Mediating the Right to Education: An Analysis of UNESCO’s Exhibition Album on Human Rights and Its Global Dissemination in 1951

The end of the Second World War was the start of a new era, with worldwide support for a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). As a UN organisation, UNESCO was assigned to present the UDHR towards the global population in an effort to guide them to peace. In 1949, their Department of Mass Communication created three tools to promote human rights: a large-scale exhibition at the Musée Galliera in Paris, a travel album, and teaching handbooks.
In my chapter, I will focus on the travel album, and in particular, on article 26: “The Right to Education”. As in the album, the right is represented by a number of images and captions, all related to this article of the UDHR. I will analyse the visuals and the corresponding texts from an intermediate perspective. Does the narrative created by UNESCO actually relate to the meaning of the pictures? Then, I will analyse the global correspondence received on the travel album. How did the viewers understand the album and was it as comprehensible as UNESCO thought? This chapter argues that the promotion and mediation of human rights were based on Western standards of education, making it difficult to spread a universal message.