a European value.The partnership established the participating organizations as innovative human rights education providers in their respective countries and in the wider Europe and provided for a potential to develop further human rights education projects on the basis of the fundaments laid down by this project.