Direitos humanos “contrariados”: Ao encontro de intervenções sociais culturalmente sensíveis

Abstract

Aims: To discuss the articulation between the notions of development and human rights, analyzing its opportunity to the field of public policy strategies; to address, in a comprehensive perspective, the issues of cultural diversity, interculturality and cultural pluralism, (re)updating the dialogue that they raise connected with human rights, and to position the questions of cultural sensitivity and alterity as incitements for a competent social intervention. Method: This is a theoretical reflection based on a literature review and documentary analysis articulating the themes of human rights, the "cultural" challenges they carry and the opportunities that a culturally sensitive social intervention raises for the realization of human rights. Findings: In present times the required approach of human rights, needs to be carried out within a comprehensive logic presupposing a discussion allocated to cultural and historical circumstances. Also, it should be framed by a sense of integrality or completeness that demands a holistic understanding of its various aspects. The accommodation of cultural diversity is a fundamental assumption of contemporary human rights, being a facilitator of social justice calling for proximity practices, dialogue, and which gives rise to development interventions responding to the culture in context and to the particularities of places and communities. By adopting a culturally sensitive and differentiated stance, social interventionists/social workers mobilize competent practices which incorporate the understanding of diversity in its full meaning, thus making a decisive contribution to safeguarding human rights. Conclusions: Human rights are the necessary guide to address public policies and collective action since they contain the foundations and values that are essential to human experience with dignity. The assumption of diversity is decisive to limit the setbacks that are posed to the exercise of human rights, so that the interventionist practice, which is sensitive and based on otherness, appears to be crucial even though it needs to be reinforced, in action and in education.