Teaching About Human Rights in Social Work Marty Dewees Susan E. Roche

ABSTRACT. This paper discusses the significance of human rights for social work and considers its importance in social work education. It relates human rights to the profession of social work and addresses challenges inherent in developing curricula and teaching human rights to social work students in both undergraduate and graduate programs. In order to expand student views of human rights, and their incorporation into their social work practice, the authors propose a four-part pedagogical method that includes readings, case examples, videos, and social action. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document

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KEYWORDS. Human rights, social work education, curriculum development

The notion of inalienable rights as inherent in humanity is at once familiar and illusive. Yet, it is this central commitment to the essential rights of all persons, because they are persons, that supplies the moral grounding for social work’s more complex interpretations of social justice, equality, and empowerment. During the past fifty years, interMarty Dewees, PhD, and Susan E. Roche, PhD, are affiliated with the University of Vermont, Department of Social Work, 228 Waterman Building, Burlington, VT 05405 (E-mail: and ). This paper is adapted from a paper accepted for presentation at the 15th Annual Baccalaureate Program Directors Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, October 1997. The authors share equally in the preparation of this manuscript. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, Vol. 21(1/2) 2001 E 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

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national human rights conceptions and laws have emerged into a normative framework which is especially pertinent to social work. As international policy, the human rights framework serves as a guide for social development, grassroots activism, and governmental accountability around the world. As a social work framework, it provides a compelling vehicle through which students can understand and identify with the social justice and client rights emphases of the profession, and carry them into all forms of practice. Human rights are defined simply as ‘‘. . . those rights which are inherent in our nature and without which we cannot live as human beings . . .’’ (United Nations, 1987). For the purposes of this paper, they are understood to mean those rights and freedoms to which all people are entitled because they belong to the human species. As internationally conceived, all dimensions of human rights–civil, political, social, economic, and cultural–are deemed equally critical (International Federation of Social Workers, 1996). This indivisibility of human rights reflects the interaction among the multiple human needs in which social workers intervene. This article establishes the relationship between human rights and social work and considers some of the purposes and challenges of teaching human rights to social work students. It presents four types of instructional methods used by the authors to respond to the challenges and engage students to move reflectively through them. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION Social work maintains a dual focus on the person and environment (Compton & Gallaway, 1999; Germain & Gitterman, 1996; Kirst-Ashman and Hull, 1999). In much of social work practice the interface between the person and environment provides the context and the focus for the work. Frequently, social work practice is directed toward the fulfillment of human needs as they occur in environments that will not or cannot sustain them. Working with and on behalf of people living in this context creates contradictions which demand social workers’ recognition of economically, socially, culturally, and politically constructed barriers. It places them in potential alliance with the large numbers of people who are excluded by these barriers and shapes the social work commitment to social and economic justice.

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One of the responsibilities of teaching in social work education is to develop students’ identification with social and economic justice and their corresponding capacity to serve as professional allies to socially and economically marginalized groups. Teaching for social and economic justice in social work translates the traditional conception in social work of clients’ needs into one of human rights, in deep recognition of client’s inherent dignity and value as individuals. The commitment to clients’ human rights then becomes an organizing principle of the work. Teaching social work students to understand the difference between recognizing something as a need and recognizing it as a right is critical. The fulfillment of rights is a matter of obligation, whereas, the fulfillment of needs can be construed by students as one of many compartmentalized options identified in their assessment of their clients’ situations. For example, white social work students, while recognizing that person after person of color lives in flagrant destitution, may or may not recognize that their efforts and their clients’ are stymied by the force of institutional racism (sexism, classism, etc.) and the extreme deprivation associated with it. Some of those who do recognize this may become enraged and react rashly in the field, incurring increasingly harsh consequences for themselves and their clients. Others may be so overwhelmed by their assumptions that the barriers are inevitable and intractable that they give up on changing oppressive policies and practices and adopt individualistic practice methods that require the same of their clients. For all of these possible reactions, students and their instructors need a practice philosophy which sustains their resilience in the midst of contradiction and uncertainty, and an analytical approach which directs their moral outrage and political will into critical analysis and principled, connective action. Human rights provides such a philosophy and approach for social work. It offers a framework with which to address connectively the multidimensionality of needs and their expression at multiple levels of social work practice and social life. For example, recognizing the fulfillment of economic, social, and cultural needs as a matter of human rights leads social workers to intervene politically as well as personally in clients’ experience of poverty, oppression, and cultural exclusion. The urgency represented in the shift from needs to rights compels social workers in every aspect of their practice. Accordingly, a decent standard of living, freedom from the taunts of racism, or

