Recontextualising young children’s human rights education in Rwanda

Children’s human rights education in early childhood should be constructed in contextualised ways that respect traditional values, yet dominant Western-centred research often overlooks cultural synergies with rights, reigniting postcolonial critiques. This paper reports on a participatory study in Rwanda, framed by a postcolonial theory, that explored children’s (aged 3–6), their parents’, and teachers’ understandings of human rights education. Findings highlight how sociocultural values were interwoven into participants’ plural perspectives, illuminating a third space where traditional values and rights intersect, and fusions, resistances and negotiations coexist. This paper explores how these insights can contribute to recontextualising young children’s human rights education in ways that reflect their sociocultural realities. This postcolonial theorisation contributes a counter-narrative to one-directional approaches, pointing to a contextually connected pedagogy for rights that not only respects but integrates and builds upon existing relational knowledges and values.<br/><br/>