Shulamith Koenig

Shulamith Koenig is Founding President of PDHRE, the People’s Movement for Human Rights Learning, which she founded in 1988 with the goal of creating a new political culture based on human rights. This non-profit organization now has offices in each of the five geographic regions, and is working with educators, social justice groups, human rights experts, community leaders and the media to make learning about human rights as a way of life an on-going activity in all areas of learning and at all levels of society. In 2003, Koenig received the UN Prize in the field of Human Rights.

Through her work, Koenig has been a strong advocate of global action for societal change through human rights learning . Through facilitating the development of human rights cities worldwide her vision has been to create an on going worldwide process for all women , men youth and children to know, own and act upon human rights as a way of life. Community leaders, are called upon to join with social scientists, educators and the media to develop this process and serve as catalysts for human rights learning at the community level. To this end, Koenig has worked tirelessly to author the United Nations Decade of Human Rights Education, and now the International Year for Human Rights learning, a beginning of a new process to strengthen democracy as a delivery system of human rights. For the last twenty years she vacillated consultations and workshops with civil society organizations working on economic and social justice, educators, human rights advocates and community leaders in more than 60 countries.