Human Rights-Based Approach

Abstract

The case studies in shared education, shared spaces and services and community restorative justice outlined in Chaps. 3, 4, and 5 have so far considered relational modules of peacebuilding. This chapter takes a quite different approach by examining a human rights-based model, at the centre of which is the principle of holding state bodies to account for their social and economic obligations through international human rights standards. Although different in terms of the nature of the interventions, peacebuilding without the supporting work that protects rights fails to tackle those issues which caused conflict or which will contribute to its resolution. The chapter considers the work of one very prominent group (Participation and Practice of Rights [PPR]) in Northern Ireland which adopted this model, and examines its successes and the ongoing challenges which it faces. The PPR human rights-based model eschews the notion of advocacy and promotes the importance of building capacity amongst community groups to identify their needs, locate them within a framework of international human rights standards, and hold duty-bearers to account for the progressive realisation of their rights. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the extent to which a human rights-based approach can gain widespread traction (policy adoption) given the variegated nature of the community sector, the fluidity of its membership and the changing priorities therein.