Human rights education in primary school textbooks: insights from Pakistan

School textbooks can play an important role in promoting human rights education (HRE) for equality and peacebuilding. In Pakistan, textbook analyses reveal persistent issues like the under-representation of women, girls and religious minorities, alongside conventional gender portrayals, which might jeopardies equality and the fulfilment of human rights. Existing studies oversimplify complex social dynamics by neglecting the intersection of various markers of discrimination (e.g. gender, class, ethnicity, ability). This article examines primary school textbooks, finding a lack of explicit human rights discussions. While some gender representation exists, meaningful diversity, intersectionality and the lived realities of social minorities (regional, ethnic, linguistic groups, persons with disabilities) are largely absent. The paper advocates for systematically integrating HRE into textbooks through an intersectionality framework to create more inclusive and representative educational content.