Education as Rehabilitation for Human Rights Violations

Abstract

Reparations for human rights violations in the form of rehabilitation can include social services such as education. This can be a particularly appropriate form of reparation for victims who have experienced abuses that result in missed education as a lost opportunity. Reparations can be rehabilitative by directly responding to harms suffered by victims and their ensuing needs, thereby helping to reintegrate those victims into society and restoring to them a functional life. Education can be provided through an administrative program or policy as individual reparations, such as scholarships to victims, as collective reparations, such as the rebuilding of schools in communities hard hit by abuses, and as symbolic reparations, such as naming schools. Court decisions awarding education as a form of reparation have also contributed significantly to our understanding of education as rehabilitation. This article examines the contributions that education as rehabilitation can make to redress as well as the implementation challenges faced by initiatives that have attempted to do so.