Join us for a book launch and discussion of Decolonial Human Rights Practice: Tactics, Obstacles, and Futures by Sarah Knuckey, Anjli Parrin, and Gulika Reddy. The authors will be joined by guest discussants Otto Saki and May Sabe Phyu for a conversation about the book’s key themes and its implications for the future of human rights practice. Drawing on interviews with activists worldwide, the book offers a granular account of the power asymmetries between human rights organizations in the Global North and Global South that undermine effective advocacy, and of how coloniality persists through everyday practice. The book also analyzes tactics for decolonial resistance and allyship, revealing when they succeed, why they can fail, and how they are neutralized or co-opted. Grounded in the insights of activists working across diverse contexts, it offers practical and conceptual resources for making advocacy more just, inclusive, and effective.

The book is available now fully open access: https://academic.oup.com/book/63156

Hardcopies can be ordered from OUP, and there is a 30% discount with code AUFLY30: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/decolonial-human-rights-practice-9780197821572?cc=us&lang=en&

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“Decolonial Human Rights Practice 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, allyship, 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 and Director, Orville H. Schell Jr. Center of International Human Rights

“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 the book so many in the human rights community have been waiting for. Deeply researched by leading scholar-practitioners, this book offers both a painful reckoning and steps toward transformation. Learning from frontline advocates, Knuckey, Parrin, and Reddy identify the micro-and macro-processes that duplicate colonial domination in the everyday practice of human rights. But the book goes further, bringing to light the ways human rights work must, can, and will change. This book is both acutely troubling and terribly hopeful. I commend it to all human rights advocates—most especially those of us based in the Global North—and I look forward to working through the lessons set out in this book with my students and colleagues in the years to come.” – Margaret Satterthwaite, Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, and UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers

“Knuckey, Parrin, and Reddy give precise language to realities that activists in the Global South have navigated for decades: the extraction of local knowledge, donor-driven agendas, patronising narratives about “capacity,” and reforms that rarely move beyond symbolism. This book is a powerful X-ray of the global human rights movement, which is now under intensifying pressure from authoritarian forces. Drawing on frank conversations with activists across continents, the authors reveal how inequality is reproduced through the everyday mechanics of advocacy. But this is not simply a critique. It is also a roadmap. Urgent, insightful, and deeply practical, it is essential reading for activists, funders, students, and anyone committed to making the human rights movement live up to the values it champions.” – Arijit Sen, Independent journalist and researcher