Human Rights Education Youth Programme

 Aims and objectives

The Human Rights Education Forum aimed to reassess and affirm the potential of human rights education towards a culture of peace and universal human rights by charting the contemporary status and role for human rights education, taking account of all its diverse forms and contexts.
The Forum also aimed to strengthen the commitment of the Council of Europe and the United Nations system to their shared agenda of support for the global community of practice concerned with educating about, for, and through human rights. 

The objectives of the forum were to:

• critically reflect on the achievements, practices, opportunities and challenges met by human rights education today for addressing the global human rights concerns of young people and its adequacy as a response to the current human rights crisis.
• identify areas for innovation in, as well as potential resources for and policies supporting human rights education, including strategies for mainstreaming in the youth and education sectors and for the development of a more enabling environment for human rights education.
• encourage and motivate young people engaged in human rights education and human rights activism to continue their work and to provide them with opportunities to finding partners and support for their efforts and advocacy to support the provision of and access to the right to human rights education.
• identify appropriate approaches, good practice and key partnerships to support implementation of the fifth phase (2025-2029) of the World Programme for Human Rights Education of the United Nations dedicated to human rights education for children and youth with a focus on digital technologies and human rights, gender equality, and environment and climate change.
• review lessons learned from 25 years of the implementation of the Human Rights Education Youth Programme of the Council of Europe and identify important directions for its further development including, considering key developments in the youth and education sectors of the Council of Europe.
• strengthen the connections between the programme of the Council of Europe youth and education sectors regarding human rights education and those of the World Programme for Human Rights Education of the United Nations.
• foster international cooperation, solidarity and partnership building among stakeholders of human rights education as a contribution to supporting the resilience and solidarity of the community of practice.

 Participants

The Forum brought together approximately 200 participants, who corresponded to the following profiles:

• Young multipliers, activists and advocates for human rights education.
• Education professionals from both the formal and non-formal sectors.
• Representatives of governmental and public institutions responsible for Education and for Youth policies.
• Young people and youth leaders of initiatives and projects of civil society organisations for citizenship and human rights education, including projects supported by the European Youth Foundation.
• Partners of the Human Rights Education Youth Programme, such as organisers of Compass training courses, publishers of Compass and Compasito in national languages.
• Representatives of international and regional organisations active in human rights education.
• Human rights activists and representatives of national human rights institutions active in promoting the right to human rights education.

 Organisers

The Forum was co-organised by the Council of Europe (Youth Department, Education Department and the North South Centre), and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in cooperation with the European Youth Forum and Amnesty International.
The Forum was also supported by the European Wergeland Centre, the Global Campus on Human Rights, Kandersteg International Scout Centre and Soka Gakkai International. It was led and prepared by a Steering Group that included representatives of the Advisory Council on Youth, the European Steering Committee for Youth and experts from a variety of specialised youth and human rights organisations.