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inclusion into community social structures, become mandates, not options; for social workers they take root and define the very nature of the profession’s mission in the person-environment intersection where client rights are vested. The call for a specific human rights orientation to social work practice has built momentum from the passage of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, to the signing of the Covenants in the 1960’s, to the related deliberations at the world conferences and summits in the 1990’s. As the century closes, the increasingly visible aspects of the oppression of such persons as women, indigenous peoples, and refugees, along with the open fragility of international economies, sharpen the focus on the global components of the social policies and cultural expressions that impact the lives of all of us (DuBois & Miley, 1996; Wetzel, 1993; Wronka in Healy & Asamoah, 1997). Social work educators have become increasingly sensitized to the inexorable link between human rights and the profession in all of its aspects, including policy, practice, and research (IFSW, 1996; NASW, 1990; Roche, 1992; Roche & Sadoski, 1996; Witkin, 1993; Witkin, 1998; Wronka, 1995). Teaching a human rights framework in U.S. social work serves several key purposes. As a philosophy, it establishes normative rationale for an internationally compelling social work ethic of diversity and social justice. One of its most fundamental tenets argues shared humanity as the basis for access and participation, and counters justifications for categorically unequal social resources, opportunity, and results. As a practice theory, human rights informs social work students how to contribute to building bridges across such alienating gulfs as racial, class, cultural, and geographical exclusion while teaching them active respect for the distinctiveness each group deems vital to its existence and quality of life. It also provides students a critically analytical framework for recognizing, understanding, and responding professionally to the interdependence of needs, policies, and resources which are more often treated separately as single-issue categories, such as poverty, mental illness, or child abuse (Dutt, 1994). This analytical framework enables students to move across levels of practice from the global to the local. It presents them with international conceptions and methods which they can adapt and apply to community, organizational, and direct practice issues in their field practica.

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Finally, as a vision and passion that are widely shared across multiple social divides around the world, human rights prepares students for long-term involvement in the social and economic justice work of their chosen profession. It connects them as members of international social work and social movements mobilized around a common, hopeful mission of human community. CHALLENGES OF TEACHING HUMAN RIGHTS IN SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION Despite the very persuasive reasons for teaching about human rights, there are at least three major factors that challenge U.S. social work educators in doing so: (a) the international human rights principle of indivisibility and its points of incongruence with U.S. political and economic tradition, (b) the human rights principle of universality and the conflicts between social work values that it amplifies, and (c) the political action implications of human rights analyses and their underlying commitments. In turn, each of these challenges is expressed through: legalistic conceptions of human rights and professional practices, social work students’ cross-cultural exposure and conceptual development, the influence of these same factors on social work educators and on their understanding of human rights, and institutional demands. Anticipating these challenges contributes to formulating relevant educational intervention. Indivisibility and the U.S. political economy. The critical principle of indivisibility in the international conception of human rights is driven by the conviction that people must have access to economic, social, and cultural resources in order to exercise the dignity of civil and political rights. It is expanded in the 1990s to include not only those rights of individuals but also the following collective rights: safe and healthy environments; cultural, political, and economic development; conditions necessary to end particular violations against girls and women; and the actions and accountability of private as well as state actors (Reilly, 1996; and Flowers, 1995). The principle contends that individuals and groups can exercise one form of human rights freely and fully only in the presence of all other forms. This contention holds particular relevance for the growing numbers of persons across the world who are increasingly subject to the globalization of Westerngenerated, exploitive free market practices (Link & Ramanathan,

