Sender: SCANET
Subject: SCANET training course, June 5-10, 2004 Dear all,
The 2004 SCANET training course in human rights research will be organ-ized between 5 and 10 June 2004. The course will feature lectures by permanent SCANET and international visiting experts. Participating doctorate candidates will hold presentations related to their ongoing PhD work. For this, they are expected to submit a paper of about 15-pages prior to the activity. The presentations will be commented on by participating experts. Application deadline: 15 February 2004.
Course information and application forms can be downloaded from http://www.
humanrights.edu/SCANET/courses.htm. A limited number of mobility scholarships are available for doctorate candidates from the Nordic and the Baltic countries.
Best wishes, the SCANET coordinator
The above message exemplifi es e-mails sent at regular intervals by the SCANET coordinator to SCANET members. The messages reminded par-ticipants, dispersed around the Nordic area and engaged in research at their respective institutions, of SCANET’s existence in the months between activ-ities, and started a series of events which would culminate in the activity itself. Following the message, doctorate candidates fi ll in their application forms and work on their papers to be submitted by specifi c deadlines. Experts invited in to lecture send out background reading and prepare their lectures.
Participants make travel arrangements followed by applications for mobil-ity scholarships. The SCANET coordinator continues organization to ensure that all details are attended to at the activity venue. When the event dawns, participants convene at the prescribed location, out-of-town participants, usu-ally a hefty majority, travelling by plane or train. After connecting fl ights and taxi rides, they arrive at the joint accommodation assigned to activity
partici-pants. As the venue usually holds no visible signs of the activity, participants attempt to shed nagging suspicions of having remembered the hotel - or the country, for that matter - incorrectly, passing an inquiry to the receptionist concerning rooms for SCANET activity participants.
Participants feel a sense of relief as the receptionist responds with a room key and an information package provided by the SCANET coordinator.
Still seeing no signs of other SCANET members, participants check into their rooms and examine at what time they are to arrive at the activity venue. When returning to the lobby, they spot others carrying similar information pack-ages. Closer examination reveals the group to include some familiar, some unknown faces. Small groups of lively discussion emerge, accompanied by a few individuals remaining outside them. As the starting time for the activity nears, a plan is organized to move jointly to its site. The brisk walk is accom-panied by continued exchanges and a dawning sentiment that SCANET is slowly starting to acquire real-life existence; it begins to emerge as an entity capable of generating a genuine sense of membership. Soon the participants reach the university building that is to be the activity headquarters for the following week. Located at the centre of a charismatic university town, the building welcomes visitors with old-time academic charm. Upon entering the activity room, it appears small, as it is fi lled with people engaged in lively discussion while enjoying coffee and sandwiches provided by SCANET.
Some participants are colleagues at their home universities, some have got to know each other in previous SCANET activities; many are meeting for the fi rst time. A defi nite excitement is in the air and people appear pleased to make each others’ acquaintance.
Soon the room is called to order and the activity announced to begin.
The brief opening speech is followed by the familiar round of introduc-tions by all participants. Sitting in the full seminar room with thirty or so people, SCANET’s existence is palpable: for the next week it will be the community to which members would hold their greatest affi liation. As the activity program is once again fully packed, SCANET will, in fact, come to occupy most of its participants’ waking hours. In the mornings, participants listen to lectures, in the afternoons, to student presentations. In between they have a common lunch break, followed by a joint dinner in the evenings that usually lasts at least until nine. If not followed by other social activities - going for drinks or having a sauna organized by SCANET among others - before bed participants read the numerous papers distributed to accompany lectures, as well as the background papers for the following day’s student presentations.
For the fi rst days virtually everyone participates in the program. By day three, participant numbers drop by three or four as people need to return back home; a few participants skip a session or two. By the second-to-last day more people leave, and by the time the activity concludes, the number of par-ticipants renders the event’s closing into a pale shadow of its robust opening just a few short days before. The remaining participants make their way back to the airport, jumping on planes to take them to their diverse destinations.
