By Jean HÉNAIRE, Educational sociologist, Director of Publications, CIFEDHOP
IV. Summary
The sum of the activities offered to participants enabled them to identify some useful criteria for interpreting the varied situations that were presented throughout the training seminar.
The first criterion was reflected in the concept of diversity. This expressed above all the differences in behaviour, attitudes and perceptions which reflected our manifold images of reality: witness the extraordinary cultural mix among participants and speakers, in which they were both actors and subjects. Such an awareness should be built up, as too often our interpretation of phenomena and events reflected an ethnocentric view of things. Breaking away from fixed mind-sets opened the way to the culture of otherness at a time when people were turning in upon their own identity.
The second criterion was that of disparity, along a number of axes: North-South, East-West, local, national, international, global, etc. This disparity was a sign of economic, cultural, political and social fractures. Because of the inequality in the protection given to human rights - or quite simply their absence - we had to reinforce the action of the international community in an atttempt to achieve complete respect for them. It was true that protection mechanisms existed, but it was also well known that it was difficult to enforce them in several regions of the world. This touchy issue was brought out particularly in the introductory sessions of the seminar concerning international law on human rights. Disparity endangered social justice for all, as was emphasised by Mr Pierre Adossama, former Minister of Education of Togo and Vice- Chairman of EIP, and by the economist Mr Driss Dadsi. Social justice was thus being undermined by market imperatives, under the influence of which social skills were being eroded and some Third World countries were being condemned to structural dependency.
The third criterion was the paradigm of complexity. Linear models of interpreting phenomena were not sufficient if we were to try to explain the dynamics of changes arising from the interaction of a number of factors which were transforming reality. Their interdependence produced complex pictures of which we could not hope to make sense unless we employed analytical matrices which took the notion of globality into account. To this end, in order to understand and interpret "macroscopic" reality, it appeared apposite to develop teaching methods which encouraged the integration of knowledge into a holistic vision.
The picture that emerged at the end of the seminar also made clear the need to act. The real human rights situation gave cause for concern in a number of ways. Protection of rights was part of a system in which those who invoked them or defended them were largely dependent on the approaches adopted by states whose interests were frequently opposed to such rights. The strengthening of civil society by citizens at the grass-roots appeared to be one of the best methods that could be used to counter arbitrary action and to develop participatory democracy in a spirit of international solidarity that matched the intentions of the International Charter of Human Rights. In this respect, the promotion of education about human rights in formal and non-formal education was to be recognised as one of the main foundations for the legitimacy of democracies. Actions which took root in people's daily lives would help to bring about the vision of a projected world society in which the right to be different was no longer a pretext for staying as one was. "Ethical rights", to borrow the term used by Mr Bokatola to illustrate the notion of future rights - "germinating rights" - could take us a little further along the road to learning a common, planetary language.