Shulamith koenig biography of martin
Shulamith Koenig, 1930-2021
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to HRE USA Forum
Shulamith Koenig, 1930-2021
This week human rights education lost one of its earliest and most passionate advocates with the passing of Shulamith Koenig, whom some have called "The Mother of Human Rights Education" or human rights learning, as she preferred. When she founded the People’s Movement for HRE (PDHRE), in 1988, no other organization in the world had made HRE its sole purpose and no other activist had envisioned its transformative power. Indeed, she was a rebel and a visionary, seeking what she called a “human rights revolution.”
Shula was the driving force behind a campaign advocating for worldwide human rights education that sparked the UN Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004). As Executive Director of PDHRE, she conducted consultations and workshops with educators and community leaders in more than 60 countries. Under her leadership, PDHRE established "human rights cities" on every continent. In 2003 the UN recognized her work with its prize in the Field of Human Rights.
Born in Israel in 1930, Shula Koenig was an industrial engineer and fierce defender of the human rights of Palestinian, activism that led to her immigration to the USA in the 1960s. She grew that passion for social justice to a global vision of human rights as a way of life for all people. She was an inspiration and mentor to many. As activist Loretta Ross said of her, “She was not perfect, but she was perfectly Shula, a sculptress, artist, mentor, and the grandmother I wish I'd had. For Shulamith, human rights learning was an ethics of care and not just an ethic of legal rights. (Reposted from: India Legal Live. August 6, 2021) Shulamith Koenig—who since 1988 was the founding president of PDHRE, a movement for Human Rights Learning (formerly known as People’s Decade for Human Rights Education)—has moved into infinity, but hers was a life lived exceptionally well. She has left the world which she reshaped with the quest of human right to have human rights education and learning. As we well know, one may be educated but never learn to care for hapless others; and formal education about human rights may still leave wholly behind rightless human beings and disadvantaged people. For Shulamith, human rights learning was an ethics of care and not just an ethic of legal rights. She leaves behind many difficult legacies, including one (where to invert the phrase of French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault) the documents of today become monuments of tomorrow. Shulamith was awarded the 2003 UN Prize in the field of human rights—an award given to five people every five years since 1966 and counts among them Nelson Mandela, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jimmy Carter. HRE was imagined by Shulamith as envisaging “a new political”—and I add a “civic”—“culture based on human rights” (in the words of Nelson Mandela). To this day, I recall that as fierce a feminist that she was, she (at Washington College of Law, American University) virtually held up Dr Karan Singh, who in his keynote address used the term “mankind” instead of “humankind”. She believed in enabling women and men (note that she always put women ahead) alike to participate in the “decisions that determine their lives, and live…in dignity with one another, moving from charity to dignity guided by the holistic human rights framework”. Many articles, monographs and manuals we Ed came indirectly to human rights through his commitment to law-related education. Although a student at Georgetown Law School and an active opponent of the Vietnam War, Ed recalled that he “still didn’t know the term ‘human rights’” though that is what opposition to the war was all about.” His teaching of public interest courses led him in 1972 to co-found the first Street Law program at Georgetown, where law students went into inner-city DC public schools to teach criminal, consumer, torts, family, housing and constitutional law. He was awarded a Robert F. Kennedy Fellowship, from the RFK Centre for Justice & Human Rights, which helped launch Street Law, Inc. in 1975 by subsidizing Ed’s first year of paid Street Law employment. With Lee Arbetman he published Street Law, a high school textbook now in its ninth edition, having sold over two million copies. Street Law developed a unique model of clinical education in law schools, supporting law students delivering interactive law-related education in secondary school and in other settings, such as prisons and homeless shelters, where access to this kind of information might be limited. The so-called “street law model” is now in practice in law schools throughout the world. However, as Ed has acknowledged, in the early days of Street Law, “We taught human rights, but we still didn’t use the words.” After his retirement as Executive Director of Street Law, Ed continued to be engaged in many educational and civic activities. He was a founding member of Human Rights Educators USA and served on its Steering Committee until his death. Ed was a strategic, passionate, human rights learner and educator, who dedicated his life to empower youth and adults to practice the core principles of equality, non-discrimination, and justice for all. Those who had the privilege to know Ed as a colleague, friend, and mentor treasured his professional talents and his personal warmth, generosity, and i .Long Live Human Rights Learning: in memoriam of Shulamith Koenig
By Prof Upendra Baxi
Edward O’Brien (1945-2015)