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1999; Prigoff, 1999). Like their U.S. counterparts, they experience economic deprivation, social exclusion, cultural alienation, violence, and institutionalized social stigma as interrelated conditions. Therefore, in addition to civil and political affronts, economic, social and cultural oppressions are true violations of human rights (Dutt, 1994). The U.S. political tradition of liberal individualism, as reflected in its earliest documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, emphasizes individual political and civil rights. At the same time, they reflect relative indifference to economic and social rights (Charlesworth, 1994). Civil and political rights (e.g., freedom of speech, press, religion) (Flowers, 1998) are officially protected cornerstones of U.S. public policy; economic, social and cultural rights are not. The values of free market economy in the U.S. constrain the legalistic application of these elements of international human rights doctrine. With the U.S. reliance on legal codes and their enforcement as the primary mechanism for defining social problems, social work students often find it difficult to fully identify with economic, social, and cultural definitions of human rights. Social Work students’ thinking often reflects the underlying assumptions of the U.S. political and economic cultures of capitalism which tend to relegate economic well-being to individual initiative and personal achievement. Their understanding of the implications of the international rights conception for social work in the U.S. develops over time as they consider the U.S. positions taken in U.N. proceedings. For example, the U.S. ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and failure to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights demonstrates the government’s reluctance to explicate rights which directly contradict ‘‘free market-economy’’ values. (See Flowers, 1998; Wetzel, 1993; and Wronka, 1995.) Students analyze how this political stance supports the tenacious U.S. myth that individuals somehow get what they deserve and what this suggests for social welfare policies. They discover that this myth obscures their social work knowledge that poverty and social marginalization are sociostructural constructions rather than personal deficiencies. Universality and conflicts between social work values. The human rights principle of universality works together with that of indivisibility, emphasizing that these undivided rights belong to everyone and cannot be removed from any person or group for any reason. This

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principle at first glance is usually acceptable to students until they begin to consider its implications for actual practice. Then content on ethical dilemmas in social work muddies the water by posing conditions in which more than one social work value cannot be simultaneously fulfilled. Students struggle with the question of how to act with and for clients so as to hold all forms of rights together in practice situations which pose tension between human rights and traditional social work values, especially as interpreted through an individualistic lens. In the context of growing sensitivity and interest in developing respect for multicultural values, diversity, and religious rights may seem to collide directly, and uncomfortably, with social work values related to the alleviation of oppression. The prototype social work value of the individual’s right to self determination may butt up against cultural oppression and customary stratifications that have a long and entrenched, often unexamined, history. This apparent contradiction becomes even more complex with the consideration of the differential rights of social groups within one culture, such as those demarcated by age or gender. For example, students often express confusion when they discover that in some cultures children are sold or tortured, while in the United States children’s life expectancy, health, and education are harshly unequal due to the disparity of wealth and opportunity. Likewise, they experience dissonance as they come to understand that women’s gender-based vulnerability to a host of violations institutionalized by legal and religious systems of marriage and family is persistent in nearly every culture in the world. Cultural relativity is a lens that students sometimes adopt rather than probing more deeply the question of universal standards that override the justification of harmful acts committed by one group against another in the name of culture. For example, Kawewe (1998) warns of the continuing atrocities that occur against children, ‘‘especially the girl child and young woman . . . in the Third World . . . under the rubric of cultural and religious freedom’’ (p. 46). Such a rubric may limit students’ exploration of such questions of who is, through power, and who is not, through silencing, included in the process of establishing cultural norms (Rao, 1995). Cook (1993) identifies the need for ‘‘female interpretations’’ (p. 14) of religious and traditional paradigms that have fostered the religious subordination of half the population, while Mayer (1995) cites ‘‘cultural particularism’’

