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Publication Date
9-2026
Description
Human rights advocacy takes place within a deeply unequal world. As activists seek to protect rights, they struggle against the global economic and political power imbalances that drive violations. Movements for human rights are engaged in an internal struggle as well: against a human rights ecosystem that has long favored Global North organizations at the expense of civil society in the Global South. Decolonial Human Rights Practice: Tactics, Obstacles, and Futures explores the ongoing struggle of human rights organizations to confront and dismantle the coloniality of human rights advocacy.
Through a granular study of everyday advocacy practice which builds upon ongoing debate among advocates and scholars, this book offers a framework for understanding the contemporary domination practices of global north organizations within the human rights space. It then shows how human rights groups are seeking to shift power and transform human rights practice, and examines the successes and limits of their tactics for decolonial resistance and allyship. By drawing together the expertise of activists around the world, this book contributes to efforts to understand power and (in)equity within and between human rights organizations, buttressing ongoing struggles to make human rights advocacy more just, inclusive, and effective.
Disciplines
Human Rights Law | International Law | Law
ISBN
9780197821602
Publisher
Oxford University Press
City
New York, NY
Reviews
"Human rights are a universal language of justice-yet too often that language avoids rigorous scrutiny of the human rights movement's practices, which mimic, if not reproduce, colonial practices. At a time of increased contestation of rights, a surge of anti-rights ideologies, and retrenchment by historical human rights enablers, this book asks an enduring question: what does a de-colonial human rights movement entail? Drawing from a wide range of interviews, the book unapologetically surfaces the struggles within the struggles for human rights. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in advancing liberatory human rights practices without romanticizing the struggle for human rights."
—Otto Saki, PhD, Senior Program Officer, Global Governance, Ford Foundation
"This is a rare book that turns critique into a concrete program of transformation. Drawing on insights from interviews with more than 150 advocates, Knuckey, Parrin, and Reddy show how coloniality is reproduced through the everyday practices of human rights work, as decisions about agendas and resources become entangled with assumptions about expertise, authority, and whose voices carry weight. More than diagnosing these inequalities, the book charts a path from decolonial critique toward a reconstructive agenda, showing how practices of resistance and solidarity can remake power relations within transnational human rights advocacy. Informed by TWAIL and decolonial thought yet grounded in the realities of practice, this is an indispensable book for anyone committed to a more democratic human rights movement."
—Aslı Ü. Bâli, Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Knuckey, Sarah; Parrin, Anjli; and Reddy, Gulika, "Decolonial Human Rights Practice: Tactics, Obstacles, and Futures" (2026). Faculty Books. 411.
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/411