Preventing human rights violations from the inside: Enhancing the role of human rights education in security sector reform

Drawing on a current project working on the prevention of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment with the security sectors of two post-conflict developing societies – Nepal and Sri Lanka – this article explores the trends in human rights education and the theoretical, contextual and practical challenges arising from interventions, and proposes some preliminary thoughts on ways forward. We argue that while there is an assumption that training can contribute to enhancing adherence by security personnel to human rights principles in general and those concerning torture in particular, little attention has been paid to theorizing precisely how such training brings about attitudinal and behavioural change. Moreover, the standardized approach to developing and exporting such training packages raises significant questions regarding how context is understood and incorporated. Finally, the difficulties associated with effectively evaluating the impact of training on practice have resulted in the reproduction of strategies with little actual knowledge of what is working. Accordingly, in the development of training interventions more attention is required to both the theories of change and the lived reality of those whose views and behaviours we seek to change.