10.5 Use of the plan in human rights education Human rights practitioners are aware that education is the key to the long-term improvement of human rights observance. Reference has been made22 to the United Nations Guidelines for National Plans of Action for Human Rights Education. These were developed separately from present work on general plans of action but obviously should be associated with, if not integrated into, the general plan. Many human rights education materials that were developed in all regions of the world have been catalogued by OHCHR and are listed in a Database on Human Rights Education that is accessible from the home page of the OHCHR web site. Despite its importance, education presents some major challenges for the promotion of human rights. National education systems often involve very large bureaucracies and long-term planning. Preparation of materials on a large scale can be a costly process. It may therefore be difficult to accommodate changes or new ideas unless they are part of larger changes, which often take place only infrequently. Owing to these complications, human rights education sometimes focuses on less central areas of education such as the media and promotional events. This is inevitably less costeffective than introducing human rights into core curricula and reduces the long-term impact of educational efforts. These considerations should be borne in mind in implementing national plans of action for human rights education as well as in implementing specific human rights education activities in the general national plan. The national plan itself should be an element in human rights education programmes. Building on general human rights education, material on the national plan will impart greater immediacy to approaches to the application of human rights standards in the country concerned. As the national plan process is a continuing one, with one plan leading into another, the national plan can be a consistent theme of human rights education rather than a single event, and lends itself to the continuing development of educational curricula. To supplement core information and values, materials produced as part of the plan’s media and dissemination programmes will add to the effectiveness of the education programme. Print materials should be disseminated among schools as a matter of course. Audio-visual materials can be used to enliven human rights learning and contemporary students will possess the computer skills needed to make use of Internet web sites. Education efforts should, of course, extend beyond the formal school and university systems. The plan should include steps to ensure that information about its content and about human rights are included, where possible and appropriate, in vocational education and training programmes. Dissemination of printed and other information should not simply involve the physical movement of materials but should form part of a strategy for the effective use of such materials in education and public awareness programmes of all kinds. Work with the potential implementing partners mentioned in section 10.2 is particularly relevant in this context. 22 See chapter 2 and section 9.7.7. 93