Soon all signs of SCANET’s existence are again annulled. A few months later the post delivers an envelope to the participants’ home universities containing the activity diploma and a group photo. Looking at the picture, many faces appear unfamiliar and names are forgotten. Participants place the envelope among their SCANET fi les and return to the responsibilities of their everyday academic life. SCANET fades back into its virtual existence, waiting to be revived by the next e-mail informing of future activities.
Decade of Human Rights Education
The years 1995 to 2004 marked the UN Decade of Human Rights Education (High Commissioner 2004a). Scholars have emphasized how the decade was the logical outcome of emphasis placed in education already in the Universal Declaration and since reifi ed in numerous documents such as the UN World Conference of Human Rights (Andreopoulos 1997; Baxi 1997; Vienna Declaration 1993). The same decade demonstrates signifi cant proliferation of educational programs on human rights: a search examining both online LLM program guides as well as Google shows that whereas only fi ve human rights LLM programs established prior to 1995 were found - two of them in the US and three in the UK, with the University of Essex advertizing its human rights LLM, founded in 1983, as the world’s fi rst (University of Essex 2006) - by 2006 the number had grown to over 120.86 In addition to national programs, the same years saw the establishment of numerous international programs, of which the most signifi cant in the European context was the European Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation, a predominantly EU-funded collaboration of 39 European universities, launched in 1997 and run in Venice (EMA 2006a). In 2000 this program was further followed by
86 The LLM guides consulted are available at http://www.llm-guide.com/university/562 (18.9.2006) as well as http://www.humanrightstools.org/masters.htm, hereon called the ‘EMA guide’. Where not available from other sources, funding year has been requested directly from the program coordinators. The list makes no claims for being exhaustive.
the European Regional Master´s in Democracy and Human Rights in South-East Europe (EMA 2006b). Over the past ten years, in addition to providing a competitive advantage by attracting students, master´s programs charging a fee have grown into a substantial source of revenue for universities: for example the fee for the Master´s Programme in International Human Rights Law at Oxford University was over 20 000 euros in spring 2007(University of Oxford 2007).
In addition to higher education, numerous initiatives exist to introduce human rights education to all levels of schooling (Andreopoulos & Claude 1997). As was discussed in Chapter 2, this emphasis has been strongly featured in Finnish educational policy. Although the temporality of expansion coincides with the UN decade, the decade appears unlikely to provide the sole reason for this proliferation - for example critical commentator Graham Hancock argues that the ‘calendar events’ favoured by the UN have been unable to induce ‘the slightest difference to the state of the world we live in’ (Hancock 1989, 100-101). Thus two additional sources can be identifi ed as having contributed to this development. First, the temporality of proliferation coincides with the establishing of human rights journals discussed in Chapter 2. Jointly with other trends discussed, these fi ndings suggest that the decade between 1995 and 2004 has been particularly signifi cant for the general expansion of the human rights phenomenon. Second, of the discussed 120 LLM programs, almost half have emerged in the UK. This feature can in turn be connected to the adoption of the UK’s Human Rights Act in 1998.
In addition to temporality, the programs are connected to another already discussed feature of the human rights phenomenon, namely the selection of English as its operational language. This applies particularly to joint ventures: for example the Mediterranean Master’s in Human Rights and Democratisation, founded in 2000 - a joint venture with the University of Malta, Bethlehem University, University of Jordan, University of Cyprus, Arab Institute for Human Rights, Centre d’Information et de Formation en Droits de l’Homme, Istanbul University, Tel-Aviv University, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, and Foundation for Human and Humanitarian Rights in Beirut - mentions that while good working knowledge of French is ‘highly desirable’, good command of English is ‘essential’ (Mediterranean Master’s 2006). The LLM program in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa, founded in 2000 and mentioned as the only program of its kind in Africa - a joint venture of the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, the American University in Cairo, the Catholic University of Central Africa in Cameroon, Universidade Equardo Mondlane of Mozambique, the
University of Ghana, Makerere University of Uganda, and the University of the Western Cape of South Africa - has likewise selected English as its language of instruction (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa 2006).
