Journal of Human Rights and Social Work最新文献

The paper explored the dignity and human rights violations faced by women domestic workers in India at their workplaces through an intersectional lens. The country has over 50 million domestic workers, primarily women, who face multiple structural vulnerabilities at work. The existing literature on domestic workers focused more on the violations of economic labour rights. The subjective experience of daily loss of dignity, humiliation, and human rights violations at the workplace remains relatively unexplored in India. In this context, a survey was conducted among 600 women domestic workers from three selected States – 200 each in Mizoram, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. The research team held six focus group discussions with domestic workers and ten in-depth interviews with NGO personnel and activists. A mixed methodology approach was employed, wherein quantitative and qualitative tools were used, followed by data integration to outline the phenomena under enquiry. The study identified multiple forms of restrictions and prohibitions in the workspaces through which discrimination and humiliation of domestic workers occur, violating their rights and dignity. The paper argues that women domestic workers are highly vulnerable to exploitation, and their identity in terms of gender, caste, class, and ethnicity, creates complex forms of intersectional disadvantages. The feminisation of domestic work and the consequent devaluation of work make the intersectional disadvantages, humiliation, harassment, and exploitation generally invisible. The scenario calls for multi-stakeholder interventions and social action to create decent workspaces to improve the working conditions and social well-being of women domestic workers.

Prison conditions and the treatment of incarcerated individuals in Chile have improved a great deal when compared to the end-of-the-dictatorship period at the beginning of the 1990s. Along with rapid societal changes over the last decade, the Chilean prison system has been transformed in many ways. Today, human rights are more visible within the prison system through a variety of indicators, both quantitative and qualitative. On the other hand, it still has pending tasks and faces new challenges, such as: historical deficit on infrastructure and material conditions, violence inside prison walls, insufficient program access, the COVID-19 crisis, changes in its population, or the threat of organized crime. Although Chile is currently under a democratic regime, the authoritarian legacy still persists and can be traced to how the prison system is operated and structured. Today, the prison service depends on the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights and houses about 45,000 incarcerated individuals, a rate of approximately 236 per 100,000 inhabitants (ICPS, 2022). Some have argued that the Chilean prison system is in better shape than neighboring countries, but others criticize its similarities to the rest of the region, which are far from adequate standards when compared to developed countries. This paper utilizes quantitative and qualitative data to describe some of the efforts that have been made to improve the human rights of the incarcerated, critically analyze some pending challenges, and identify current roles and opportunities for social work professionals inside Chilean prisons.

The theme for World Social Work Day (WSWD) 2017 focused on “promoting environmental and community sustainability.” The day celebrated and promoted all the actions related to this theme in which social workers are engaged. The WSWD slogan reiterated the third pillar of the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development, developed by three international social work bodies, and was aligned with the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. The connection between the two agendas is connected to human rights and highlights the need for some theoretical and methodological reflections to deepen the understanding of sustainable development with the aim of identifying and analyzing the foundations of social work education and practice in this field of action. This article presents background information that allows an understanding of the specific importance of social work in the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Curricular planning in social work education should be properly aligned with the SDGs to equip students with the skills and competencies necessary to work with target communities. Incorporating the SDGs into the professional curriculum of social work, as well as creating pedagogical tools to connect with new target groups, should create better opportunities for social workers to enhance their professional activities. As a specific reference, a Chilean experience is presented that demonstrates how the SDGs allow for the implementation of community empowerment strategies and policy advocacy at the local level.

The purpose of this paper is to (1) examine global human rights disparities that were acutely revealed or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) explore ways that the identification of disparities and lessons learned during the pandemic offer opportunities for social work education. The article begins with an overview of global human rights in the categories of gender, children, race/ethnicity, environment, and socioeconomic status. The use of an intersectionality framework is then suggested as one lens for examining lessons learned during the pandemic to improve our global preparation and response. We do not want to wait for the next crisis to find populations with the same human rights vulnerability.