Center News
Promoting Human Rights Education
in the Americas
by Natasha Concepcion*
As part of its mission to advance international human rights, the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (Center) at the Washington College of Law (WCL) conducted a training seminar for human rights law professors from the Americas from May 26 to June 2, 1999. The focus of the seminar was on the importance of local and regional educators in disseminating human rights norms throughout civil society. The purpose of the seminar, which was entitled “Building Domestic Capacity in Academic Centers of the Americas,” was to contribute to the dissemination of human rights standards by building on human rights education at law schools, and by teaching professors how to teach human rights and incorporate human rights education into the curriculum. Participants in the seminar included representatives from important Latin American human rights institutions such as the Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos (IIDH) in Costa Rica and Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) in Argentina, as well as human rights law professors from several universities in the region, such as Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, in Mexico City, Universidad Nacional and Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia.
The Co-Directors
of the Center’s Inter-American Human Rights Digest Project, Claudia Martin
and Diego Rodríguez-Pinzón, organized the seminar in cooperation
with cooperating regional coordinators in Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina. The
Center and the regional coordinators then recruited and selected 29 participants
from approximately 80 applicants based on their activities and interest in the
field of legal education in human rights. The Center designed a two-step program
for the “institutionalization” of human rights education in Latin
America. The seminar reflects step one, training legal educators. The second
step involves a regional collaboration with these educators in the development
of local diagnostic reports to assess the status of human rights and human rights
education.
The main objectives of the seminar were to: (1) work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and academic institutions in the Americas to foster an exchange of expertise, contacts, and resources to enhance local human rights training capacity; (2) implement a “train-the-trainers” program, enabling human rights law professors to take an active role in training those sectors of society that are failing to implement human rights norms; (3) implement a series of training seminars for legal practitioners, including NGO staff, members of the judiciary, and government officials; (4) foster the discussion of human rights in legal academic institutions in a neutral, nonpolitical forum; and (5) develop and reproduce a training manual and accompanying materials to be distributed to educators in Latin American universities.
The seminar focused on the organization of the Inter-American Human Rights system, the international human rights instruments that create obligations that bind states, and the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and Court. The participants examined comparative material from other relevant legal systems, including the United States and Europe, and were given hypothetical problems taken from the Center’s publication La dimensión internacional de los derechos humanos: Guía para la aplicación de normas internacionales en el derecho interno. The problems demonstrated the practical applicability of the participants training activities. Furthermore, the trainees interacted with members of international institutions working on issues relevant to their own work. For example, during a panel discussion at the Inter-American Development Bank on June 1, 1999, the participants talked with the members and staff of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). This event provided a forum for participants to relate their own experiences and perspectives on human rights education, with the goal of aiding in the development of a more integrated regional system of human rights in Latin America.
The seminar also served as a forum for deliberation through panel discussions. Some of the panel topics were: “General Principles of International Rights Applicable to Human Rights,” with speakers including IACHR Member and WCL Dean Claudio Grossman, and IACHR President and WCL Professor Robert Goldman; “Connection Between Domestic Rights and International Rights,” with Dr. Carlos Ayala, former president of IACHR; “The Introduction of Human Rights to the Inter-American System: Judicial and Political Perspectives,” with Professor Goldman, Dean Grossman, and Dr. Peter Quilter, Advisor to the Office of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States; and “Human Rights: A Latin American Perspective,” with speakers including Dr. Clara Elena Reales, Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Law of the University of the Andes, and Dr. Dina Rodriguez-Montero, Education Program Director of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights.
In conjunction with presenting the seminar, the Center also launched the Inter-American Human Rights Academic Network (Network) to encourage the integration of Human Rights education into legal curriculum. By partnering with several Latin American institutions, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, and the Inter-American Institute on Human Rights, the Network aims to enhance the ability of several academic centers in Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico to provide local legal training to educators. Those educators will eventually be responsible for training their students (and future lawyers), the police, the judiciary, and others.
According to one of the participants, Lorena González of the Inter-American Institute on Human Rights and Coordinator of the Central American Network, a branch of the Network, the seminar succeeded in meeting its objectives. She commented that “the use of interactive methodologies [such as the use of hypothetical problems to practical legal applications of the law] allowed the participants to play an active role during the seminar and also permitted them to contribute from their own experiences. Thus, the participants learned about the different realities in the sub-region.” González lauded the Center for creating the Network and for laying the ground work for another meeting, which the Mexico branch of the Network organized and held from October 4 to 6, 1999, in Mexico City. Participants at this follow-up meeting included lawyers, political scientists, journalists, sociologists, international relations specialists, and law professors from throughout Latin America. The Center’s own Claudia Martin and Diego Rodríguez-Pinzón, along with WCL Professor Richard Wilson, also conducted workshops and administered hypothetical problems to the participants.
In recognition of its important work on human rights education, the Center recently received a two-year grant from the Associate Liaison Office for University Cooperation of the U.S. Agency for International Development to continue its work with the Colombian Human Rights Academic Network. The Center will work with the Universidad Nacional and the Universidad de Los Andes, which are the regional coordinators for Colombia, to prepare a diagnostic report on the current situation of human rights education in Colombia.
*Natasha Parassram Concepcion is a J.D. candidate at the Washington College of Law and a staff writer for the Human Rights Brief.
Other websites that may be of interest:
The proper citation for this article in the Human Rights Brief Volume 7, Issue 1, beginning at page 30 is: 7 No. 1 Hum. Rts. Brief 30 (1999).