Also for the European Master’s program the primary language is English.87 The Nordic region has numerous programs focussing on human rights and likewise utilizing English as their working language. The Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law offers three different English Master’s programs focussing on human rights (Raoul Wallenberg Institute 2006), and the University of Oslo, in association with the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, offers a Master´s of Philosophy in the Theory and Practice of Human Rights, launched in 2001 (University of Oslo). In Finland, the Åbo Institute for Human Rights introduced its English-language Master’s degree program in international human rights law in 2006 (Institute for Human Rights 2007). In 2002 the Finnish Research School in Human Rights Research was started, followed by its second 4-year term commenced in 2006. Although its offi cial language is not English, in practice English has acquired a predominant position. In general the proliferation of PhD programs in human rights has been more moderate, with the searched LLM guide enlisting only three programs, of which two were in Spain. The third was the PhD program founded in the Netherlands in 1995 and continued until 2005 (KNAW 2006); the program can in many respects be held as a model for both the Finnish Research School as well as SCANET educational activities.88 Human rights education has been invested with signifi cant hopes for the future of the human rights phenomenon. Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has summarized these desires by emphasizing that human rights education is its highest priority, holding a fundamental role in empowering individuals to defend their rights and those of others (in Toivanen, Mahler & Mihr 2006, 171). The authors of the sub-stantial volume on human rights education edited by George J. Andreopoulos and Richard Pierre Claude - a book published with the initiative and support of the Organizing Committee for the UN Decade - elaborate this statement.
They emphasize how human rights education ‘offers hope for the future of
87 Likewise, for example, the LLM in Human Rights offered by the University of Hong Kong since 1999 and advertized as ‘the only Master´s programme of its kind in Asia’ utilizes English (LLM in Human Rights, 2006). Links are, however, found to Spanish and French programs, yet the numbers are more moderate, as this search located 12 Spanish (DerechosNet 2006) and 24 French programs. Of the latter, only 13 explicitly mention the concept ‘droits de l’homme’ in their course curriculum (CREDHO 2007).
88 Information is not available on the status of the program beyond this time.
our children and the destiny of humanity as a whole’, how it is essential to a ‘genuine process of global social change’ (Koenig 1997, xiii), and how it provides a unique strategy for the ‘building of a universal culture of human rights’ (Andreopoulos & Claude 1997, xxii). Viewed against such high expec-tations, surprisingly little scholarship has emerged evaluating the abundant human rights programs: what kind of teaching they offer and how their opera-tions can be assessed to contribute to the realization of these goals.
In the same volume Garth Meintjes introduces guidelines for elaborat-ing the meanelaborat-ing of empowerment and the manner in which its realization is connected to central utilized pedagogies. He begins by noting how the eman-cipatory emphasis of human rights education is unique in its explicit goal to induce transformative change compared to other areas of conventionally defi ned education, usually attempting to socialize individuals into existing norms and thus reproduce the society. He points out how this induces the potential for elites to see human rights education as threatening (Meintjes 1997, 65). Meintjes then discusses different approaches to education, draw-ing a contrast between empowerment which increases people’s or communi-ties’ control or mastery over their own lives, and ‘banking’ education. He bor-rows the latter expression from Paulo Freire, who has defi ned it as a process in which ‘knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing’. Banking is further governed by the assumption of ‘an absolute ignorance’ of others, and it is ‘characteristic of the ideology of oppression’ (in Meintjes 1997, 66). Meintjes notes how, as students are treated simply ‘as receptacles to be fi lled with useful ideas and information’, they are subjected to the psycho-logical impacts of the process where they are deprived of their own critical conscience and deceived ‘into believing that knowledge is an object to be received rather than a continuous process of inquiry and refl ection’; they are subjected to the ‘violence of anti- dialogue’. By contrast, empowered students become conscious of their own participation in the creation of knowledge as well as their critical ability to conceptualize their experiences of reality. Thus, in order to realize the potential of empowerment as well as its liberating pros-pects for challenging existing oppressive structures, human rights education needs to be ‘dynamic’ instead of ‘static’ (Meintjes 1997, 66-67).
