Laura Grace, Human Rights Officer
For Just Fair, participation is both ‘the arrow and the target’ – a right, and a means to achieve other rights. It sits at the centre of our work: from our Lived Experience Advisory Group, to supporting communities to be heard at the UN, to our capacity building trainings and projects in London (the London Communities Human Rights Programme) and in Bristol and South West England (the Racial Justice for Human Rights Programme).
We are passionate about ensuring people (as rights holders) are recognised as experts of their own experience, and that decision makers treat them as partners when developing their policies and programmes. This is because projects designed with communities, rather than for them, are more grounded in the nuances of lived realities.
The right to participate and the human rights-based approach
The right to participate in civic and cultural life is one of our most basic human rights. We have the right to express ourselves, to hold duty bearers (that is, those who have the responsibility to respect, protect and fulfil rights) to account, and to influence the decisions that affect our lives. It is therefore unsurprising that participation is a core principle of any human rights-based approach – supporting people to take part actively, freely, and meaningfully in public life without discrimination.
Transparent processes allow for feedback and course correction, ensuring duty bearers remain accountable to the communities they serve and making it more difficult for power imbalances to go unchecked.
Human rights-based approaches can transform human rights standards and principles into practical frameworks that guide our work – in simple terms, taking a human rights-based approach involves:
- Building accessible and inclusive projects that are led by, and responsive to the needs and strengths of people in communities.
- Supporting people to know and claim their rights and engage with duty bearers.
- Advocating for duty bearers to seek out and listen to feedback on proposals, policies, and practices from the people impacted by them.
Participation in practice: the London Communities Human Rights Programme
Just Fair and our partners in the London Communities Human Rights Programme (LCHRP) dedicated a recent in-person meetup to sharing our current participation frameworks – the advocacy we do, the support we provide, and the internal strategies for developing projects – and what we could improve.
Just Fair is one of two project leads on the London Community Human Rights Programme, alongside the British Institute of Human Rights. As experts in working with communities to develop human rights-based approaches, we are supporting four London-based groups to take up and use human rights in their work – Community Plan for Holloway, Indoamerican Refugee and Migrant Organisation, Southall Community Alliance and Unfold.
What is going wrong
At our meeting, we spoke about what good participation looks like and identified some common issues we have experienced when working with duty bearers.
These included:
- poor consultation processes
- inaccessible community engagement events,
- short consultation periods
- jargon-filled questionnaires
- opaque decision-making processes
- a lack of visible change
The groups reported that all these issues can lead to consultation fatigue, disenfranchisement, and a weakened community voice.
What can good look like?
Together, we talked about how we as civil society can support duty bearers to get the basics right, respect and uphold human rights, and respond to the needs of people in the community. We discussed examples of good practice we have seen from duty bearers across London and beyond, including:
- organisations that promote equitable access to services and consultations by providing information in accessible formats – including the NHS’s use of Easy Read and community languages
- forms of consultation and co-creation that meet people where they are and reach those likely to impacted by decisions – like Haringey Council’s use of legislative theatre
- clear processes that respect the time people put in to engaging with duty bearers by outlining the parameters of, and communicating the changes that result from, consultations
The community groups shared experiences they had working with duty bearers to help improve their consultation processes, as well as their plans for how they intend to work with both communities and duty bearers over the next three years of the London Communities Human Rights Programme. Although the changes the community groups seek to achieve are simple, they represent a fundamental shift in how and when duty bearers engage with people – from infrequent, inaccessible and formal consultations towards regular, flexible community inputs on the daily decisions that shape how we enjoy our rights.
Over the next three years, Just Fair will be supporting these groups to develop these new human rights-based strategies for working with communities and duty bearers, so that people can name and claim their rights, and duty bearers listen and respond.
Case studies: making it real in the London Communities Human Rights Programme:
Organisers like those from Community Plan for Holloway do inspiring work to support people in the local community to be heard in the planning process – advocating for consultations around the redevelopment of the Holloway Prison and creating events and materials that support community engagement.
Through kitchen table chats, community meetings, and rights-based resources, they are supporting people to name and claim their rights with duty bearers, and shape what the new development looks like – securing the rights of both current and future neighbours.
A human rights-based approach also creates opportunities for us to reflect on our internal strategies and how they may inadvertently uphold injustices. LCHRP Partner Unfold is working to change their internal power dynamics to champion social justice through a human rights-based approach.
Together, we are building internal policies and practices which place accessibility and inclusion at their core – respecting the rights of the people they support to participate and reflecting the type of frameworks they want to see duty bearers develop.
Unfold’s emerging Women’s and Youth Advisory Councils are outstanding examples of what good participation can look like for civil society and duty bearers alike – the Councils hold Unfold’s Trustee board and staff to account, while offering advice and guidance on the organisation’s strategic priorities and direction. In developing these Councils, Unfold is:
- developing solutions built on collective lived experience
- meaningfully engaging with the question of who has a voice in our organisations.
Support for you
Participation is not a tick box exercise or something that is ever complete, it is an ongoing process and a core principle of any human rights work. Committing to embedding human rights principles and using the human rights-based approach as a framework can help ensure our work is as impactful as possible for those who need it most.
If you would like to explore how your organisation could introduce a human rights-based approach, contact Just Fair’s Human Rights Officers, Laura and Ben.
Background image: Open Minds by Rozalina Burkova for Fine Acts
