Human Rights and Sexual Abuse

Addressing Sexual Harassment in School: Using a Human Rights Framework.

The webinar exploring sexual harassment in school using a human rights framework was a fantastic opportunity to understand sexual abuse in schools, and human rights education as a right and an obligation. We recommend that you watch the video recording of the webinar as it offers important insights that can help all teachers and educators in understanding how these topics are combined.

You can see the presentation in the video here: 

The questions and participation were not included in the video, but have been summarised here as they add to the conversation, and we wanted to share these ideas too.


An introduction to the hosts.


Audrey Osler is a Professor of Education at the University of South-Eastern Norway and at the University of Leeds, UK. She is Editor-in-Chief of  Human Rights Education Review. She has expertise in working for reconciliation in post-conflict settings in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Her most recent book is Human rights and schooling: an ethical framework for teaching for social justice and she is currently writing Where are you from? No, where are you really from? drawing on history and memoir to discuss empire, migration and belonging (Virago Press, 2022). 

Twitter: @ÁudreyOsler:


Beate Goldschmidt-Gjerløw is a researcher and PhD candidate at Agder University in Norway. Beate is a political scientist specialized in peace studies and conflict transformation. She has taught politics and human rights for many years in upper secondary schools and is lecturing in teacher education programs at various universities and colleges in Norway. Her current research explores how teachers address sexual violence in upper secondary schools. Beate is editing the anthology Controversial, emotional and sensitive issues in school (Universitetsforlaget, 2021). You can find out more about her research and publications here

Twitter: @beate_gold


Key questions from the webinar


Question - I was a primary teacher and I think young children can suffer the same social injustice and have a similar experience of not being listened to. Have you any work that you can cite that shows that very young children also need to be aware of what their human rights are, and be aware that they have the right to be listened to and not to be sexually harassed because they can experience this in muted ways as well as overtly. Is there any information on this?


Audrey Osler - I would just say that in the UK we have a comprehensive Rights Respecting Schools programme on child rights education in some schools, developed by UNESCO. Where children do learn about their right to express themselves and to be confident to ask questions to engage with human rights in this very concrete way, they are able to address everyday issues, and understand sexual harassment and other concerns. However, I have a reservation also because I have come across examples of Rights Respecting Schools that may contradict this. Some human rights education  may be more concerned with certain forms of discipline to manage children’s behaviour. So, I think that any of these programmes can be used for good or ill.


Participant Comment - Thank you for a letting me join in, I am a former primary school teacher myself and I'm now currently doing a PhD focused on primary school teacher’s ability to detect and intervene towards harmful sexual behaviour in primary school. So, it is good that we can cover all stages of school here. Teaching children from a very young age how to voice their opinion, and how to tell people about violations of human rights, not only sexual but any, is essential for children. The teacher has such an important role in modelling the behaviour you want to see in creating a safe space for children to talk. I mean the safe space has to be there regardless, for children to exercise their participatory rights and controversial issues.


Answer from participant and Ph.D. Research Fellow Kjersti Draugedalen - We have all this research from not only Norway but from worldwide, saying that children and young people who are sexually abused can take around 17 years to tell anyone. But if you as a professional can become this significant other, the chances are much higher for children to actually share these kinds of traumatic experiences sooner. However, teachers tend to outsource this difficult teaching about sexual violence, and when you outsource it to people there isn’t necessarily that special bond and it disables that communication, because you don't have that fundamental trust that is needed. Schools often outsource their human rights education as well through NGOs and so on, which kind of amplifies the problem.


Question - Do Teachers have a legal obligation to report any suspected mistreatment of students to a governmental body? For example in Canada when a teacher suspects mistreatments they are obligated to report the case to the children's aid society and social services. Is that the same across the world?


Beate - It is in the Norwegian legal framework, the Norwegian Education Act, that if there are suspicions that any learner is experiencing violence, there is a duty to act and it depends on the nature of the violence how it is reported. If it's sexual violence they should report to the child protection service if they have a suspicion, and if they have a very firm suspicion they can also contact the police.


That leads nicely onto another question that we've had. Which is about what is unprofessional and illegal in terms of sexual harassment. A teacher who was doing some training said that the other teachers were asking what specifically are the terms for sexual harassment.


Experiencing sexual harassment is very subjective and it entails all forms of unwanted sexual attention and it can be verbal, it can be digital, it can be non-verbal, through body language and it can also be physical. So, it has both verbal and non-verbal, and physical dimensions. Harassment can take many forms, it can be sexual harassment, it can be heterosexual harassment, it can be harassment that is based on sexual orientation, or harassment based on gender non conformity. So, there are many different faces of harassment.


