Education Reform for Healing, Co-Existence and Human Rights in Transitional Justice Environments

Session Submission Type: Group Panel

Description of Session

Examining historical injustice and promoting human values are critical dimensions of citizenship and central to the goals of democratic civic education. This panel will present cases from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Southeastern Europe to reflect upon educational reform efforts in transitional justice environments. Through the analysis of primary and secondary data based upon interviews and document review, the panelists describe how the schooling sectors have responded to the challenge to contribute to the promotion of healing, co-existence and justice in post-conflict, post-totalitarian environments. The panel will also address the reciprocal influences of what transitional justice moments and formal processes offer the education sector and the specific roles that Truth Commissions and Human Rights Commissions have played.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Citizenship and Democratic Education (CANDE)

Chair

• Susan Garnett Russell, Teachers College, Columbia University

Individual Presentations

• Transitional Justice Processes and Education: Common Efforts for a Justice-Based Reconciliation - Elizabeth Cole, United States Institute for Peace

• Truth Commissions and education systems: Time to look back - Julia Paulson, Bath Spa University; Michelle Bellino, University of Michigan

• Aspirations and limits of the human rights education vision in a transitional justice environment: the South Africa case - Felisa Tibbitts, Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice at the University of the Free State (South Africa)

• Constructing Citizenship in Post-Conflict Contexts: The Cases of Rwanda and Liberia - Laura Quaynor, University of South Carolina Aiken; Susan Garnett Russell, Teachers College, Columbia University