A noted legal scholar examines the source of human rights, arguing that rights are the result of particular experiences with injustice and looking at the implications in terms of the right to privacy, voting rights, and other rights.

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.

7. War and Photography

A devastating analysis of modern Britain. Britain is a forward-thinking, human-rights protecting beacon of democracy, right? Think again! Written in time for the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this book is a documented exposé of Britain's domestic human rights abuses under successive governments from the year 2000 to the present. It covers the deaths of the 20,000 pensioners a year who can't afford heating, the 40,000 people who succumb to air pollution each year, the limits on freedom of speech (including libel law), mass surveillance of Britons by the deep state, and much, much more. By comparing Britain to other rich countries on issues as diverse as infant mortality, child wellbeing, ethnic rights, and union membership, Human Wrongs reveals just how anti-human the British system really is for people of a certain class, gender, disability and/or ethnicity.

The domestic processing of human rights complaints attracts a great deal of public attention and interest. Yet despite this scrutiny, there is still much below the surface that we don’t know. When people contact the human rights commission or a human rights lawyer, how do they think about and use human rights discourse? How do the legal professionals involved characterize the experiences they describe? How are complaints turned into cases? Can administrative systems be both effective and fair? Defining Rights and Wrongs investigates the day-to-day practices of low-level officials and intermediaries as they manage the gap between social relations and legal meaning in order to construct domestic human rights complaints. It documents how agency staff struggle to manage a huge body of claims within a system of restrictive rules but expansive definitions of discrimination. It also examines how independent human rights lawyers and advocacy organizations challenge human rights commissions and seek to radically reform the existing commission/tribunal structure. This book identifies the values that a human rights system should uphold if it is to be both fair and consistent with its own goals of promoting mutual respect and fostering the personal dignity and equal rights of citizens.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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.