Human Rights as a Concept of Public Law: Challenges for Central Asian Higher Education Systems

Abstract

This chapter first explains human rights as a concept of public law and briefly analyzes its legal nature. Second, the chapter outlines the particular challenges this concept presents for the Central Asian countries and their formal education sectors. Treating the concept as a predominantly legal phenomenon, it considers how human rights play into key ideas such as the Rechtsstaat and its crucial elements: rule of law and civil society. Further, it scrutinizes the role of human rights education (HRE) and knowledge dissemination in raising legal awareness and promoting legal culture among the population, a particularly relevant problem for the Central Asian countries. The chapter then proceeds to address issues of disseminating knowledge on human rights, primarily in the formal education sectors and hence public (but also private) higher education institutions that impart legal knowledge in the four main Central Asian countries. Challenges to providing effective formal education in human rights are reviewed, along with local contextual factors in the region (cultural, social, historical, economic, and political) contributing to those challenges. Understanding such factors facilitates the development of potentially useful suggestions and solutions to address these challenges. The latest overview of the current human rights education programs in Central Asia is a crucial basis for this brief analysis. Lastly, the chapter argues in favor of applying a systemic, principled, as well as contextualized approach to improving human rights education efforts in the region.