人権問題のグローバリゼーション

人権教育への示唆

抄録

Globalization is an on-going process in the world, today, demonstrating both dynamics of standardization and differentiation in the spheres of politics, economy and culture. On one hand, certain values and modes of communication are universalized, and on the other there is growing advocacy of local, ethnic and other multicultural forms of identification. Globalization encourages international institutions and global/domestic networks of non-governmental organizations to expand their influence, and curtails the autonomy and sovereignty of nation states.
With respect to human rights, global standards as represented by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights instruments prevail over national standards. The idea of universal human rights, which honor individual dignity, increasingly limits the scope of national jurisdiction. In addition, the concept of locally-specific human rights is also advocated, particularly by some non-Western countries, and the effective coordination of universal standard of human rights and the local cultural values and concerns is becoming a significant political issue. Today, it is generally maintained that the universal standards should be properly translated according to local contexts.
In the field of human rights education as well, there has been a clear shift from the conventional approach, which emphasizes specific human rights issues, to one which focuses on strategies to design and implement comprehensive human rights education. The latter approach aims to educate agents of human rights as global citizens equipped with certain knowledge, skills and attitudes. It actively incorporates various theories, methods and perspectives of global human rights education. Recently, we notice that various initiatives on human rights education, such as “Dowa education”(education related to the Buraku issue in Japan), intercultural education, development education, gender education and others have increasingly come to use the common frameworks and language of global human rights education. The next challenge is how to infuse the universal perspective of human rights education into the concrete practice of education based on specific human rights issues.