Abstract: While conceptualizing education as a fundamental right has increased access to education for many, it has done so by centering a more technical framework of education listed in the first clause of Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) without simultaneously ensuring the spirit of education described in the second clause as one “directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” This article suggests that focusing primarily on guarantees of accessibility as mandated by the first clause of Article 26 of the UDHR does not protect the right to education from being coopted and commodified. Instead, it is the second clause and the conceptualization of education as a process of struggle and critical consciousness that enables the spirit of the right to education to be realized. Looking at comparative insights from leading educational thinkers like Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in India, John Dewey in the United States, and Paulo Freire in Brazil, we must build a framework for education that centers process, consciousness, and community. This reformulated notion of education is vital to enhancing democratic engagement, establishing meaningful social communities, and ensuring what Amartya Sen describes as a flourishing life, one measured by human capabilities rather than economic standing. 

Abstract: In 1970, the World Council of Churches, then the largest international Protestant and Orthodox body, embarked on a massive human rights mobilization it called the Programme to Combat Racism (PCR). Rooted in the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the PCR supported movements for freedom across the world, while focusing on liberation of Southern Africa from European colonialism and white minority rule. From 1970 until the end of apartheid in 1994, the World 
Council of Churches promoted self-determination as the heart of human rights activism by sending financial aid and symbolic support to Marxist anticolonial rebels in places like Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa. This paper interrogates the history of the PCR in order to better understand the past, present, and future of religious human rights mobilizations. It asks: what conceptions of human rights were left behind as the World Council of Churches centered anticolonial epistemologies in its human rights practice in the late twentieth century? What new understandings of human rights arose in global Christian networks as a result of (and in competition with) the PCR? 
 

Abstract: Forged during the same historical moment with intertwining deliberations that impacted their draftings, the UN General Assembly approved the first human rights treaty--the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention)--one day before the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on December 10, 1948. Their invocations and commemorations are windows into the circumstances and events that continue to shape their relevance and the efficacy of their mutually reinforcing premises. Given the documents' commingled origins and developments, a viable avenue for exploring a future direction of the UDHR is to consider its past and present in tandem with the Genocide Convention and within a context of contemporary and anticipated human rights crises, such as climate change and statelessness.