Human Rights Education in the Euromed region

A significant number of human rights local, regional and international NGOs in the Arab and Euro-Med region are increasingly involved in human rights education with a variety of different groups particularly young people. In cooperation with Arab Human rights Arab NGOs, international and regional organizations promote HRE by building training programs for young human rights defenders (HREA), addressing youth while working on HRE and intercultural dialogue (European youth centre in Budapest), and undertaking capacity building programs while implementing HRE trainings and ensuring access to HRE materials and tools (Equitas, Amnesty International and Salto Euromed resource Centre).
However, there is little systematic exchange of ideas and cooperation between such organisations in regards to ideas, information, strategies and methodologies. Additionally, there is little exchange between educationalists and activists on similar issues.
In many countries, the human rights movement is currently facing the challenge of ‘recruiting’ a new generation of young committed human rights defenders. For various reasons (historical, organisational, cultural, etc.) human rights NGOs are significantly dominated by people in their 40s and plus, however, by no means in all organisations: few young people become involved in this vocation.
To respond to this challenge, in the beginning of 2006, the EMHRN launched a new project on Human Rights Education (HRE) and Youth. The project aims at promoting youth participation in human rights work by developing a sustainable network of young NGO representatives from the mainstream human rights
movement, as well as strengthening NGO networking in the field of human rights education.

Read the report