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Translators, Advocates or Practitioners? Social Workers and Human Rights Localization

The importance of speciﬁc professions for human rights realization is increasingly recognized. Journalists, teachers, and civil servants are all considered to play a role because their work affects individual rights. This is also the case for social workers. The connection between social work and human rights is evident in the large amount of literature explaining how human rights relate to social work. At the same time there is more attention for human rights localization. These ﬁelds of knowledge are related: social workers are local professionals and if they start applying human rights in their work this may inﬂuence human rights localization. This article contributes to existing debates on human rights localization by reﬂecting on the potential role of social workers in local human rights efforts in the Netherlands. Since human rights localization in general and human rights application in social work are recent phenomena in the Netherlands this provides a useful case study for a qualitative analysis on whether and how social workers can be regarded as actors in human rights localization. By connecting different actors that are said to play a role in human rights localization to proposed forms of human rights application by social workers this article identiﬁes three possible roles for social workers in human rights localization: as human rights translators, as human rights advocates, and as human rights practitioners.

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Translators, Advocates or Practitioners? Social Workers and Human Rights Localization

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Social Workers as Local Human Rights Actors?

The realization of human rights standards depends in part on the commitment of local actors. It can be argued that local public service professionals such as social workers can also be regarded as key players. The possible role of social workers becomes imperative if these professionals are working in a policy context that is not congruent with human rights. If existing laws or policies cause or maintain disrespect for human rights, social workers are in a position to observe that this is having an adverse impact on clients. When social workers are regarded as human rights actors, the question arises how they can or should respond to law and policy that impedes them in carrying out their work with respect for human rights. This article adds to existing theories on social workers as human rights actors by examining the practices of social professionals working in such a challenging policy context. The research took place among professionals in social district teams in the city of Utrecht, the Netherlands. Following a series of decentralizations and austerity measures the social care landscape in the Netherlands has changed drastically over the last few years. As a result, social workers may find themselves on the one hand trying to realize the best possible care for their clients while on the other hand dealing with new laws and policy expectations focused on self-reliance and diminished access to specialist care. The article explores how social professionals’ responses to barriers in access to care affect human rights requirements. In doing so, this socio-legal study provides insight into the ways in which everyday social work relates to the realization of human rights at the local level.

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Social Workers as Local Human Rights Actors?

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Applied human rights

What do human rights look like when we present them as action-based, bottom-up concepts, and not exclusively as legal items? After all, when we narrow down human rights to a legal concept only, we do not do justice to its meaning. In many professions and branches the idea of human rights is used in jargon, as guiding principles and as a source of inspiration. Human rights make a difference, albeit not necessarily as an enforceable legal concept. This facet of human rights - its practical application beyond lawmakers and lawyers - is deeply underexplored and deserves much more attention. Applied human rights are not per se a matter of lawmaking and enforcement only: it can be part of a mission and vision of companies, it is sometimes at the core of artistic work, it can be a leading principle in social work - especially considering the rights of the child, and it is used as a guiding principle in technological innovation. Human rights are not just for lawyers, but also for managers, engineers, social workers, musicians, local governments, law enforcers, designers and business people. However, and not surprisingly, in each branch the impact and implications of human rights differ. Therefore, it is time for a comprehensive textbook in which the idea of human rights is not exclusively explored as a legal concept, but instead discussed from various applied perspectives. In this book, we explore human rights as an applied concept: as something we do. The chapters are written by an international group of leading experts in a wide range of disciplines and themes, including technology development, social studies, pedagogy, business strategy, public governance, the arts, philosophy and law.

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Human Rights education, turning words into action

This article considers how lecturers can use human rights education as a core element of preparing students for professional social work practice. This paper is based on a symposium held at the EASSW conference in Madrid 2019 which was hosted by members of an interest group of lecturers, from Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland. The symposium elaborated on the interest groups action plan: ‘Human Rights, turning words into action’. The group posit that the application of human rights in social work practice should follow the rights and interests of service-users. The challenge for educators is that that in the first instance, students must learn about human rights instruments and enforcement mechanisms and then they must be schooled about the discursive, dialogical and democratic particularity of rights. Ignoring this character of human rights risks reducing rights to a technical debate. This article reflects on some of the difficulties, pitfalls and drawbacks that we have encountered, and some of the critiques of current human rights structures. The aim is to try to develop a ‘practice of critique’ and propose a strategic human rights agenda for professional social work education and practice.

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Human Rights education, turning words into action

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Indiscriminate Bulk Data Interception and Group Privacy

Human rights groups are increasingly calling for the protection of their right to privacy in relation to the bulk surveillance and interception of their personal communications. Some are advocating through strategic litigation. This advocacy tool is often chosen when there is weak political or public support for an issue. Nonetheless, as a strategy it remains a question if a lawsuit is strategic in the context of establishing accountability for indiscriminate bulk data interception. The chapter concludes that from a legal perspective the effect of the decision to litigate on the basis of the claim that a collective right to group privacy was violated has not (yet) resulted in significant change. Yet the case study, the British case of human rights groups versus the intelligence agencies, does seem to suggest that they have been able to create more public awareness about mass surveillance and interception programs and its side-effects

