Human rights education, social change and human development : the case of a Fulɓe West African rural community

• Main Author: Cislaghi, Beniamino Ferdinando
• Published: University of Leeds 2015
• Subjects: 323.071
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.634201

This thesis investigates how human rights can be used as a tool for human development, fostering positive social change. In particular, the thesis explores how a human rights education programme run by the NGO Tostan contributed to processes of social change in a Fu1be rural community in West Africa. I looked at three components of social change and at possible shifts during and after the human rights education programme. First, I analysed community members' capability, to participate publicly in the decision-making process of their community (as a place where social structure could be renegotiated). Secondly, I looked at the role that gender relations played in limiting or fostering that capability. Thirdly, I explored participants' understandings of certain human-rights inconsistent social practices such as early and forced marriages (and at possible shifts during the programme) and at whether they would renegotiate those practices at the public level. The thesis reviewed key literature to address issues of relativism of human rights, critical models of human rights education, how social norms are constructed and challenged at the social and individual level and how gender and power relations contribute in constructing those norms.