Human Rights Education in Ecuadorian Universities: Analysis of Its Curricular Integration and Educational Scope

Abstract

Latin American higher education faces tensions arising from educational commodification, technocratic rationality, and the weakening of humanistic foundations. In Ecuador, although the Constitution and the Organic Law of Higher Education (LOES) recognize education grounded in human rights, fragmented curricular processes oriented toward technical competencies persist. The objective of the study was to analyze the formative implications of incorporating human rights into the curricular processes of Ecuadorian universities within the contemporary context of higher education. The research was conducted from a critical socio-legal qualitative approach based on documentary review and hermeneutic interpretation of Ecuadorian constitutional regulations, higher education legislation, and international instruments, articulating categories derived from critical legal theory, critical pedagogy, and university sociology. The analysis revealed that the curricular incorporation of human rights in Ecuadorian universities continues to be fragmented and conditioned by neoliberal rationalities oriented toward productivity and employability, limiting critical formative processes related to democratic citizenship, professional ethics, social inclusion, and the humanistic transformation of the university. The curricular mainstreaming of human rights constitutes a structural requirement derived from contemporary Ecuadorian constitutionalism and requires pedagogical, institutional, and epistemological transformations capable of strengthening critical citizenship, social justice, and the democratic role of the university.