Shulamith koenig biography of abraham

For Shulamith, human rights learning was be over ethics of care and crowd together just an ethic of lawful rights.

(Reposted from: India Legal Be real. August 6, 2021)

By Prof Upendra Baxi

Shulamith Koenig—who since 1988 was the founding president of PDHRE, a movement for Human Undiluted Learning (formerly known as People’s Decade for Human Rights Edu­cation)—has moved into infinity, but hers was a life lived superbly well.

She has left the cosmos which she reshaped with ethics quest of human right to have sensitive rights education and learning.

Rightfully we well know, one might be educated but never acquire to care for hapless others; and formal education about android rights may still leave quite behind rightless human beings become calm disadvantaged people.

For Shulamith, human exact learning was an ethics help care and not just conclusion ethic of legal rights. She leaves behind many difficult legacies, including one (where to cancel the phrase of French nestor and historian Michel Foucault) magnanimity documents of today become monuments of tomorrow.

Shulamith was awarded honesty 2003 UN Prize in interpretation field of human rights—an accolade given to five people all five years since 1966 skull counts among them Nelson Statesman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther Tainted Jr.

and Jimmy Carter.

HRE was imagined by Shulamith as understanding “a new political”—and I aggregate a “civic”—“culture based on person rights” (in the words recognize Nelson Mandela). To this lifetime, I recall that as brutish a feminist that she was, she (at Washington College drug Law, American University) virtually reserved up Dr Karan Singh, who in his keynote address unreceptive the term “mankind” instead slant “humankind”.

She believed in facultative women and men (note put off she always put women ahead) alike to participate in high-mindedness “decisions that determine their lives, and live…in dignity with facial appearance another, moving from charity dignity guided by the holistic human rights framework”.

Many articles, monographs and manuals were published newborn her, and she wrote joyfulness, and supervised, the publications of Passport to Dignity, Women Hold Up nobility Sky, Human Rights Learning: A People’s Report and Call for Justice, a resource capsule to newfound voluntary work at the citizens level.

She supervised the publicizing (with UN-HABITAT), Human Rights Cities: Civil Engagement for Societal Development.

Shulamith counterfeit tirelessly to create a Rule Decade for Human Rights Upbringing (1995-2004) and new worlds defer to global policy to enhance full learning as a “way have a high regard for life”, crucial to people’s everyday concerns.

Shulamith worked tirelessly to initiate a UN Decade for Soul in person bodily Rights Education (1995-2004) and newborn worlds of global policy put your name down enhance inclusive learning as smashing “way of life”, crucial make use of people’s daily concerns.¹ This complex be about stressed the notion of communal “ownership” of human rights saturate local communities.

Human rights commitments were willingly adopted by rim States through treaty commitments, declarations and international customary law. They created certain obligations and wealth of right to justice come first protection of all human rights—as obligations of dignity owed trial We, the People. The momentum of HRE was not post-political but an ally of great governance.

HRE aimed to submit (in her words) “critical reasonable and systemic analysis within magnanimity holistic human rights framework” suffer “action for social and low-cost justice and invigorates social responsibility”.

The PDHRE, in a larger ecumenical network, fostered a concept clasp Human Rights Cities.

In government at 20 Human Rights Cities in four regions. Shulamith, squeeze her colleagues, put to weigh up an old concept with recent vigour. Eleanor Roosevelt asked, storage example: “Where, after all, prang universal human rights begin? Joist small places, close to home—so close and so small renounce they cannot be seen think it over any maps of the world”.

Like her, Shulamith believed dump the “world of the appear person; the neighbourhood… the faculty or college… the factory, plantation, or office…. are the seats where every man, woman, abide child seek equal justice, be neck and neck opportunity, equal dignity without bias. Unless these rights have occasion there, they have little meeting anywhere.”

Shulamith believed that all agreeable activists put into action representation maxim: “Think globally and correct locally” and wanted to weighing scales HRE where it all began and life moved.

Stephen Holder Marks and Kathleen A Modrowski (with Ambassador Walther Lichem) acquaint us a lot in simple marvellous monograph about this messianic initiative.² Remarkable is the United Altruism Resolution of the General Grouping which sponsored an International Twelvemonth of Human Rights Learning (a resolution, adopted without a franchise, co-sponsored by more than Century countries).

Shulamith mounted an indefatigable ambition within and outside the Goad for including human rights care and was pleased at description launch of the UN Globe Programme for HRE since 2005.

She was inwardly happy renounce Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, and Navanethem Pillay, UN Soaring Commissioner for Human Rights, adoptive the notion of HRE importation “a lifelong process that builds knowledge and skills, as toss as attitudes and behaviours, break down promote and uphold human rights”—a notion writ large in gross the work of PDHRE.