Question- Nice to meet you thank you so much for the good presentation. I've just recently trained teachers on school related gender-based violence and they really paid great attention, and they were very happy when I read the violation paper. I also include a pledge to do something about our past violence. When I read these documents, many of them were all missing that part. If I have another chance to train teachers, how best can I get them to commit to things like documenting the cases and referring these cases of violence against children?


Beate - Thank you, I would speak very warmly of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and highlight that every child has the right to education, and the right to education also includes the right to sexual education, and that sexual education also includes education on sexual violence. Include articles about children’s rights to protection and the right to be heard. I would very much link it to the rights of the child.


But perhaps you would prefer more didactical resources? I've written about different kinds of resources that you can use in my paper on children's rights and teacher responsibilities. These include all sorts of things from picture books, digital resources and all kinds of things you can use.


Audrey - Young children are often very excited to learn they have rights, and to understand them. However, many people fear that children who are told about having rights will take advantage of that. But I have never really found that to be the case, because children also stand up for each other, and protect each other. I think most education that equips children with rights doesn't actually threaten the adult, or others.


We are all interconnected, and I think that activist element is teaching children from a very young age that they have rights, but they also have responsibilities to each other, to help uphold each other's rights. I think that creates very responsible, and very caring young people. I think it's a very powerful way of building on the caring that children bring to school, and it's building on the caring they do for their siblings and friends when they arrive in school. It's a very basic everyday action, it's not just dealing with the critical incidents that can happen.


Participant Comment – I’d like to see these things added to the curriculum here in Sierra Leone, so that teachers can incorporate this into their teaching. Otherwise, teachers won’t include it, because they won’t think about it, and understand the necessity of it, because they spend all their time on curriculum subjects. Thank you.


Thank you for reading, we hope that you have been able to watch the video too, as it offers an invaluable insight into this topic.

Please leave your comments below to tell us your thoughts too. Do you feel confident about how to approach incidents of sexual violence and harassment in school?

Steve Sinnott Foundation • February 26, 2021

36 Bicycles. Countless Futures in The Gambia.

By Ann Beatty • May 20, 2026
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity. 

Education for Hope in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Times

By Laura Griffin • May 13, 2026
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here

I heard it said today by a friend that “You learn a language best when you use it to speak and write about things that are important to you. ”

By Susan Piper • May 6, 2026
This summed up to me about why I volunteer for the Hands Up Project. HUP is a charity trust which, through its network of volunteers, connects children around the world with young people in Palestine. By means of online interaction, drama and storytelling activities, it enables the use of creativity and selfexpression to promote mutual understanding, personal growth, and the development of English language skills. I joined HUP in 2020 during COVID. After going to Palestine in 2017, I wanted to get more involved in working with Palestinian children in schools. HUP gave me the opportunity to link up with schools in the West Bank and Gaza. Every week I’d tell them stories from all over the world, then we’d discuss it, play games and I’d get them to retell it. Sometimes we would work from their coursebook English for Palestine’ in mutual team teaching sessions with their teacher. The simple act of telling a story became much more than entertainment. It became connection, healing, and a bridge to the world beyond their immediate reality to help them improve their language skills, and to give them a platform to speak about their lives in a language that connects them to people everywhere. I loved it, every week, seeing their smiling faces on the screen and building long lasting friendships with their teachers. I even went to Gaza in 2023 and met some of the kids I’d only seen on Zoom. It was a beautiful experience and something I will never forget. As hostilities escalated, I lost contact with everyone. I thought about where the kids were and what had happened to them. As I watched schools being bombed, universities flattened, and people killed in their thousands, I thought about where the kids I’d met were and what was happening to them. I kept in contact with many of the teachers I knew and heard daily news of displacement, destruction, hunger and bombing. Recently, I’ve started to link up again with children in Gaza, and it feels wonderful to be back helping them learn after being denied an education for over two years. Connecting with children in Palestine is more than just words. When a child in Palestine confidently tells their story to someone on the other side of the world, bridges are built, empathy grows, and the world gains a fuller picture of childhood in contexts far from peace and privilege. My work with these children is rooted in the belief that education and voice are inseparable. Through storytelling and English language learning, I witness children not just learning new vocabulary, but reclaiming their narratives, believing in their potential, and finding human connection in a world they perceive has abandoned them. And more than anything, this work reminds us all that children — everywhere — deserve to learn, to speak, and to be heard. Links to HUP information, books and resources: The Hands Up Project BY SUSAN PIPER Susan Piper is currently an ESOL teacher in Oldham, Greater Manchester and has worked in education for over 30 years. She is also a volunteer for the Hands Up Project and is the International Solidarity Officer and President of her NEU district. She believes in quality education for all and aims to make her lessons creative and inclusive so that effective language learning can take place.