Educational Values in Human Rights Treaties: UN, European, and African International Law
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Educational Values in Human Rights Treaties: UN, European, and African International Law Pablo Meix-Cereceda 1 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract While human rights treaties provide a formidable set of principles on education and values, domestic Courts often tend to adjudicate claims in terms of local arguments for or against each particular educational practice. This article explores how international human rights law could inspire the interpretation of domestic law and educational practice, without neglecting specific cultural aspects. Firstly, the article reviews the sociological debate on values in education and shows its importance for the legal discussion. Secondly, some critical contestations of international cultural human rights are outlined, as well as certain arguments to justify the importance of this model. The study of international law follows: the UN, the European Court of Human Rights, and three relevant African Charters, as well as every reference to education made by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and by the African Court is examined. Lastly, a comparative section reveals a certain cultural commonality inspired by the UN treaties, but also reflects some cultural and institutional differences between the European and the African regional systems. Keywords Educational values . Human rights education . Cultural rights . Best interest of
the child . African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child . African Charter on Democracy, Elections, and Governance
Values in Education: the Complexity of Interests and the Law It can be argued that the social behavior of the individual is highly influenced by the desire to achieve certain goals. These goals are influenced by the specific set of values broadly driving a society, which they in turn shape over time, at least to a certain extent. This set of common values lastly comes to influence the drafting of constitutions and
* Pablo Meix-Cereceda [email protected]
1
Faculties of Labor Relations and Law / Facultades de Relaciones Laborales y Derecho, University of Castilla–La Mancha, Albacete campus, Plaza de la Universidad, 1., 02071 Albacete, Spain
P. M. Cereceda
laws within a state. As the German philosopher and law scholar Häberle (1981, 211) wrote, “educational aims are an essential content of cultural constitutional law.” However, this does not mean that laws necessarily base on a unanimous understanding of certain values, but more often on the conception of a majority of citizens. Taking one step further, when a significant number of states decide to establish an international system of human rights, these values are discussed by their representatives and eventually become part of a convention or a charter in a wording that is acceptable to the high contracting parties. If the system is successful, it will in turn infuse its lifeblood into the domestic education system by providing certain standards based on problematic cases. Considering the task of schools, they seek to instill certain values that eventually will
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