GISD 625 Human Rights-Based Approach to Social Justice

Over the past two decades, nonprofit organizations and social justice activists around the world have adopted human rights frameworks, strategies and tools to advance their goals. At the international level, Oxfam and Action Aid, for example, have embraced human rights-based approaches to their work. National and local nonprofit organizations and activists from Vermont, Peru, South Africa and India and have also discovered that human rights provide a legitimate and coherent framework for analyzing public policy and organizing people to demand social justice. Drawing on case studies from the United States and globally, this course examines human rights-based approaches adopted by nonprofit organizations to advocate on social justice issues affecting marginalized groups, including women, children, racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities and migrant workers.