Reimagining the Future of Human Rights

Book excerpt: This book is the collective effort of participants from Dejusticia’s annual Global Action-Research Workshop for Young Human Rights Advocates. The talented writers featured here are graduates from previous workshops who came together again in 2018 to explore the intersection between research and activism and what it holds for the future of human rights. The authors in this book question traditional methods and explore new ways and visions of advancing human rights in the troubled context in which we live today. Do the struggles of small-scale miners in Ghana, the use of strategic litigation in Lebanon, and the recognition of the rights of nature in India represent evidence for hope? Or is the opposite true, and, as shown in the chapters on martial law in the Philippines, the treatment of wastewater in Argentina, and in the internal conflict in Yemen, human rights have failed to deliver on their promises? Whatever the answer, Reimagining the Future of Human Rights invites us to reflect on the work of human rights in different contexts and the challenges that activists face, but also the progress they have made. The chapters in this book offer a snapshot of the current state of human rights that can help guide our work as activists and researchers.