| Abstract: | Human rights education and training have become one of the principal pillars of the international human rights movement. Based on a comprehensive survey of training resources and approaches developed for police internationally, this article concludes that they principally follow a dry information transmission model using a traditional lecture-style pedagogy. Looking across the large body of training material available internationally, it appears that there is a fixed body of resource material that circulates and gets recycled, the regularity of its employment rather than its quality now bequeathing it the title best practice. Human rights training has taken on a ritualistic quality. Rather than simply assuming that such ritualism is indicative of mindlessness or cynicism, however, this article treats it as a point of curiosity. It asks: How is it that a template of action has developed and is continuing to expand, with the support of a range of stakeholders when it evidently falls short on key dimensions? Why continue to repeat a performance that seems so ill conceived? The article proposes eight explanations for the persistence of ritualized practices in human rights training for police. |
