Critical knowledge & capacity building
DEMOCRACY AS MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING: A HUMAN RIGHTS APPROACH
Human rights education was recognized as “essential for promoting and achieving stable and harmonious relations among communities and for fostering mutual understanding, tolerance and peace” by the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights. In 1994, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004) and urged all UN member states to “promote the dissemination of education and information for the building of a universal culture of human rights. As a result, governments have increased their commitment to promoting human rights education, primarily via government education programs. As governments are concerned with international relations, the maintenance of law and order, and the general functioning of society, they tend to view human rights education as a means of fostering peace, democracy, and social order.
As part of Connexus’ values of promoting democracy, we believe in participation as a means and an end in itself. We thus encourage a number of initiatives which put emphasis on developing capacities for civic participation and human rights activism, as well as the propagation of materials and forums where such principles can be enforced in theory and praxis.
A glance at our programmes and joint initiatives
Supporting critical debates across Europe: taking a participatory approach for knowledge and strategy-building – the Zetkin Forum for Social Research
The Zetkin Forum for Social Research is committed to promoting internationalism and social progress through the production of knowledge and rigorous academic research. Working with movements and organisations across Europe and the MENA region, it investigates a range of issues including the development of contemporary socio-economic conditions, the mechanisms of the capitalist world economy, and the history of the labour movement. To this end, it undertakes a wide range of self-run and collaborative projects, including a research centre, a publishing house, and international conferences.
The forum is the home of the Internationale Forschungsstelle DDR- IFDDR, who carries on historical analyses on public policies and the international socioeconomical context during the Cold War and Eastern bloc years.
Co-creation as critical thinking: the World to Win collective
The World to Win’s mission is to educate how maps govern the way we perceive the world. The collective strives to excite with cartography as a medium to assert agency of representation by replacing outdated maps with those that bear equitable representation of regions and peoples.
