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jharnby asked Dr Stephen Hopgood: "How well do you think our national curriculum covers human rights education?"
Dr Stephen Hopgood answer: "Human rights education is done through the citizenship stream in secondary schools. There doesn’t seem to be a significant amount of material on human rights particularly, within that citizenship stream...." Show more»" Human rights education is done through the citizenship stream in secondary schools. There doesn’t seem to be a significant amount of material on human rights particularly, within that citizenship stream. And also of course it is not clear that citizenship and human rights are necessarily entirely sympathetic with each other at some level. The idea of human rights is something that in effect overrules or trumps the claims of citizenship sometimes. Asylum seekers coming to Britain would expect to be able to make claims under the covenant on social and economic rights or on civil and political rights, but it is not clear that the state meets those. Citizenship frequently is, if you like, a kind of pass to special rights. For example welfare rights. Rights that are real - you can go and collect money from the state in this way, but if you don't have citizenship you can't. I think there is a tension there between the value benefits of citizenship, and the human rights claim. And many citizens would think they deserved special rights in relation to non-citizens. Even though the human rights language can’t differentiate between them. The question I would ask on this specifically is - how many British citizens would pass the citizenship test? It asks all sorts of questions about government and British history, and it is not clear to me that many existing citizens would necessarily pass. So for me the citizenship stream is purely a political thing in order to try and reduce tension amongst people who are sceptical about either Muslim citizens of Britain or newcomers to Britain from Eastern Europe. "Show less«
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0 comment | Topic: Politics | Email to friends | Dec 08 2007 8:17:45 PM

bonzo1 asked Dr Stephen Hopgood: "Are there any circumstances where you would condone violence being used to restore human rights - I'm thinking here about the violence being used by organisations such as the PKK and the Tamil Tigers?"
Dr Stephen Hopgood answer: "The short answer to that I think is yes, but I'm going to make a distinction between what we might call political rights and human rights. We can all think of circumstances under which we think that ..." Show more»" The short answer to that I think is yes, but I'm going to make a distinction between what we might call political rights and human rights. We can all think of circumstances under which we think that violence is justified, unless we are thoroughgoing pacifists. And many pacifists have famously recanted at some point when they realised the horrors that we're facing. The argument that the Tamil Tigers and the PKK would both make at some level is that this is self-defence for them as an ethnic or religious group. What they’re after, both of those organisations, is a state. Within a state they think that they can defend themselves. That state can then guarantee political rights for its citizens. So what they would argue, undoubtedly, is - once we've got a state rights really begin to matter because rights are then enforceable, and there is a legal recourse if those rights are trampled upon. Human rights that exist in a more rhetorical realm don't do any good for the Tamil Tigers when they're being carpet-bombed or the PKK when they're being attacked by the Turks. There are the words restore human rights in the question, I think what they would argue is in order to get anything approximating rights you need a mechanism of self defence, you need a state, and when you are trying to fight for that state against an existing state which is already heavily armed, there is no alternative. What if we replace PKK with Nelson Mandela and the ANC? At some point Nelson Mandela made a very conscious decision that he and the ANC would have to resort to armed violence. This in a sense is a ‘cuddlier’ example of the use of violence to restore human rights If you imagine that we didn't condone violence in the ANC case we would basically have an endless continuation of apartheid. So I think a blanket ban on violence, really, risks freezing a form of injustice. "Show less«
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0 comment | Topic: Politics | Email to friends | Dec 08 2007 8:15:50 PM

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