From September 2021 to February 2022, We have worked with three community activists from Difference NE, The Annexe at The Wharton Trust and Sheppey is Ours! And we joined the Social Rights Alliance’s first ever Community Researchers project to use action research to explore what economic, social and cultural rights mean in each other communities, and how a Human Rights-Based Approach can add value to our activism.
We made this film as part of the process of this work:
Human Rights Defenders Claim Their Rights: A Learning Journey
A Manifesto for a Human Rights-Based Approach
By Martin Connelly, Nic Cook, Hinda Mohamed and Kayleigh Rousell, with Helen Flynn, Susanna Hunter-Darch and Emma Lough.
Anyone who has done work around taking a Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) is probably very familiar with the PANEL principles (other acronyms are available!). For lots of us, they’re a useful framework for looking at and thinking about the different elements that an HRBA entails. On 22 February 2022 as the Community Researchers we gathered in London, meeting in person for the first time, and reflected on our learning. After six months, we shared what we feel about the PANEL approach to human rights. Human rights defenders from Difference NE The Annexe at The Wharton Trust and Sheppey is Ours! And us identified certain focus points which are fundamental to applying a Human Rights-Based Approach in practice. These differ from the PANEL principles usually associated with the approach which incorporate: Participation, Accountability, Non-Discrimination, Empowerment and Legality. Through working together and meeting with allies and activists who have embraced human rights as a tool for social change, we as a group devised a manifesto for action with a set of human rights focus points at its heart.
These are:
Solidarity, Power, Access, Accountability, Intersectionality.
These focus points need to be held at the core of work we do, alongside the Human Rights Based-Approach principles, as a manifesto for action.
Solidarity
Solidarity comes from people, holding space for all lived experiences and the problems that different people and communities face. It can be found in the form of space, feelings or actions that build collective power through empathy and communication. Ultimately, solidarity is about allyship, building our awareness and knowledge of our inter dependency and collective power to make change happen.
Power
If power can be given, it can be taken away. We recognise the unlocked power in our communities in the form of knowledge and experience that is not seen, heard or respected. Power is structural and needs to shift but it is also inherent and comes from people. We strive for a non hierarchical society in which there is no ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, and systems are shaped by the people most affected. We can empower ourselves, but we cannot be empowered by others.
Access
Access is about more than participation. It must be constant, inclusive, and intentional. Only when everyone has equal cultural and physical access to systems, spaces, and decision-making can those practices and processes claim to be valid. We work, unrelentingly, to open up access, extend access – remove barriers.
Accountability
We hold ourselves to account and we hold others to account. We do this to make sure that we remain true to our core principles and that our social systems reflect
and uphold these. Where necessary, we will push to change the law to ensure everyone is protected, heard, and treated with respect.
Intersectionality
Intersectionality is about more than non-discrimination. We understand individuals and communities as complex with multiple and overlapping needs and identities that
should be seen, respected, and celebrated. When change takes place, it needs to reflect the different dimensions of personal and interpersonal experience.
Using these focus points, we claim the right to talk about rights – and through this make rights