Promoting Human Rights through the Professions (abstract)

This paper examines the ways in which professionals in a range of fields—the health professions, education, journalism, and law to name just a few—have the capacity to engage in critical work in the promotion of human rights. Whereas the scholarly study of human rights focuses largely on formal law and governance processes, this paper explores how strategies for promoting human rights might be integrated into the everyday work lives of professionals. Our focus on this everyday lever for human rights promotion seeks to broaden the vision of what constitutes human rights and justice work by exploring the capacities of actors that are not formally part of the international human rights regime. We will focus especially on health professionals as potential advocates for human rights. To this end, our paper will include case studies of Dr. Holly Atkinson’s work with Physicians for Human Rights and her work as Director of the Human Rights Program at Mount Sinai Medical Center, which trains future physicians to do basic human rights work. We also consider the role of professional associations, particularly national medical associations, as potential vehicles for advancing fundamental human rights through the setting of professional standards, norm diffusion, and lobbying