Co-Defenders: How Human Rights Activists and Anthropologists Can Work Together

Abstract

The Human Rights Project (HRP) of the Urban Justice Center employs a human rights framework as a tool for social justice and government accountability. HRP has documented the ways in which welfare reform legislation violates international human rights standards and law, and it has joined forces with ninety organizations to introduce human rights legislation in New York City. In this article, HRP's Director Ramona Ortega invites anthropologists to join forces with human rights advocacy groups such as HRP. The author notes a commonality of interests shared by human rights advocates and anthropologists, and points out the specific ways in which ethnographers can provide valuable information and anthropologists can provide authoritative insight in the struggle for social justice in the U.S. and internationally. The case of Coca Cola Co. offers a model of such collaboration and points to the possibilities that can come of collective efforts. The author also offers a specific suggestion to anthropologists that they translate dense scholarly material into readable formats that can then be put to use by human rights advocates.