Summer Schools
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, rights and Humanity held a series of Pan-European Summer Schools in Human Rights, Democracy, Tolerance, and Cultural Cooperation.
In 1991, at the request of the International Cultural Centre (ICC), Krakow, Rights and Humanity and the Jagiellonian University cooperated in developing a human rights component within the ICC’s college for new Europe – an established sumer school for East and Central Europeans.
For a number of years we held an annual three week summer school with practitioners covering human rights, democracy, tolerance, and cultural cooperation. These brought together university professors and graduate students from all over Eastern, Central and Western Europe.
Theses expanded human rights education and supported democracy and the emergence of civil society organisation throughout East and Central Europe.
Developing the Principles Approach to Human Rights Education
It was during one of these summer schools that Ms Häusermann identified the core principles underlying human rights. In a series of exercises asking the question “why?” she led her students to identify the fundamental assumption underlying human rights as being: the equal worth and dignity of all human beings and our common humanity.
This was an analysis of human rights that resonated with the summer school participants. It has proved useful in Rights and Humanity’s subsequent education and advocacy with UN agencies, governments and NGOs. The principles approach is now widely used by other human rights educators.