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Bringing Human Rights Home: Access to Justice and the Role of Local Actors Implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Most European states have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), but implementation varies at national and local levels with municipalities often playing a key role. Decentralization policies have often led to municipalities providing social support as well, but little attention has been paid to the accessibility of municipal support for persons with disabilities in the light of the CRPD. Therefore, this article presents the Dutch 2015 Social Support Act (SSA) as a case study. The SSA introduces the right to an assessment. This legal evaluation moment has far-reaching consequences for persons with disabilities as it serves as the gateway for access to reasonable accommodations under the CRPD. Dutch municipal councils implement their assessment systems in different ways, but social district teams are usually set up to execute the assessment under the mandate of the municipality. It is often the case that social workers fulfil both counselling and gatekeeping roles, despite the fact that they are not necessarily trained to combine these dual responsibilities. This article identifies impeding factors that influence the gaining of access to municipal social support at the level of the social system, the involved organizations and the individual professionals. It takes a legal-anthropological approach based on in-depth multidisciplinary interviews with experts in the field of disability rights advocacy, social policy and human rights, or with experiential expertise. The results indicate a lack of alignment between the SSA and the CRPD. The discussion gives recommendations for a broader implementation of the CRPD.

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The Non-human Borderlands

Indigenous rights’ relationship to ecological justice in Amazonia has not been explicitly explored in the literature. As social scientists rarely talk about violence against non-humans, this case study of conservation in Amazonia will explore this new area of concern. Ethical inquiries in conservation also engage with the manifold ways through which human and nonhuman lives are entangled and emplaced within wider ecological relationships, converging in the notion of environmental justice, which often fails to account for overt violence or exploitation of non-humans. Reflecting on this omission, this chapter discusses the applicability of engaged social science and conservation to habitat destruction in Amazonia, and broader contexts involving violence against non-humans. The questions addressed in this chapter are: is the idea of ecological justice sufficiently supported in conservation debate, and more practical Amazonian contexts? Can advocacy of inherent rights be applied to the case of non-humans? Can indigenous communities still be considered 'traditional' considering population growth and increased consumptive practices? Concluding that the existing forms of justice are inadequate in dealing with the massive scale of non-human abuse, this chapter provides directions for conservation that engage with deep ecology and ecological justice in the Amazonian context. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-29153-2 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/

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Human factors science and safety engineering

A symbiotic relationship between human factors and safety scientists is needed to ensure the provision of holistic solutions for problems emerging in modern socio-technical systems. System Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP) tackles both interactions and individual failures of human and technological elements of systems. Human factors topics and indicative models, tools and methods were reviewed against the approach of STAMP. The results showed that STAMP engulfs many human factors subjects, is more descriptive than human factors models and tools, provides analytical power, and might be further improved by including more aspects of human factors. STAMP can serve in minimizing the gap between human factors and safety engineering sciences, which can collectively offer inclusive solutions to the industry.

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Human factors science and safety engineering

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Human-centered evaluation of explainable AI applications

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) aims to provide insights into the inner workings and the outputs of AI systems. Recently, there’s been growing recognition that explainability is inherently human-centric, tied to how people perceive explanations. Despite this, there is no consensus in the research community on whether user evaluation is crucial in XAI, and if so, what exactly needs to be evaluated and how. This systematic literature review addresses this gap by providing a detailed overview of the current state of affairs in human-centered XAI evaluation. We reviewed 73 papers across various domains where XAI was evaluated with users. These studies assessed what makes an explanation “good” from a user’s perspective, i.e., what makes an explanation meaningful to a user of an AI system. We identified 30 components of meaningful explanations that were evaluated in the reviewed papers and categorized them into a taxonomy of human-centered XAI evaluation, based on: (a) the contextualized quality of the explanation, (b) the contribution of the explanation to human-AI interaction, and (c) the contribution of the explanation to human- AI performance. Our analysis also revealed a lack of standardization in the methodologies applied in XAI user studies, with only 19 of the 73 papers applying an evaluation framework used by at least one other study in the sample. These inconsistencies hinder cross-study comparisons and broader insights. Our findings contribute to understanding what makes explanations meaningful to users and how to measure this, guiding the XAI community toward a more unified approach in human-centered explainability.

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Translators, Advocates or Practitioners? Social Workers and Human Rights Localization

Social Workers as Local Human Rights Actors?

Applied human rights

Human Rights education, turning words into action

Indiscriminate Bulk Data Interception and Group Privacy

Bringing Human Rights Home: Access to Justice and the Role of Local Actors Implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The Non-human Borderlands

Human factors science and safety engineering

Human-centered evaluation of explainable AI applications

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Sociale professionals op het snijvlak van hulp en recht

Sociale professionals op het snijvlak van hulp en recht

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Products 1.858

Translators, Advocates or Practitioners? Social Workers and Human Rights Localization

Social Workers as Local Human Rights Actors?

Applied human rights

Human Rights education, turning words into action

Indiscriminate Bulk Data Interception and Group Privacy

Bringing Human Rights Home: Access to Justice and the Role of Local Actors Implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The Non-human Borderlands

Human factors science and safety engineering

Human-centered evaluation of explainable AI applications

Projects 2

Sociale professionals op het snijvlak van hulp en recht

Sociale professionals op het snijvlak van hulp en recht