Safe Spaces Human Rights Education in Diverse Contexts

ANDRÉ KEET
victim rather than a self-willing agent”. This follows Badiou’s (2002) argument
that human rights “presupposes an impoverished conception of the human as a
victim, which leads to highly conservative politics” (Souter, 2009:45). “Humanity
is defined solely in relation to the evil that can be committed against it” (ibid:46)
which results in “a lack of any positive alternative to how things are” (ibid).
Despite these critiques, the growth and development of the international human
rights regime seems to provide the most potent possibility on which to ground the
emerging demand towards transnationalism and cosmopolitanism (see Delanty,
2009; Habermas, 2006:19-30). These movements are rooted in the positive
contribution made by the human rights regime in challenging violations of human
rights on a global and local level. The interventions of the United Nations in all
parts of the world and the work of its associated agencies such the Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural
Development (IFAD), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the World
Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF),
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Office of the (UNHCR), the
various criminal tribunals and the International Criminal Court, demonstrate the
contribution of the international human rights regime. Add to this the massive work
done by non-governmental actors and social movements across the world, Derrida
(1994) is probably spot on in his analysis of the ‘new international’. This intellectual
position is shared by Habermas who regards the emergence of social movements as
resulting from “free discourse and communicative action” (Borradori, 2003:67).
There are, most certainly, many more human rights critiques and positive
contributions which cannot be listed within the context of this chapter. It will suffice
to indicate the affluence and multiplicity of these resources. HRE practitioners, in
their ideologically driven pragmatisms, will argue that these critiques will fall
outside of the pedagogical function of HRE given its perceived complexity or
obscurity. They will do well to note that the most horrific human rights atrocities
ensued from simple prejudicial logics such as those associated with the Holocaust,
the Rwanda genocide and Apartheid. These critiques, on the other hand, are not
complex, but rather disrupting and in most instances the resistance to disruption
hides behind claims of obscurity. Ultimately, the unremitting displacement of these
critiques deprives both human rights and HRE from its political and pedagogical
value. To work against this deprivation, I suggest a conscious and productive
interplay between human rights and its critiques, and HRE and human rights
critiques within the context of discourse. In this sense, critique is an act of loyalty
and fidelity to be opposed to zealotry. Critique is the incubator of renewal.
Renewal and Conclusion
Though instructive, the patterns emerging from human critiques are for most part
ignored by HRE. In general, HRE failed to disclose how the layered human subject
is being standardized by standards in service of socio-economic and politicocultural
power arrangements. HRE, as “practices that systematically form the
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