Teaching for Tolerance: Strategy Paper
Main aims of the project:
- To encourage school education that increase understanding and respect between people of different religions or world views and that foster knowledge about and respect for freedom of religion or belief as a human right,
- and by this contribute to combat discrimination and intolerance based on religion or belief and prevent violations of the human right to freedom of religion or belief
Main focus:
The network will focus on the following three aspects
of education to meet with the aims.
- Education for tolerance
- Education about freedom of religion or belief
- Education about religion or belief
Objectives:
- To contribute to the collection, development, dissemination and use of material for school education about freedom of religion or belief as a human right and about tolerance with regard to religion or belief
- To evaluate different educational models (of civic and human rights education and education about religion or belief) from around the world to see if they contribute to tolerance and understanding between people with different believes and worldviews and if they are in compliance with international human rights standards on freedom of religion or belief, and to encourage states to revise existing models of education if necessary in order to achieve the aims of the Madrid Consultative Conference
Main strategy:
To co-operate with other partners in developing a
global, interdisciplinary network that contribute to the development
and dissemination of material and to the evaluation of models as
lined out in the objectives. In particular, there is a need for
dialogue and co-operation between:
- people with legal expertise in the field of human rights (and in particular freedom of religion or belief)
- persons with expertise in the field of education about religion and belief and human rights/civic education, and
- people with experience in inter-faith / inter-belief dialogue.
In order to facilitate dialogue between persons with expertise in these three different, but interrelated fields, The Oslo Coalition co-operate with existing networks and organizations, both those with a regional focus and those with a global focus. Co-operation with governmental authorities as well as the UN system and other super-national organizations is of importance to succeed. For instance the network will give input to relevant institutions at the international and national level about models and materials for education that might meet with the aims and recommendations of the Madrid Consultative Conference.
Project organization:
- The working group will take a main responsibility in developing and implementing the strategy and plan of action of this network project in cooperation and dialogue with the Oslo Coalition secretariat and the project leader appointed by the Oslo Coalition Board.
- The persons and organizations affiliated with the network will be encouraged to contribute with input to both the planning and implementation process and will be updated by regular information letters made available on the Oslo Coalition Internet site.
- One or two persons will be appointed to take a main responsibility for each of the separate project that are listed in the plan of action. Information will be sent out to all about who these persons are and where they might be contacted. The project leader of the whole project will be coordinating the actions of the different minor projects.
For more information
about this TTFRB network project, see the Oslo Coalition web page.
Also see the May 2003 newsletter of the Oslo Coalition TTFRB project
(to be found at the web page).
The project leader and the secretariat welcomes all responses and suggestions concerning the presented plan and information about as well as initiatives for co-operation with other partners and projects.
The secretariat
can be contacted at: office@oslocoalition.org
The working group can be contacted at: sandvig@human.no
