Human Rights-Based Community Practice in the United States

This book is organized around major human rights concerns, with a focus on community organizing to secure economic and social rights and to address forms of social exclusion and inequality in the United States. Chapter 1 provides an overview of human rights, highlighting the importance of rights-based practice for community social work. It lays the conceptual groundwork for a rights-based approach to community practice, contrasting this method with conventional needs-based approaches within community social work. Chapters 2 through 4 address rights-based community practice through the lens of specific economic and social rights: health, housing and food. Focusing on community practice through local and state-wide campaigns for different rights provides an in-depth illustration of how a particular right is defined and successful pathways to secure the right. Chapter 5 concludes the book with examples of several methods to assess human rights realization at the community level and prioritize local level efforts from a rights-based perspective.

Kathryn Libal, PhD, is Assistant Professor in Community Organization at the School of Social Work and Associate Director of the Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut. She has published on women's and children's rights movements in Turkey and on the advocacy of international non-governmental organizations on behalf of Iraqi refugees. Her current scholarship has focused on the localization of human rights norms and practices in the United States, including a co-edited volume with Dr. Shareen Hertel on Human Rights in the United States: Beyond Exceptionalism (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and a new project on the politics of food security and food policy in the United States as a human rights concern. Kathryn Libal is also co-director, with Dr. David Richards, of the Economic and Social Rights Group at the University of Connecticut. Scott R. Harding, PhD, MSW, is Associate Professor in Community Organization at the School of Social Work, University of Connecticut. He teaches courses on community organizing, social welfare policy, poverty and inequality and war, militarism and social work. His research addresses “political social work,” including community organizing and collaborations to strengthen local communities and address forms of social exclusion. He has worked on social justice and international solidarity issues for more than 25 years. He was Executive Director and Policy Coordinator for the California Homeless & Housing Coalition and has served as a board member for national, state and local organizations in California, Kansas and Connecticut. He is a Board Representative of the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration (ACOSA), a Council Member of the Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) Council on Global Learning, Research and Practice, and former Editor of the Journal of Community Practice.