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Editorial Introduction to Special Issue on Human Rights in Education

Lynette Shultz

Privacy in the YCJA: When Cops and Schools Pass Notes

R. Aubrey Abaya
In the wake of the killing of George Floyd in 2020, global protests generated public scrutiny about policing in our communities. Between 2020 and 2022, many school boards in Canada began to re-evaluate the value of having police in schools, as school resource officers or school liaison officers, with many boards eventually electing to end these programs altogether. Interactions with police in and through schools can facilitate a process by which youth are pushed out of the school system and into the criminal justice system, commonly known as the school to prison pipeline.The Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), which governs youth in conflict with the law, specifically in their interactions with the justice system and information that is permitted to be shared with other entities like schools. In part, these protections are provided to prevent stigmatization and promote rehabilitation. However, the YCJA had been amended to allow more information disclosures between police and school administrations. This article looks at the legislative history of the YCJA to provide context to these amendments. This article also explores how the court has interpreted privacy for youth under the Act, and how the privacy provisions operate in practice. Finally, it provides empirical research that relies upon interviews with key informants that shed light on the impacts of information sharing between police and schools on youth.

Children's Rights at the Crossroads: The Challenge of Anti-Trans Legislation in Alberta Schools

Jamie Anderson, Caitlin Campbell, Nicole Richard and Tonya Callaghan
Significant barriers to inclusion persist for 2SLGBTQIA+ children in Alberta, with legislation limiting school support for 2SLGBTQIA+ students taking effect in the province in 2025. Transgender and non-binary identities are specifically targeted by this legislation, with the government restricting the ability for youth to use different names or pronouns at school without prior parental permission. Tensions between parental rights claims and children’s rights have a long history in Alberta discourses, but there is a growing movement in education policymaking across Canada and the United States that seeks to elevate parental rights into law. Parental rights movements refute the rights of children as enumerated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and seek control over their sexual orientation and gender identity. Through a narrative literature review and Critical Discourse analysis, we examine the key values concerning children’s rights and parental rights that underpin anti-trans policymaking in the Alberta context and explore pedagogical possibilities that center children’s rights in anti-trans school contexts.

Beyond Human Rights Education: Re-Imagining Sociality for Participatory Striving

Sabine Krause, Raphael Zahnd, Wayne Veck, Michelle Proyer, Oliver Koenig and Magdalena Hanková
This article presents a theoretical elaboration based on the thesis that the UN Declaration on Human Rights (UNDHR) is not sufficient to realize co-creative practices for a (world) society based on the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. We argue that these goals are not a legal but a social task and responsibility rooted in a deeply social concern. In addressing the difficult implementation of UNDHR, the article turns to notions of the fellow human being and relatedness as the foundation of a society. Philosophical concepts and anthropological perspectives are used to demonstrate how education as “coming into practice” (Biesta, 2006) plays a central role in preparing individuals for sociality, understood as a way of getting to know different worlds, seeking diversity, striving for understandings, and finding connections to oneself by embracing “otherness.”

"Human Rights Are Not for Black Peoples": Understandings of International Human Rights Discourses by Young Adults in Tigray During War and Genocide

Thashika Pillay, Fisseha Gidey Gebremedhin, Ikeoluwapo Baruwa, Micheal Abraham Tesfamariam and Sanjay Lalwani
In November 2020, a war broke out between the Ethiopian federal government and the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia. This two-year period of extreme violence resulted in between 800,000 – 1 million Tegaru deaths, a communications blockade, sexual violence and starvation used as weapons of war, and an Ethiopian government imposed siege around Tigray to prevent entry of humanitarian aid. This study co-designed by three Tegaru researchers and one non-Tegaru researcher explored the experiences of young Tegaru adults, aged 18-25, during the early stages of the war. The findings in this paper are from semi-structured one-on-one interviews held in August/September 2022 with nine men and nine women and follow-up one-on-one interviews in January/February 2023, all of whom were living in the Tigray capital city of Mekelle. Participants shared their experiences related to the violence, siege and blockade imposed by the Ethiopian government during this period. Notably, most participants expressed strong condemnation of the actions taken by the international community, especially given the discrepancy as to how the international community responded to the Russia – Ukraine War which began in February 2022, 15 months after the conflict and genocide against Tigray began. Using the colonial matrix of power as a theoretical framework, this article shares Tegaru understandings of the international community’s response to the war and genocide in Tigray and Tegaru demands that international organizations and nation states put into action the human rights discourses they purport to support, demonstrating a desire for a universal practice of international human rights, one that does not privilege groups based on race or wealth. In not living up to these claims of the universality and neutrality of international human rights, international organizations and western nation states illustrated that human rights remains the domain of one particular subset of peoples, those with Eurocentric systems of knowing and being, who are seen as the true inheritors of the earth. These logics then destroy all other ways of knowing and being (Mignolo, 2007), and such acts become a production of invisibility wherein Tegaru lives are considered dispensable.

Translating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into Practice: Ensuring the ‘Security’ of Teachers in South African Public Schools

Nicholus Tumelo Mollo
The United Nations (UN) has adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to ensure that its member states promote and respect human rights. One of these rights is the right to security. There are studies that have been conducted about the right to security of teachers and learners; however, less is known about the translation of the UDHR security provision into practice to ensure the security of teachers in South African public schools. This qualitative study intended to close this gap by responding to the following research question: How is the UDHR translated into practice to ensure the security of teachers in South African public schools? The purpose of this article is to establish a human rights-based foundation for state support for ensuring teachers’ right to security in public schools. To answer the research question and achieve the purpose of this article, data were sourced from South African education law and national policy sources, Department of Basic Education (DBE) reports, research reports and academic articles that focus on the security of teachers. Critical policy analysis was used as both a theory and a method in this study. This approach involved examining various discourses and power relations that take place through the construction and functions of policy. The study provides two main findings. These findings are: (i) National law and policies align internationally, but some school-based safety policies fall short (ii) There is a difference between policy rhetoric and practiced reality on teacher security in South African public schools. It is recommended that despite the DBE’s efforts to ensure teachers’ security in public schools, the translation of the UDHR security provision into practice should be improved and impactful. This study contributes to the field of education law and policy, and it sheds light on how the UDHR provisions are translated into practice.