‘Exploring the local: vernacularizing economic and social rights for peacebuilding within the Protestant/Unionist borderland community in Northern Ireland’

Abstract

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home-so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

Three-faced: The conflicting roles of citizenship education in conflict-affected societies – A comparison of Northern Ireland and Israel

“…Although teachers in both schools were keen to empower students, the circumstance that teachers from the Catholic school framed CE in terms of rights and active participation is significant. The Nationalist community has traditionally invoked a rights discourse when articulating their grievances within the state, a discourse that is notably less evident within the Unionist communities (Cahill-Ripley, 2019). It also shows the greater difficulty for teachers from majority communities, who are often framed as the dominant power in the conflict to reappraise the past and to make concepts such as rights, equality and citizenship meaningful to students by connecting them to students’ personal experiences compared to teachers from minority communities, who are likely to be framed as the main victims.…”

“…Notably, teachers from all four schools perceived the curriculum as not sufficiently relevant to the students' lived reality, prompting them to reinterpret citizenship in more meaningful ways. While teachers from all schools seemed to envision CE as active citizenship building on human rights, equality and critical thinking in relation to the conflict, minority and majority groups vary in their readiness to adopt these conceptsan issue that has been noted in previous research (Agbaria and Pinson, 2019;Cahill-Ripley, 2019;Gordon, 2012;Goren and Yemini, 2018). It emerged that it is more difficult for teachers from majority communities (Protestant and Jewish-Israeli) to connect these concepts to their communities' recent history and thus make them relatable for the students, whereas active forms of CE were more readily embraced by the minority communities.…”