Education for Human Rights and Citizenship in Kurdistan-Iraq

• In Event: Education for Diversity, Citizenship, and Human Rights in the Middle East

Abstract

Audrey Osler
Buskerud University College, Norway and University of Leeds, UK
This paper examines tensions and contradictions in implementing human rights education (HRE) and citizenship education into the school curriculum in the autonomous region of Kurdistan, Iraq.
Since 2005 Kurdistan is recognised as an autonomous region of Iraq, under the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) administration. In 2009 the KRG turned its attention to educational reform, extending the number of years of compulsory education from six to nine; introducing new learning objectives and two new curriculum areas human rights and democratic citizenship. It made a specific commitment to gender equity.
This paper reports on curricular reform in this field, focusing primarily on analysis of curriculum aims and textbooks used in basic and secondary schools. It draws also on classroom observations and interviews with teachers and school inspectors. It forms part of a larger on-going program of research in the region. Published papers from the research program have addressed the political context in which the reform are being implemented; teachers’ and education professionals’ experiences and understandings of both human rights and human rights education; and HRE and gender equity (Ahmed et al., 2012; Osler and Yahya, 2013; Yahya, 2013). This paper is informed in particular by research into teachers’ understandings of rights, justice and their own practices.
It reports on the tensions which can exist between HRE which is linked in the eyes of many in Kurdistan to the on-going struggle for recognition of the Kurdish people and homeland, but which is essentially a cosmopolitan project, and citizenship education, which has a strongly nationalist focus, concerned with Kurdish identity. This is characteristic of citizenship education across the globe (Reid et al., 2009). Nevertheless, struggles for human rights in Kurdistan are complex and multi-layered and include struggles for the rights of women and girls in what remains a strongly patriarchal society. Institutional practices in education worldwide continue to operate unjustly against women and girls even when the right to education is formally achieved (Tomaševski 2005) and this pattern is repeated in Kurdistan.
Education policy is a dynamic process, in which teachers, administrators and students are actors. Teachers in Kurdistan rely heavily on text books as classroom tools and so the quality and format of these books is critical, directly influencing teaching styles. Books which largely reproduce international human rights instruments are likely to be dry and inaccessible to both students and to teachers who are not trained in this new subject. Human rights education, as conceived in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and training (UN 2011) is intended to be transformatory, enabling learners to claim their rights, participate in learning and experience rights in school. By contrast, much citizenship education across the globe is designed to promote good citizenship, by which is often meant obedient and conformist citizenship.
The paper concludes by considering how text books might be orientated so as to address the social cultural and learning contexts of students and promote greater student participation.

Author

• Audrey Helen Osler, Buskerud and Vestfold University College, Norway