edited by Rainer Huhle HUMAN RIGHTS AND HISTORY A CHALLENGE FOR EDUCATION edited by Rainer Huhle H UMAN The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention of 1948 were promulgated as an unequivocal R response to the crimes committed under National Socialism. Human rights thus served as a universal response to concrete IGHTS historical experiences of injustice, which remains valid to the present day. As such, the Universal Declaration and the Genocide Convention serve as a key link between human rights education and historical learning. AND This volume elucidates the debates surrounding the historical development of human rights after 1945. The authors exam- H ine a number of specific human rights, including the prohibition of discrimination, freedom of opinion, the right to asylum ISTORY and the prohibition of slavery and forced labor, to consider how different historical experiences and legal traditions shaped their formulation. Through the examples of Latin America and the former Soviet Union, they explore the connections · A CHALLENGE FOR EDUCATION between human rights movements and human rights education. Finally, they address current challenges in human rights education to elucidate the role of historical experience in education. ISBN-13: 978-3-9810631-9-6 © Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” Stiftung “Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft” Lindenstraße 20–25 10969 Berlin Germany Tel +49 (0) 30 25 92 97- 0 Fax +49 (0) 30 25 92 -11 [email protected] www.stiftung-evz.de Editor: Rainer Huhle Translation and Revision: Patricia Szobar Coordination: Christa Meyer Proofreading: Julia Brooks and Steffi Arendsee Typesetting and Design: dakato…design. David Sernau Printing: FATA Morgana Verlag ISBN-13: 978-3-9810631-9-6 Berlin, February 2010 Photo Credits: Cover page, left: Stèphane Hessel at the conference “Rights, that make us Human Beings” in Nuremberg, November 2008. © Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, photographer Jan Zappner Cover page, center: United Nations International Nursery School, “It’s Human Rights Day for Them, Too,” Dec. 1, 1950. © United Nations, NICA ID 123898 Cover page, right: © Europeans for Peace, photo archive HUMAN RIGHTS AND HISTORY: A CHALLENGE FOR EDUCATION edited by Rainer Huhle CONTENTS 4 Foreword (Martin Salm) 6 Introduction: The Complex Relationship of Historical Learning and Human Rights (Rainer Huhle) 11 A Duty to Humanity – Stéphane Hessel (Interview with Rainer Huhle) 19 Human Rights and Their History from a European Perspective (Morten Kjaerum) ThE DAWN OF HUMAN RIGHTS 25 The Universal Declaration and the Conscience of Humanity (Johannes Morsink) 37 “Jewish Rights are Human Rights”: Jewish Contributions and Controversies in the International Establishment of Human Rights after 1945 (Rainer Huhle) 50 From the Holocaust to the Genocide Convention: A Human Rights Learning Process (William Schabas) 62 Coming to Terms with “Crimes against Humanity”: Nuremberg and Beyond (Rainer Huhle) RESPONSES TO THE EXPERIENCE OF INJUSTICE: SELECTED EXAMPLES 82 The Prohibition on Discrimination: A Founding Principle of Human Rights (Heiner Bielefeldt) 90 Freedom of Expression as a Human Right: The Role of Hate Speech in the Public Sphere (Otto Böhm) 99 Freedom of Expression as a Cornerstone Human Right (Agnès Callamard) 107 The Right to Asylum in West Germany: Refugee Policies in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949–1975 (Patrice G. Poutrus) 114 From Abolition to Eradication: Slavery in the Twenty-First Century (Aidan McQuade) 125 Compensation for Nazi Slave Labor: The Context of Human Rights (Günter Saathoff) HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION AS THE OUTCOME OF HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENTS 130 “The Law is Our Only Language”: Soviet Dissidents and Human Rights (Uta Gerlant) 142 The Helsinki Final Act and the Civil and Human Rights Movement in the Soviet Union (Ernst Wawra) 155 Human Rights Education between Norms and Practice: Reflections on the Colombian and Latin American Experience (Flor Alba Romero) HISTORY AND HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION 166 The Role of History in Education against Discrimination (Monique Eckmann) 175 The Role of Historical and Political Education in Contemporary Human Rights Education (Albert Scherr) 180 Memory Work and Human Rights Education in an Immigrant Society (Hasko Zimmer) 189 History as Resource: Human Rights Education as Historical and Political Education (Karl-Peter Fritzsche) 192 Index of Authors Stiftung EVZ HUMAN RIGHTS AND HISTORY: A CHALLENGE FOR EDUCATION Stiftung EVZ HUMAN RIGHTS AND HISTORY: A CHALLENGE FOR EDUCATION 3 FOREwORD FOREWORD When we met in November 2008 for the international conference “Rights that make us Human Beings,” we gathered at a historic location: the courtroom of the Nuremberg District Court, which was the setting for the Nuremberg Trials from 1945 to 1949. Stéphane Hessel’s appearance there remains especially vivid in my memory. Hessel is a survivor of the Buch- enwald concentration camp and French diplomat who participated in the drafting of the Universal Declara- tion of Human Rights. At this historic location, Hessel spoke about the challenges we face today. He passion- ately called on young people to work for a solution to an increasingly urgent problem, namely the scarcity of resources and climate change, and especially for a solution to global poverty. In so doing, he touched on the overarching challenge that shaped the conference: to conceive of the human rights formulated in 1948 as a direct response to war and genocide and as the product of history, and to relate them to contemporary threats to human dignity. One of our central interests in this respect is human rights education, which always entails two things: conveying knowledge and respect for human rights. The link be- tween knowledge and attitudes is important because knowledge alone cannot produce action to protect hu- man rights, just as an opinion without knowledge cannot ground arguments or produce useful action over the long term. The Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” stands for the acceptance of responsibility for past injustices and, against this background, for resisting the threat of new injustices. This relationship be- tween historical awareness and current engagement remains fragile. Awareness of the historical genesis of human rights is part of the understanding of these rights, yet we also know that human rights have a universal validity independent of their original context. By the same token, a human rights perspective on historical injustice helps us move beyond ideology or other prejudices, but commemoration and mourning also require a space that is not necessarily oriented towards current engagement. One of the central concerns of this volume is to situate the United Nations Charter of Human Rights and its provisions within their historical context. The Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” em- bodies the desire to link our efforts to facilitate understanding between peoples to the historical experience of injustice, and to realize this project by promoting human rights education that takes historical contexts into account. If we learn about rights in their proper historical context, we are better equipped to understand in- justice in the present day, and we come to understand the need to struggle against violations of human rights, to demonstrate civic courage, and to draw sustenance from our successes. We also learn that our engagement for human rights is an open-ended struggle, with a history of achievement and ongoing challenges. This volume is the outcome of papers given at the 2008 conference in Nuremberg, and of our subsequent dis- cussions and reflections. I extend my sincere gratitude to the editor Rainer Huhle, the individual authors, the translator Patricia Szobar and our program manager Christa Meyer. Martin Salm Chairman of the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” 4 Stiftung EVZ HUMAN RIGHTS AND HISTORY: A CHALLENGE FOR EDUCATION Stiftung EVZ HUMAN RIGHTS AND HISTORY: A CHALLENGE FOR EDUCATION 5 Rainer Huhle INTRODUCTION: ThE COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP OF HISTORICAL LEARNING AND HUMAN RIGHTS On December 10, 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was cel- ebrated around the world. The anniversary occasioned many publications, conferences and other events that addressed the development and significance of the Declaration and the enforcement of the human rights that it envisions. Once again, it became clear that people throughout the world regard the Declaration, with its straightforward prose that has been translated into countless languages, as a binding statement of their hu- man rights. The Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” and the Nuremberg Human Rights Center used the anniversary as an impetus to explore a very special aspect of the Universal Declaration, namely its sig- nificance for human rights education. In particular, we addressed the tension between concrete experiences of injustice, as they are reflected in the history of the development of the Declaration, and the pursuit of universal, normative human rights that are temporally and spatially decontextualized. This tension stems from the UDHR’s status as a historical and temporally bound document that is imbued with both universal and contemporary meaning. Drafted at a time when the recognition of human rights was a direct response to the crimes of Nazi Germany, the Declaration provided universal answers to concrete experiences of injustice that remain valid