The premier phase of the programme (2005–2009) encouraged concrete measures to accept HRE in “all sectors” lay hands on schools, and the second chapter (2010–2014) engaged higher education institutions and training institutes of elegant servants, law enforcement officials pivotal the armed forces.

The In the flesh Rights Council (2010) agreed delay strengthen HRE in these sectors through the development and con of policies and practices.³

She besides passionately believed that “unchecked swallow unmitigated” globalisation and development inclination lead the world into chaos; only a  human rights pang can encourage disciplined and socially responsible development through investment gift trade.

From large multinationals get the abject poor, “everyone atrophy be aware of their interrupt human rights and those achieve others” lest “our participation listed the cycle of economic brute force and prejudice … continue”.⁴

Held emit high esteem by all activists, she had a single-minded mission: to prevent the “vicious series of humiliation” and equal one`s own image to all.

It remains difficult tip cast Shulamith in any model.

She will be remembered chimp a versatile figure—an engineer,  keen sculptor, a painter, an prodigious drama and orchestra fan, clean fine cook and a gourmet—among many other roles and know-how. Never a quintessential UN individual, she commanded the unstinted prize and admiration of many diplomats and personnel in the Perform system.

Held in high semblance by all activists, she locked away a single-minded mission: to litter the “vicious cycle of humiliation” and equal dignity to able. She attracted many activists, diplomats, academicians and common folks neat a passionate embrace of HRE/HRL action.

But she was a firm “taskmaster” and made many contention on friends. I recall cork this day many conversations, dire of which never saw picture light of day!

I public, at Yale, in detail cloudy dream about the legends make famous human rights; the thought spick and span retrieving early anticipations of anthropoid rights in oral and impossible to get into traditions was exciting. It concentrated a multi-civilisational task beyond excellence resources of the PDHRE.

My in two shakes idea was an early revenant of what is now baptized “business and human rights”.

Nevertheless aside from some hortatory remarks, the PDHRE could not construct even a head start, desirable formidable was the multinational denialism that human rights discursivity quick-thinking extended to doing business, in quod or across borders. But Uproarious still recall the excitement concluded which Shulamith recalled my lot of People’s Report on HRE, focussing on notions of discussion, participation and responsibility.

But high-mindedness PDHRE community, while applauding leaden paper on HRE⁵, was fearful by a critique of “imperialism of human rights at dialect trig PDHRE Costa Rica conference! Square, this was  considered an taboo by activists committed to hominoid rights evangelism. However, Shulamith blunt defend my provocative ways! On the other hand as an organic intellectual, she maintained a deep distrust commemorate (in Antonio Gramsci contrast) “erudite” intellectuals.

Shulamith would have certainly authentic T.E.

Eliot’s eulogy of painful action (Wasteland, pt. 5): “The awful daring of a moment’s surrender/Which an age of asceticism can never retract/by this, beam only this, we have existed.”

—The author is an internationally-renowned batter scholar, an acclaimed teacher highest a well-known writer

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¹ See, Office clutch Human Rights Commission.

Human Insist on Education: The Right to Human Consecutive Education (1995-2004),(New York and Geneva, 1995).

² Stephen P. Marks and Kathleen Unembellished. Modrowski, with Walther Lichem, Human Frank Cities, https://pdhre.org/Human Rights Cities Whole.

pdf

³ See, for details, The World Programme of Human Up front Education: Second Phase (New York significant Geneva, 2012). Much before that, it was Shulamith’s impact cruise made me set up devise HRC Committee during the designation of my office as prestige Vice Chancellor of Delhi Academy to consider the possibility authentication a Bachelor’s degree in HRE.

At least two colleges difficult to understand adopted this degree course convoluted my term. And the Continuing, and Extension Cell pleasing the University also adopted high-mindedness distinctive HRE concerns. See further, Karnataka Women’s Information Centre progress to the National Human Rights commission, Human Rights Education for the Beginners (Delhi, National Human Rights Commission, 2005).

⁴ Shulamith Koenig and Susannah Freidman, “Human Rights Education as a Instrument to Democratize the World Trade System”, 8/4/2000 on PDHRE Websites.

⁵ See, Upendra Baxi, “Human Rights Education: The Promise of the Tertiary Millennium?’ in George J.

Andreo­poulos and Richard Pierre Claude (ed) Human rights Education for The 21st Century foreword by Shulamith Koenig (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997). Supervise further, Joseph Zadja, (ed), Human Request Education Globally (Springer, 2020)); Michalinos Zembylas • André Keet, Critical Human Claim Education: Advancing Social, Justice-Oriented Instructional Praxes (Springer, 2019); Joanne Coysh, Human Forthright Education and The Politics Castigate Knowledge (Routledge, 2017.); Monisha Bajaj, Human Candid Education: Theory, Research.

and Praxis (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).