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as an obstacle, based on a misguided application of cultural relativism in the Middle East. Two of the hallmarks of oppressive processes are internalized oppression and internalized domination (that is, acceptance of the oppressive prejudices by both the oppressed and dominant groups respectively) (Pheterson, 1990). Further, the nature of the dynamics of their operation tends to be hidden (Weick, 1994). Taken together these processes may make the arrangements, or structures supporting oppression of all types, exceedingly difficult to recognize. Political action implications of human rights. The third challenge involves helping students make the critical connection between a personal commitment to the dignity of all persons and the political action implications of such a commitment. While there is ample support in the literature for social work’s fundamentally political nature (Cowger, 1997; DuBois & Miley, 1996; Lee, 1994; Miley, O’Melia, & DuBois, 1998), this is not always intuitive for students early in their social work educations. The passion for helping people and connecting on a personal level tends to frame many students’ entrance into the profession. Further, their preoccupation is often with neediness rather than oppression (Breton, 1992). Many are young; many have limited experience outside their own cultural or ethnic backgrounds. The conflictual nature of challenging the political status quo is potentially quite daunting for some students and is perceived as explicitly contraindicated by others. The task here is to assist students in translating their recognition of the structural components (Wood & Middleman, 1989) of their clients’ pain into intervention, thereby shifting some of their focus from internal change to promoting/achieving/creating more responsive sociocultural arrangements. The deconstruction of egregious conditions often benefits from a human rights framework for connecting the differences among people at all levels and for connecting the personal and culturopolitical dimensions as inseparable. Students then can discover the commonality between the flagrant violations of women, for instance, living under religious family law in some countries with those of women living under secular family law in the U.S. This may be an especially poignant discovery when students gain a new valuesbased lens through which to view a familiar outrage. The process can also result in an intense identification with the persons who formerly

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seemed exotic strangers in another land and those of cultures different from students’ in this one. Considering the capacity to provide the grounding for a cohesive practice perspective through a human rights lens and the challenges to developing this, the authors have developed a structural frame to be infused across the curriculum. Teaching methods, materials, and activities are designed to encourage the integration of a human rights dimension into student practice. A consolidation component requires students to describe and reflect upon their human rights learning experience. TEACHING METHODS Given the challenges of teaching about human rights as a framework for social work practice, a multi-method teaching approach is desirable. In anticipation of the nature of these challenges, these methods must engage students across cognitive, affective, and experiential learning domains. These methods include: readings, case examples, videos, and social action. The underlying rationale for this sequence is that it provides the learner with a conceptual foundation upon which to base progressively more involving learning experiences. Readings. Students in policy and practice courses read a number of sources regarding international human rights conceptions. Parts I and II of Teaching and Learning about Human Rights: A Manual for Schools of Social Work and the Social Work Profession (U.N., 1994) is usually the first of these they are assigned. This book provides them with an introduction to social work and human rights, basic international human rights instruments, and social work practice issues and case vignettes. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see United Nations, 1994), as an internationally endorsed moral document provides significant grounding for social work as a value-based profession with global implications (Healy in Healy & Asamoah, 1997). In addition, it ‘‘has provided the foundation upon which human hopes and aspirations rest’’ (Wetzel, 1993, p. 1). Students read documents which the U.S. has ratified as well as those which it has either ratified with reservations and those which it has not ratified, establishing the ambivalence of U.S. commitment to human rights as a normative framework. One such example of a document the U.S. has not ratified which is particularly compelling to students is the Convention on the

