Human Rights Advocacy Stories


Book Description

Softbound - New, softbound print book.




Campaigning for Justice


Book Description

A study of strategies implemented in local, regional, and international human rights campaigns elucidating how advocates were able to achieve their goals. Advocates within the human rights movement have had remarkable success establishing new international laws, securing concrete changes in human rights policies and practices, and transforming the terms of public debate. Yet too often, the strategies these advocates have employed are not broadly shared or known. Campaigning for Justice addresses this gap to explain the “how” of the human rights movement. Written from a practitioner’s perspective, this book explores the strategies behind some of the most innovative human rights campaigns of recent years. Drawing on interviews with dozens of experienced human rights advocates, the book delves into local, regional, and international efforts to discover how advocates were able to address seemingly intractable abuses and secure concrete advances in human rights. These accounts provide a window into the way that human rights advocates conduct their work, their real-life struggles and challenges, the rich diversity of tools and strategies they employ, and ultimately, their courage and persistence in advancing human rights. Praise for Campaigning for Justice “This book is a gold mine. A terrific resource not only for those just entering human rights work, but also for those with years of experience.” —Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Co-founder, International Campaign to Ban Landmines “A singular contribution that will be indispensable for those interested in advocacy and human rights.” —Elazar Barkan, Director, Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University “Addressing the critical question of how human rights organizations actually do their work, this book has a currency that is needed right now.” —Barbara Frey, Director, Human Rights Program, University of Minnesota “A vivid testament to the lives of human rights activists, including Becker’s own, as advocates and courageous fighters for the rights of others.” —Radhika Coomaraswamy, Former Special representative to the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, United Nations




Just Advocacy?


Book Description

Bringing together some of the most respected scholars in the field, including Inderpal Grewal, Leela Fernandes, Leigh Gilmore, Susan Koshy, Patrice McDermott, and Sidonie Smith, Just Advocacy? sheds light on the often overlooked ways that women and children are further subjugated when political or humanitarian groups represent them solely as victims and portray the individuals that are helping them as paternal saviors.




Rescuing Human Rights


Book Description

Focuses on understanding human rights as they really are and their proper role in international affairs.




Righting Wrongs


Book Description

Many young people aren't aware that determined individuals created the rights we now take for granted. The idea of human rights is relatively recent, coming out of a post–World War II effort to draw nations together and prevent or lessen suffering. Righting Wrongs introduces children to the true stories of 20 real people who invented and fought for these ideas. Without them, many of the rights we take for granted would not exist. These heroes have promoted women's, disabled, and civil rights; action on climate change; and the rights of refugees. These advocates are American, Sierra Leonean, Norwegian, and Argentinian. Eleven are women. Two identified as queer. Twelve are people of color. One campaigned for rights as a disabled person. Two identify as Indigenous. Two are Muslim and two are Hindu, and others range from atheist to devout Christian. There are two journalists, one general, three lawyers, one Episcopal priest, one torture victim, and one Holocaust survivor. Their stories of hope and hard work show how people working together can change the world for the better.




Human Rights and Justice for All


Book Description

Human rights is an empowering framework for understanding and addressing justice issues at local, domestic, and international levels. This book combines US-based case studies with examples from other regions of the world to explore important human rights themes – the equality, universality, and interdependence of human rights, the idea of international crimes, strategies of human rights change, and justice and reconciliation in the aftermath of human rights violations. From Flint and Minneapolis to Xinjiang and Mt. Sinjar, this book challenges a wide variety of readers – students, professors, activists, human rights professionals, and concerned citizens – to consider how human rights apply to their own lives and equip them to be changemakers in their own communities.




Being Heumann


Book Description

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year for Nonfiction "...an essential and engaging look at recent disability history."— Buzzfeed One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human. A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn’t built for all of us and of one woman’s activism—from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington—Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann’s lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society. Paralyzed from polio at eighteen months, Judy’s struggle for equality began early in life. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a “fire hazard” to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher’s license because of her paralysis, Judy’s actions set a precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people. As a young woman, Judy rolled her wheelchair through the doors of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco as a leader of the Section 504 Sit-In, the longest takeover of a governmental building in US history. Working with a community of over 150 disabled activists and allies, Judy successfully pressured the Carter administration to implement protections for disabled peoples’ rights, sparking a national movement and leading to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Judy Heumann’s memoir about resistance to exclusion invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.




Evidence for Hope


Book Description

A history of the successes of the human rights movement and a case for why human rights work Evidence for Hope makes the case that yes, human rights work. Critics may counter that the movement is in serious jeopardy or even a questionable byproduct of Western imperialism. Guantánamo is still open and governments are cracking down on NGOs everywhere. But human rights expert Kathryn Sikkink draws on decades of research and fieldwork to provide a rigorous rebuttal to doubts about human rights laws and institutions. Past and current trends indicate that in the long term, human rights movements have been vastly effective. Exploring the strategies that have led to real humanitarian gains since the middle of the twentieth century, Evidence for Hope looks at how essential advances can be sustained for decades to come.




Rights After Wrongs


Book Description

The international legal framework of human rights presents itself as universal. But rights do not exist as a mere framework; they are enacted, practiced, and debated in local contexts. Rights After Wrongs ethnographically explores the chasm between the ideals and the practice of human rights. Specifically, it shows where the sweeping colonial logics of Western law meets the lived experiences, accumulated histories, and humanitarian debts present in post-colonial Zimbabwe. Through a comprehensive survey of human rights scholarship, Shannon Morreira explores the ways in which the global framework of human rights is locally interpreted, constituted, and contested in Harare, Zimbabwe, and Musina and Cape Town, South Africa. Presenting the stories of those who lived through the violent struggles of the past decades, Morreira shows how supposedly universal ideals become localized in the context of post-colonial Southern Africa. Rights After Wrongs uncovers the disconnect between the ways human rights appear on paper and the ways in which it is possible for people to use and understand them in everyday life.




Human Rights in Children's Literature


Book Description

How can children grow to realize their inherent human rights and respect the rights of others? This book explores this question through children's literature from Peter Rabbit to Horton Hears a Who! to Harry Potter. The authors investigate children's rights under international law - identity and family rights, the right to be heard, the right to be free from discrimination, and other civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights - and consider the way in which those rights are embedded in children's literature. This book traverses children's rights law, literary theory, and human rights education to argue that in order for children to fully realize their human rights, they first have to imagine and understand them.