This thesis investigates how human rights can be used as a tool for human development, fostering positive social change. In particular, the thesis explores how a human rights education programme run by the NGO Tostan contributed to processes of social change in a Fu1be rural community in West Africa. I looked at three components of social change and at possible shifts during and after the human rights education programme. First, I analysed community members' capability, to participate publicly in the decision-making process of their community (as a place where social structure could be renegotiated). Secondly, I looked at the role that gender relations played in limiting or fostering that capability. Thirdly, I explored participants' understandings of certain human-rights inconsistent social practices such as early and forced marriages (and at possible shifts during the programme) and at whether they would renegotiate those practices at the public level. The thesis reviewed key literature to address issues of relativism of human rights, critical models of human rights education, how social norms are constructed and challenged at the social and individual level and how gender and power relations contribute in constructing those norms.

Launched in 2009, Amnesty lnternational's Human Rights Friendly Schools project is to date the most ambitious attempt to create a global model for rights-based education policy. Drawing on theories of utopianism, pragmatism and micropolitics, this thesis explores the influence of wholeschool human rights education (HRE) approaches for promoting human rights and school improvement within formal education. Based on participant-observation, semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis at both Amnesty and a London secondary school at multiple points over two years, this study examines how rights-based policies and practices are enacted through non-governmental organisation (NGO) partnership, and explores how the organisational and political contexts of NGOs and schools in England influence such projects. The study found that Human Rights Friendly Schools was primarily implemented through the school's existing student voice programme, and was used to raise awareness of school-wide rights initiatives. Throughout the project, HRE was envisaged as both a means to empower students and as a way to improve their behaviour and performance. However, authoritarian leadership practices and damaging micropolitical activity undermined schoolwide messages about human rights, and the human rights discourse represented by Human Rights Friendly Schools challenged elements of the school's behaviour management systems which teachers and students perceived to be excessive. Tensions between discourses of control and empowerment led to a series of teacher and student strikes - a destabilising chain of events that led to the dissolution of the Amnesty partnership. This thesis concludes that whilst the partnership ultimately failed to embed the rights-based approach envisioned by Amnesty, important lessons can be learned. The findings suggest that future whole-school HRE projects should provide stronger support for school-wide rights learning, address potential disjunctures between rights-based and neoliberal policies and prioritise inclusion of the full range of school community voices in planning and implementation. Such approaches can support wider school policies and development strategies whilst simultaneously improving relationships between teachers, students and leaders.

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This thesis explores the nature and extent of Human Rights Education (HRE) in primary education policy and practice in England. It highlights that the provision of holistic education about, through and for human rights at all levels of formal schooling is required by the international legal framework, and has been included most recently within the UN Declaration on HRE and Training (2011). The UK has signed and accepted most of the international instruments and initiatives that address HRE and therefore ought to be educating in accordance with their requirements. The thesis investigates whether the commitment to educate about, through and for human rights is reflected in English primary education policy, and shows that this is ostensibly not the case. Following this finding, it draws upon quantitative and qualitative empirical research with primary teachers across England to gauge whether the elements may instead be reflected in practice in primary classrooms and schools. This empirical investigation shows that, despite the practice of teaching about values that could have human rights relevance, there is little evidence to suggest that primary teachers are addressing effectively the elements of the tripartite framework. Educational practice is therefore unlikely to be remedying the deficiencies in policy concerning HRE in England. The empirical research identifies a number of the barriers to effective HRE articulated by primary teachers and explores these in detail in light of the academic literature. It therefore fills a gap in the current research by not simply addressing the pragmatic question of whether HRE is being incorporated into classroom practice in a manner consistent with the international framework, but also by delving deeply into the underlying reasons why. It concludes by arguing that stronger government policy and guidance reflecting the international requirements for HRE is needed, but unless the identified practitioner-based concerns are taken into account, the commitment to educate primary school children about, through and for human rights is likely to remain undelivered in England.