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Rights of the Child (U.N., 1989) and another is the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) (U.N., 1979). These documents address populations and issues with which they are commonly concerned. Students often move on to do independent human rights reading in researching social issues for class assignments in all areas of the curriculum. For example, they may read other United Nations documents, like the Platform for Action, passed by countries participating in the 1995 U.N. World Conference on Women in Beijing. They may read some of the social work references cited at the back of this paper, human rights literature from other disciplines (e.g., Donnelly, 1985; Gewirth, 1997), and unpublished documents of limited circulation that have been produced by human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch groups, and the Center for Women’s Global Leadership. They also learn to search electronic on-line sources for human rights materials, current issues, and organizations. Case vignettes. The use of case vignettes in human rights education for social workers can bring students face to face with the meaning of human rights in real peoples’ lives. Because case vignettes are narrated in very human terms, the barriers that often separate students from others are diminished and they are more able to appreciate some obstacles experienced by clients as violations of their human rights. The emotional identification raises students’ consciousness that as social workers they take a position on the human rights involved in case vignettes, by intent or default. For example, in direct practice involving woman battering students can learn to assess with women their safety and full participation, or not. They can refer women who want counseling to practitioners who address the cultural and interpersonal politics of coercive power in clients’ lives (e.g., Laird, 1995; Waldegrave, 1990; and White, 1995) or to those whose analysis is limited to intrapsychic interpretations. Either way, their actions constitute a human rights position and hold implications for women’s security of person and bodily integrity. Often the position involves competing rights which creates an ethical dilemma about whose rights or which rights to promote. This in turn makes the implications of the vignette more complex, because students are called upon to analyze a situation of unequal power. The necessity to mediate between two, or more, competing values generates a highly compelling process for them.

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Sometimes these case examples are cross cultural, adding even further to the ambiguity with which students are faced. Now they not only confront issues of competing rights, but they also struggle with the additional issues of not knowing what is normative in other cultures or how to factor that into the decision making. As a consciousness-raising introduction to the narratives and experiences of others, students start listening to the voices of those who are both alike and different from themselves as they tell about their lives. For example, Filipino children, with no formal protection from any source, abused by parents, a 13 year old Zimbabwe girl raped and beaten by her father and then relegated to a juvenile delinquency center, a young Catholic boy’s brutal account of sex trafficking in Southeast Asia, an adolescent committed, because of his homosexuality, to a mental hospital in the United States. The stories are rich and powerful. Students usually find shadows of their friends or families–sometimes themselves in such accounts and then begin to conceptualize and address the scenario both as human beings and as social workers. Further, they may connect the many ways that people resist abuse and protect themselves and their children with the many ways that people, particularly women, around the world are claiming their human rights to security of person (see Cook, 1993; Copelon, 1994). More fully developed case examples provide the forum for students to experience more fully responsive reactions to the violation of human rights. Caroline’s story is one such example the authors use. A child from a small New England city, Caroline’s life experience was filled with events and relationships that precluded any vision of human rights. As a girl-child she suffered her mother’s rejection and hostility, culminating in Caroline’s childhood memory of her mother, in a jealous and drunken rage, cutting her hair with blunt scissors as she tried to sleep. As a troubled teenager, Caroline stole from local stores, used alcohol and drugs and was then banished to the state reformatory for delinquents. There her behavior became more and more aggressive toward the adults around her, until she was placed in the state mental hospital. Considered by then to be incorrigible, she was assigned work in the laundry. She was routinely sexually assaulted by both male patients and occasionally, male staff. Her efforts at self advocacy were punished and she was denied her requests to go to the hospital school. Released from the hospital, Caroline was usually homeless until,

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shortly after prostituting herself to buy drugs, she was found dead in an alley of an overdose. Other examples come from the authors’ practices, human rights literature (see United Nations, 1994), or from dramatizations of current world struggles (e.g., in Sarajevo). Disabled children denied education because of the shame their parents feel, old persons forced to leave their treasured homes and supports, street children robbed of their childhoods so they might find food for their families–all of these scenarios provide vital grist for exploring the breadth and depth of human rights implications in peoples’ lives. Following the case vignettes, students are asked to consider, and put in writing, (1) what human rights issues are involved, (2) what structural issues are present, and (3) possible social work responses to Caroline, at various times in her life, that might have promoted her human rights. These questions are used variously for stimulating critical thinking, focusing students’ free-writing, guiding class discussion, and evaluating students’ understanding. Multimedia and videos. Computer technology and video recordings are powerful extensions of the use of case examples and the concepts of human rights in action. They connect students to people whose rights have been violated, and to those working to prevent and ameliorate such violations. Selecting this media involves purposefully combining stories of human rights violations and human rights activism in order to convey both the impact of the violations on everyday lives, and the possibilities for human rights-oriented social work practice to promote and protect rights. Some multimedia and videos, like the Amnesty Interactive CDRom: A history of human rights (Amnesty International USA, 1994), teach students explicitly about human rights. The CD-Rom presents ‘‘people, ideas, and events that have shaped the history of human rights’’ (Human Rights Educators’ Network, 1998). Others implicitly or explicitly lead students to extend human rights thinking to issues not commonly treated as issues of rights by U.S. social workers. For example, videos such as My body is not who I am (Aquarius Productions, 1995); My country: The civil rights movement that created the Americans with Disabilities Act (Aquarius Productions, 1997); and When Willy broke his head . . . And other tales of wonder (Fanlight Productions, 1997-98) address the stigma faced by people with disabilities and their civil rights activism.

