Just Fair works to create positive social change using human rights. Issues like poverty, food insecurity, poor housing conditions, discrimination in employment and education, and health inequalities are all human rights issues that need human rights-based solutions.
Human rights-based approaches are powerful, but they can be challenging to put into practice, especially for smaller organisations who face capacity, resource, expertise, and structural barriers to participation in the law and legal policymaking.
We lead two pioneering rights-based programmes that aim to break down some of these barriers for organisations in London and South West England, alongside the British Institute of Human Rights and Black South West Network respectively.
Here we share what a rights-based approach looks like for Just Fair, and what the first six months of our intensive work with four London-based organisations has involved.
Human rights-based approaches
In essence, a human rights-based approach is a model of working that puts people’s rights at the centre of policy and practice.
The rights-based approach focuses on building systemic change by:
- Working with individuals, groups, and communities: encouraging them to know and claim their rights, and designing participatory processes that speak to their needs
and
- Working with duty bearers (those who the responsibility to respect, protect and fulfil our rights): ensuring decision makers are aware of their duties, that they have the tools they need to meet them, and that they are held to account when needed.
For Just Fair, this means collaborating with community organisations to develop rights awareness projects, strengthening their human rights knowledge and confidence, standing alongside them in advocacy spaces, and using our status as a leading human rights organisation to hold public bodies accountable for fulfilling their human rights obligations.
Read more about the human rights-based approach
Taking a human rights-based approach in London
The London Communities Human Rights Programme is designed to support organisations leading change in their area to take up and use human rights in their work.
As part of the project, we are working intensively with four groups over a four-year period: Community Plan for Holloway, Indoamerican Refugee and Migrant Organisation, Southall Community Alliance and Unfold. Our role is to support these partner organisations by sharing our expertise, leveraging our power as a leading voice, and helping them develop their own human rights-based approach to their work.
Community Plan for Holloway
Community Plan for Holloway are stepping up their efforts to make sure the needs and wants of the local community are heard by decision makers around the redevelopment of the Holloway Prison site. This has included hosting a community meal that brought together people from all around the local area to share delicious food, hear more about the work of the Community Plan, and learn more about human rights and how to claim them.
Indoamerican Refugee and Migrant Organisation (IRMO)
IRMO are seeking to embed human rights-based approaches into all their activities and have been developing new policies and action plans that integrate human rights principles into their advice and casework on immigration, welfare, housing, and access to healthcare, so their community are better able to name and claim their rights and entitlements.
Southall Community Alliance
Southall are working with grassroots organisations and residents to raise critical consciousness across the borough. Through human rights trainings, community forums and events at local festivals, the team are building spaces in which people feel comfortable sharing their experiences and can see themselves as rights holders with collective power.
Unfold
Unfold are developing a human rights-based strategy for social justice advocacy from the ground up. Drawing on the team’s expertise in co-productive work, participation is being put at the very centre of each strategic planning stage as the organisation seeks to understand how they can best support their mentees to advocate for change.
We’re only at the start and are so excited about what the next three and a half years will bring. You can follow along with this project on its dedicated page.
If you have any questions about the project, please contact Laura Grace, Human Rights Officer at [email protected].
Background image by AhnJi
