A/CONF.189/PC.2/22 page 34 (c) Human rights education 116. The promotion of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, as affirmed in several international instruments, and first of all in article 55 of the Charter of the United Nations,130 is a valuable tool for combating discrimination and intolerance in education. As proclaimed in the slogan that guided the work of the International Congress on the Teaching of Human Rights, organized by UNESCO in Vienna in 1978, “for human rights to be better respected they need to be better understood, and to be better understood they need to be better taught”. Similarly, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action adopted in 1993 at the World Conference on Human Rights stresses how important it is for human rights to be part of the educational curriculum: “… human rights education, training and public information [are] essential for … fostering mutual understanding, tolerance and peace” (A/CONF.157/23, II, D, para. 78). Consequently, with regard to the subject of this study, human rights education is one of the essential components of the strategy to combat racial discrimination and religious intolerance. The crucial question is how human rights can be “better taught”. 117. In the first place, we should be glad that human rights education today is not the sole reserve of experts, particularly legal experts, but has become a common good and common ground for society as a whole, including - a point with which we are concerned here - for primary and secondary schoolteachers. This development should be consolidated in teacher recruitment and by offering in-service training and refresher courses on the subject for teachers and trainers, under the supervision of ministerial departments and with the assistance of the relevant national and international organizations. Human rights education requires, of course, adequate legal knowledge of the various instruments that address educational issues and, in particular, of those dealing more particularly with racial discrimination and religious intolerance. It is essential that “pupils … be made aware that they have equal rights and duties … [and] that national remedies and … international remedies are available to them if their rights are violated”.131 118. However, it is in our view the pedagogical dimension of human rights education that is important here, as it can be decisive in terms of the quality of the message received by schoolchildren and students. In the first place, as recommended by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, teaching about human rights and the problems of racial discrimination should be multidisciplinary so as to undermine scientifically the very foundations of racism. At the educational level considered in this study, an introduction to modern genetics, history, anthropology, psychology, etc. may well help to create tolerant minds open both to the unity of mankind and to the diversity and interdependence of cultures. As is rightly pointed out in the declaration entitled “Tolerance and diversity: a vision for the 21st century”, submitted for signature to Heads of State and Government by the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the Millennium Summit in September 2000, “the first mapping of the human genome [is] an extraordinary achievement which not only reaffirms our common humanity but promises transformations in scientific thought and practice”. 119. Next, it is important that human rights education should involve more than the provision of information and should constitute a comprehensive lifelong process shaping pupils’ minds.132 Human rights education, if it is not to become too abstract or too encyclopaedic - which might undermine its effectiveness - should also be incorporated into already existing subjects, while