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Other videos demonstrate the indivisibility of human rights, depicting the interaction of specific economic, social, cultural, and political factors impinging on people’s humanity. For example, In the Shadow of the Law (Espinosa, 1990); Displaced in the New South (Zeiger & Mofford, 1995); and Uneasy neighbors (Espinosa, 1991) present the socially constructed vulnerability of refugees, immigrants, and migrant workers in the U.S. Jackson’s (1995) From One Prison; the Kensington Welfare Rights Group’s (1995) Poverty Outlaws; Films for the Humanities and Sciences’ (1999) To be old, black, and poor, and Dancing in Moccasins; and Filmakers Library’s (n.d.) Who lives, who dies?, reflect the indivisibility of social, economic, cultural, and political factors in the lives of citizens. Some videos’ global contexts portray the universality of human rights while their multicultural content simultaneously reveal the diversity of ways that rights and freedoms are violated and pursued around the world. For example, Rogers’ (1994) award winning video, The Vienna Tribunal, presents students with ‘‘highlights of moving testimonies at the Global Tribunal on the Violations of Women’s Rights–held in conjunction with the U.N. World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna 1993’’ (Women Make Movies, 1999). Social work students gain an expanded understanding of the differences and similarities in form and context among human rights abuses and activism. They also learn about international governmental human rights policy mechanisms and processes, and nongovernmental organizations’ social action strategies for influencing governmental policy deliberations. In using videos as compelling as these, instructors prepare students for viewing them and debrief with them after the viewing. In preparation, instructors provide students a brief overview of the video and the rationale for its use. They forewarn them about content that may stir up unpleasant memories or uncomfortable feelings. They also suggest that students allow themselves to leave the room before the video ends if they feel the need to do so. In debriefing the class, the instructors explore a generic series of sequentially asked discussion questions that get at the following: (1) what students observed and experienced, (2) the meaning that they made of what they saw, (3) what they learned about human rights and social work, and (4) how they might apply this experience to their local work practice. In every class, some students have experienced or known others who

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have experienced incidents of human rights violations and their readiness to discuss their reactions freely in a group setting varies. Therefore, instructors make themselves easily available immediately after class and in the ensuing days to debrief individually with students if and as they may want this. Social action. The culminating method of this process is the direct involvement of students in planning, participating in, and evaluating a human rights social action event. One example of this use of the method by one of the authors is the annual Sixteen Days of Activism Against Gender Violence international campaign (Roche, Biron & Reilly, 1994). Students participate in the campaign as an activity sponsored by their student social work organization, as an option for fulfilling an individual course assignment and as a required group assignment. In all of these forums, the instructors participate alongside the students. Another example occurs when students plan and organize an event to benefit a local family in severe economic need so that family members might celebrate a holiday dear to their culture. Similar to teaching with videos, the use of the social action method involves preparatory, engagement, and debriefing phases. During the preparatory phase students identify the themes that they want to organize their campaign participation around, plan their participation, mobilize the participation of others and make all necessary arrangements. During the engagement phase, they carry out their participation in such a way as to concretize the themes to raise consciousness, stimulate critical analysis and/or catalyze change-oriented action. Alternatively, they may join a larger social action activity that others have organized. An example of the former is a student presentation in a college dorm that explores sexual harassment as a human rights violation. An example of the latter is gathering signatures on a human rights petition on campus and in the community as part of a larger worldwide petition drive. During the debriefing phase, students are asked the same types of questions that they are asked after viewing a video. Additionally, they are asked to describe and analyze others’ reactions and to evaluate the action and their individual and collective impact. One purpose of this phase is to enhance their critical analysis of human rights issues through their reflection of the reactions they received from others during the social action. The other is to generate human rights practice

