Human Rights Education: The 4th R
Get Up, Stand Up! Celebrating 50 years
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
vol. 8, No. 2, Fall 1997.

Overview: Participants work cooperatively to create a map of their community and identify the rights associated with each major institution.

Time: 1 hour (but could extend over several days)

Materials: art supplies, chart paper; copies of the UDHR for each participant.

Setting: elementary school to adult groups

Procedure:

1. Divide participants into small groups and ask them to draw a map of their town (or neighborhood in the case of larger communities). They should include their homes, major public buildings (e.g., churches, post office, city hall, schools, museum) and public services (e.g., hospitals, fire department, police station) and any other places that are important to the community (e.g., grocery stores, parks, cinemas, gas stations).
2. When the maps are complete, ask participants to analyze their map from a human rights perspective. What human rights do they associate with different places on their map? For example, the church might represent freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, the school with the right to education, the post office with the right to information, to privacy, and to self-expression. As they identify these rights, they should look up the relevant article in the UDHR and write the number of the UDHR article(s) next to that place on the map.
3. Ask each group to present its map to the whole group and summarize its analysis of human rights exercised in the community.

Are there any articles of the UDHR that seem to be especially exercised in this community? How can this be explained?

Are there any articles of the UDHR that no group included on their map? How can this be explained?

Which of the rights identified are civil and political? Which are social, economic, and cultural? Did one kind of right predominate on the map? Did one kind of rights predominate in certain areas (e.g., more civil and political rights associated with the court house, city hall, or police station)?

Can anyone see new ways to add rights to their map, especially those that were not included in the first?

4. Discuss:

Are there any places in this community where people’s rights are violated?

Are there any people in this community whose rights are violated?

What happens in this community when someone’s human rights are violated?

Are there any places in this community where people take action to protect human rights or prevent violations from occurring?

Variations:

1. This lesson could be developed as a math activity, drawing the area to scale. It could also serve as a geography activity, including topography, directions, and spatial relationships.
2. Each step of the activity might be done on different days, allowing participants time to reconsider the layout and make-up of the neighborhood and the rights associated with each component.
3. The discussion in Step 4 provides an excellent opportunity to have a lawyer or human rights activist speak to the group.
4. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) might be substituted for the UDHR, especially for school use. A representative of a human services agency or children’s advocacy group might speak in Step 4.

Variations for Young Children:

1. The map might be created in three-dimensional form.
2. This activity might be combined with a walk around the neighborhood to observe rights in action.
3. The exercise might focus just on the school or the home, or different groups might take separate parts of one common map to analyze for human rights.

Adapted from a demonstration by Anette Faye Jacobsen, Danish Centre for Human Rights.

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