Practising human rights from below

Abstract

I n this section we will examine the practice of human rights from below. It is important not only to understand human rights from below and the ideas that have been explored in previous sections, but also to think about what it means to enact this perspective of human rights. Here we will not only be concerned with what the ‘human rights practitioner’ might do – the advocate, the community development worker, the NGO worker – but also what human rights from below means for community members, engaged citizens, volunteers and others. One of the important aspects of a community development approach is that it is not confined exclusively to a community development worker but rather engages the entire community. Applying the same perspective to human rights from below implies that we are all concerned with working for human rights, whether paid or unpaid, activist, volunteer, citizen or engaged professional. WAYS OF PRACTISING HUMAN RIGHTS FROM BELOW Of the two fields discussed in this book – community development and human rights – community development has put more effort into considering the problematic of practice. In human rights, practice is often regarded as unproblematic – difficult, challenging and potentially dangerous, of course, but clear and straightforward in its nature. It is couched largely in terms of legal practice: advocacy, bringing cases to anti-discrimination tribunals or to courts, appealing to the United Nations.