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theory that is grounded in and can be reinvested back into their local social work worlds. REFLECTING ON THE TEACHING-LEARNING As the final phase of the learning process students are asked to design and present a human rights-based practice model for intervention in a case scenario presented to them. In small groups they are asked to collaborate, process areas of difference between them, explicate the specific goals of their interventions, and provide a human rights-based rationale for each. They are asked to identify the elements of cultural heritage that appear to conflict with those of human rights and to describe the group’s process of working through them. They are also asked to support their practice components through reference to their readings, the video, what they learned from the case vignettes, and from the Sixteen Days of Activism project. Other students are invited to respond in order to support, challenge, add, or strengthen specific models developed. Here again, the instructors participate in this discussion with the students, offering their own evaluation-based encouragement, speculations, and instruction. Finally, students are invited to discuss ways in which to sustain this approach with other kinds of clients and how it might influence their more general practice frameworks (Roche, 1996). They are asked to consider the world of agency practice and the variety of responses that they would expect to receive, or have already received, in response to their promotion of human rights. Their social action experience serves as one basis for assessing people’s reactions and for strategizing how to support themselves and each other in continuing this work beyond the duration of the course. One of the strongest impressions that students convey in their reflection is their recognition of the commonalities which are shared across the lines of identity and issue differences. Contrary to what one might expect, the human rights framework with its emphasis on the humanity in each of us has a powerful connective effect which supports their consideration of the case examples, videos, and readings. CONCLUSION The inclusion of an explicit human rights commitment in the social work curriculum for students is critical. We are all members of a

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shrinking world in which the rancor of global human rights violations poisons the quality of all lives. At the same time, there is a vital international community overlapping and beyond the social work profession that seeks to apply the values of human life and the rights inherent in it to global and local social structures. The human rights framework offers a powerful, unsettling, and hopeful message to students. Social work’s moral and value base is consistent with this human rights focus. Its integrity is dependent on human rights recognition, and it compels us as practitioners to incorporate that recognition actively into our work. While many students may not immediately perceive the relevance of this focus to their emerging sense of self as social worker, they are typically responsive to the kind of instructional methods described above. Social work educators are positioned to accept the responsibility, for the sake of social workers in the 21st century, and for the wholeness of their future clients and the world’s oppressed, to integrate human rights content into the development of the student praxis. REFERENCES Amnesty International USA. (1994). Amnesty interactive CD-Rom: A history of human rights [CD-ROM]. (Available from AIUSA Publications, 322 Eight Avenue, New York, NY 10001). Aquarius Productions. (1995). My body is not who I am: A candid perspective on living with (dis)abilities [Video]. (Available from Aquarius Productions, 5 Powderhouse Lane, P.O. Box 1159, Sherborn, MA 01770). Aquarius Productions. (1997). My country: The civil rights movement that created the Americans with Disabilities Act [Video]. (Available from Aquarius Productions, 5 Powderhouse Lane, P.O. Box 1159, Sherborn, MA 01770). Breton, M. (1992). Liberation theology, group work, and the right of the poor and oppressed to participate in the life of the community. In Group work reaching out: People, places and power (pp. 257-269). Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Press, Inc. Bunch, C., & Reilly, N. (1994). Demanding accountability: The global campaign and Vienna Tribunal for Women’s Human Rights. New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Women’s Global Leadership and the United Nations Development Fund. Charlesworth, H. (1994). What are ‘‘women’s international human rights’’? In R. J. Cook (Ed.), Human rights of women: National and international perspectives. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Compton, B. R., & Galaway, B. (1989). Social work processes (4th. ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co. Cook, R. J. (1993). Gaining redress within a human rights framework. In J. Kerr

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