These observations provide the backdrop for examining SCANET edu-cational activities. This analysis continues to utilize the concepts of Lave and Wenger, namely the learning curriculum and the legitimate peripheral participant. Lave and Wenger connect the concept of the learning curriculum to the reproduction of communities of different kinds, and emphasize that
learning is essentially situated activity. Thus, in addition to the acquisition of substantive facts, learning is understood to include the construction of identi-ties and membership as well as socialization to a new identity. The learning curriculum represents the perspective of learners - the ‘new-comers’ and the legitimate peripheral participants - aspiring to gain access into the social practices of the given community. This concept is contrasted by the teach-ing curriculum, the agenda of intentional instruction designed particularly from the perspective of what the community’s ‘old-timers’ - its full members - construe relevant for the instruction of newcomers (Lave & Wenger 1991, 36-37; 40-41; 53; 97; 116). Lave and Wenger assign the relationship of new-comers and old-timers an intrinsic tension: whereas the reproduction and sus-tenance of communities requires new members to gain full access, this can on a personal level awaken resentment in old-timers, for whom the process may induce loss of infl uence and status (Lave & Wenger 1991, 116). This resent-ment may embody itself in reluctance to offer newcomers thorough access to all elements of full membership, leaving its content opaque. This truncates the possibilities for identities of mastery to develop among newcomers, and transforms their legitimate peripheral status from an inclusionary and dynam-ic position into one of ‘unrelatedness or irrelevance’ (Lave & Wenger 1991, 29; 37; 42; 101-104).
The SCANET community of practice can be construed to embody the second generation of Nordic human rights experts with the fi rst, now retired generation of pioneers emerging in the 1980s. A prominent SCANET expert lists the pioneers in Norway as including the late Torkel Opsahl, Jan Helgessen, who is still continuing his work, and the retired Asbjorn Eide, who held a leading role. In Finland Allan Rosas became infl uential and start-ed to recruit younger researchers, in Swstart-eden Göran Melander’s impact was central, and in Denmark key fi gures were above all Lars Adam Rehof and Mårten Kjaerum. Due to the recent emergence of formal educational human rights programs, for the previous two generations of Nordic experts, social-izing and education into experts status have occurred through more informal training that could be characterized as apprenticeship.89 This raises the ques-tion whether such a formal ‘ school’ as SCANET is successful in reproducing the community of practice of human rights experts; whether it renders the community transparent or whether in its activities the status of legitimate peripheral participation is marked by unrelatedness or irrelevance. Connected
89 Due to its empirical focus on SCANET, this study does not offer a comprehensive analysis of the socialization processes of previous human rights expert generations, but rather offers mere glimpses. The concept of apprenticeship again follows that utilized by Lave and Wenger.
to this inquiry, the subsequent analysis explores SCANET educational activi-ties from the perspective of empowerment by asking whether its educational mode provides its students with increasing control or mastery over their own lives with which to challenge oppressive structures, or whether it is character-ized by ‘banking’, socializing its students to the ‘violence of anti- dialogue’.
Conceptions of Knowledge, Expertise and Learning
The SCANET website lists annually around a dozen activities in its name.
These include seminars, training courses and expert meetings held at its par-ticipant universities. For the present inquiry focus is invested on the training courses organized explicitly by SCANET with funding provided by ScaFund.
Each year commonly includes one week-long activity and one or two shorter, two to three day activities. The activity venues typically change and they have been organized in different parts of the Nordic region. Due to their short duration as well as limited number, SCANET activities do not pro-vide a comprehensive doctorate study curriculum. Instead they can be seen as complementing the training that participating candidates receive at their home institutions. Due to the high number of visitors in SCANET
Each year commonly includes one week-long activity and one or two shorter, two to three day activities. The activity venues typically change and they have been organized in different parts of the Nordic region. Due to their short duration as well as limited number, SCANET activities do not pro-vide a comprehensive doctorate study curriculum. Instead they can be seen as complementing the training that participating candidates receive at their home institutions. Due to the high number of visitors in SCANET