Learning Human Rights through Landmark Decisions of the European Court of Human Rights

Stefania KRUGER, Education Department, Council of Europe

 

I shall briefly present you the project “Learning human rights through landmark decisions of the European Court of Human Rights”, which was launched at the end of 2010 by the Education department of the Council of Europe.

I will mainly focus on the process of the project, since you will afterwards have a presentation more in details by some members of the Project Group about the final results of the project, namely:

• the handbook that was distributed to you this morning
• and some of the associated tools that go with it, the repository of teaching materials and a video on corporal punishment.

What is the project about?

The project is based on the exploration of the landmark decisions of the human rights case law, and it aims at providing a concrete picture of the manner in which the main rights and freedoms protected by the European Court of Human Rights are implemented in practice.

It aims at achieving:

- a better understanding of the principles of the system of protection of HR and the functioning of its mechanisms;

It should also enable European secondary school students to become familiar with the key principles of European HR law, and for them to understand how the Court functions.

The starting point of this project was a growing awareness of a lack of knowledge about the Court and its jurisprudence, particularly outside the legal profession, a lack of knowledge which is partly responsible for a high number of inadmissible and repetitive cases.

In order to address this, it was considered highly important to raise awareness about the Court’s standards, to show to pupils that:

- the Court is the most effective international mechanism for the protection of HR,

- that it is a “quasi constitutional” court, which establishes the standards for the states to follow and

- that thus it is a powerful instrument of legal and social change that has a real impact on the life of European citizens and the society.

The project’s philosophy is complementary to our longstanding work on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights education.

Why?

Because in addition to the factual knowledge about the Court and some of its judgments, it wanted to contribute to the acquisition of citizenship competences for all children and young people through the creation of school environments that are respectful to human rights principles and values.

The intention was to build new approaches and new ways for developing a genuine culture of human rights in the schools.

There is clearly a need to develop a culture in which the essence of human rights is understood and in which violations of human rights are prevented as far as possible.

And I quote here the Charter on EDC: “One of the fundamental goals of all education for democratic citizenship and human rights education is not just equipping learners with knowledge, understanding and skills, but also empowering them with the readiness to take action in society in the defence and promotion of human rights, democracy and the rule of law”.

(1)Education is a powerful tool in this respect, because the sooner we start learning about HR, better are the chances that we will become empowered, socially responsible citizens who can promote the culture of HR;

(2) politically, there was also the intention to show the impact of the work of the Organisation on the real life of European citizens;

(3) and there was also the aim to raise awareness on the importance of the Rule of Law in the society more generally.

Professor Jim Murdoch will enter into more details in his presentation on how this empowerment and competences can be acquired through “learning activities” on real “stories” of violation of human rights.

At this stage I should just like to add that the same concepts of empowerment and participation were used for the process itself of the project.

The project was carried out by national teams from Albania, Croatia, Slovenia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, all of which were composed of students, and which were guided by the national team leaders of the Project group. What is interesting to note is that the teams were composed not only by students in Law and Human Rights Education, but also by students specialised in Education, pedagogy, sociology and psychology.

Each national team selected 10 landmark cases from the Court and developed educational resources, lesson plans and teaching materials around the cases. The teams were free to choose any judgment from the Court. They then developed their study along the model presentation that was devised by the Project Group.

The factual summaries of the cases were usually the responsibility of the law students, whereas the lessons plans and teaching materials were the responsibility of the students of pedagogy. But both group of students influenced both types of activities and enriched the materials.

The teams were not afraid to take up sometimes difficult and controversial cases, as you will see in the handbook. The essential idea was to put a face, a mental picture, on the Court’s cases, in order to propose a new way of teaching human rights to teachers, but also to allow students to understand them better and more easily.

For example, after seeing the video on Campbell and Cosans v. the UK, of which you will have a presentation by its author Ms Olympia Tsipira, I think that everyone will remember that this was the case which definitely stopped the corporal punishment in schools in Great Britain.

Once the teams had worked upon the chosen activities, and proposed lesson plans, these were all tested in the field, in pilot schools. The feedback, comments and suggestions received from the teachers in the field further helped the Project Group to shape, refine and correct the activities. I think one of the issues that was regularly mentioned by the teachers was the need to simplify the vocabulary and also to avoid the legalistic jargon.

During the process of preparation of the handbook, we also organised several activities: meetings of the Project Group of course, but also roundtables in the participating countries, which gathered representatives of international organisations, academic representatives, decision-makers, practitioners and students. We organised study visits to the Court of Human Rights for the national teams, during which they visited the Court, attended hearings, met with the national judges and had a presentation of the work of the Council of Europe. There was also a symposium on freedom of expression that was organised.

So you see the process in itself aimed to encourage participation, knowledge, dialogue and synergies among the teams involved.

The outcome of the process you have in front of you: the handbook and the USB key which contains some additional information. There is also a dedicated website and a repository/research database. Mr Bernard Dumont will shortly show you how it works.

In conclusion, I would like to say that we have tried to create a toolkit that is accessible for all, that is concrete and motivating both for teachers and students.

We hope that the member States will find these tools useful and will disseminate them largely, and we hope that our project will open up new possibilities for introducing law related education approaches in study programmes and to develop a genuine culture of human rights.

I shall now give the floor to one of our eminent member of the Project Group, Professor Jim Murdoch from the Glasgow University, who will present you the handbook.