Decolonizing human rights education, Eurocentrism, and human rights universals

Abstract Critical reflection on the history, conceptual underpinnings, and practices of human rights education (HRE) has prompted calls for the field to be decolonized, in response to the injustices of colonial history and persisting present-day coloniality. We sympathize with current calls to decolonize and value their effect in prompting critical reflection on Empire in all its facets, yet we also regard HRE as having a credible role to play in response to both colonialism and continuing coloniality. Addressing the decolonial criticism of human rights education as undermined by Western, European, universalist underpinnings, we question its account of European thought. In doing so we distinguish between a qualified universalism on the one hand, which we support, and colonial hypocrisy and pseudo-universalism on the other. Favouring a postcolonial stance, we argue that while the practices of HRE must reflect local diversity, its conceptual foundations are neither historically fixed nor geographically determined. We reflect on the prospects for developing a conceptually coherent and programmatically defensible HRE if we embrace the decolonization imperative’s scepticism about European thought and the possibilities for universality that seem so central to the human rights movement.