The Council of Europe is the only political organisation which brings together nearly all the countries of Europe, with a total of 46 members. Founded in 1949, its mission is to guarantee and promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

For the member states of the Council of Europe, human rights are supposed to be more than just part of the legal framework; they should also be an integral part of education for children, young people and adults.

In 2010, the Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education was adopted by the Committee of Ministers: this is an important reflection of the central role that education plays in the promotion of the Council of Europe’s key values – democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

In doing so, the member states recognised the importance of human rights education and education for democratic citizenship, and committed themselves to implementing the measures set out in the Charter and to ensuring that it was widely disseminated to the authorities responsible for education and youth.

The Charter contains definitions of education for democratic citizenship and of human rights education, and also includes policy guidelines on how to implement national policies and programmes to support these two subjects. It is presented in the form of a Recommendation from the Committee of Ministers and, since its acceptance in 2010, has succeeded in energising work across the region, both by the Council of Europe and by other organisations.

Every five years, the Education and Youth Departments of the Council of Europe run a review of member states’ progress in implementing the Charter. This exercise is part of the Council of Europe’s contribution towards the United Nations World Programme for Human Rights Education and the United Nations’ 2030 Education Agenda.

Human Rights Education Youth Programme

The Council of Europe’s Youth Programme supports non-governmental youth organisations in implementing the Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education. 

This support takes the form of tools and resources on human rights education and capacity-building activities for trainers, multipliers and advocates of human rights education as a human right. 

The Human Rights Education Youth Programme was established in 2000, with the aim of bringing human rights education into the mainstream of youth work. The work was originally built around Compass, the manual for human rights education with young people. Through a cascading effect, the
Programme has reached thousands of individuals and NGOs. Human rights education has become a central part of youth work in Europe and has had important effects on formal education as well.

The Council of Europe youth strategy reaffirms the close relationship between youth policy, youth work and human rights education. The Committee of Ministers defined the aims of the youth sector as enabling young people across Europe to actively uphold, defend, promote and benefit from the
Council of Europe’s core values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. increasing capacity building and resources for youth organisations and other relevant stakeholders to provide human rights education and advocate access to rights is also defined in the same document as a priority for action.

Internet literacy and HRE online 

The digital world demands additional skills and awareness from young people and also opens up new routes to learning. For human rights education, there are rights concerns online, of which young people need to be made aware, and their opportunities to exercise rights, in particular rights to expression, to information and to participation.

The Council of Europe has published an Internet Literacy handbook and an online game ‘Through the Wild Web Woods’, which presents children’s rights in child-friendly language. The Youth Department’s No Hate Speech Movement, as well as being an educational campaign against hate speech, was also a campaign for human rights online, designed to develop online youth participation and citizenship, including participation in Internet governance processes. The campaign involved groups from over 40 countries and, in addition to traditional campaigning activities, has developed educational resources such as Bookmarks, which remains a very useful resource to complement Compass and Compasito.