Human Dignity Through Action: Transformative Human Rights Education and Social Work

Abstract

This article explores the need for social action and activism in order to realise and implement human rights. This is done in light of multiple global failures to implement the standards and values explicit and implicit in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and multiple human rights covenants, protocols and programs. The focus of this article is on the need for, and how to teach and learn, for action and activism towards realising human dignity in pre-service and in-service social work programs. Exploring dignity through action is a difficult task. Not only is there no consensus on the meaning of the concept of human dignity, there are also various schools of thought on the ontology of human rights. This article is positioned within the struggle approach of the protest school. Within this approach, human dignity is not understood as a universal fact or as self-evident. It is understood as being enabled through social struggles and activism. The global quest, embraced by both human rights and social work, to combat ongoing poverty, discrimination, racism, violence, oppression and dehumanisation, speaks to the link between human rights and social work. The protection of human dignity has always been central to both. It also speaks to the need to include transformative human rights education, focusing on agency, activism and action, in pre- and in-service education modules for social work professionals.