Human rights education in primary school textbooks: Insights from Pakistan
Document Type
Article
Department
Institute for Educational Development, Karachi
Abstract
School textbooks can play an important role in promoting human rights education (HRE) for equality and peacebuilding. In Pakistan, textbook analyses reveal persistent issues like the under-representation of women, girls and religious minorities, alongside conventional gender portrayals, which might jeopardies equality and the fulfilment of human rights. Existing studies oversimplify complex social dynamics by neglecting the intersection of various markers of discrimination (e.g. gender, class, ethnicity, ability). This article examines primary school textbooks, finding a lack of explicit human rights discussions. While some gender representation exists, meaningful diversity, intersectionality and the lived realities of social minorities (regional, ethnic, linguistic groups, persons with disabilities) are largely absent. The paper advocates for systematically integrating HRE into textbooks through an intersectionality framework to create more inclusive and representative educational content.
Publication (Name of Journal)
Human Rights Education Review
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/25355406.2025.2536849
Recommended Citation
Parveen, N., Rodrigues, G., Zainulabidin, N., & Ashraf, D. (2025). Human rights education in primary school textbooks: insights from Pakistan. Human Rights Education Review, 8(2), 296–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/25355406.2025.2536849
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.