Local Action/Global Change

Julie Mertus is an Associate Professor and Codirector of the MA program in Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs at American University. A graduate of Yale Law School, Professor Mertus has twenty years of experience working for a wide range of nongovernmental and governmental human rights organizations. Her prior appointments include: Senior Fellow, U.S. Institute of Peace; Human Rights Fellow, Harvard Law School; Writing Fellow, MacArthur Foundation; Fulbright Fellow (Romania 1995; Denmark 2006); and Counsel, Human Rights Watch. Her book Bait and Switch: Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy (2004) was named –œhuman rights book of the year– by the American Political Science Association Human Rights Section. Her other books include: Human Rights and Conflict (2006)(editor, with Jeffrey Helsing); The United Nations and Human Rights (2005); Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War (1999); and The Suitcase: Refugees’ Voices from Bosnia and Croatia (1999). Professor Mertus has won several awards for her innovative curriculum design and teaching. In 2005, she was named the School of International Service Scholar/Teacher of the Year., Nancy Flowers serves as a consultant to governments, nongovernmental organizations, and UN agencies on human rights education. She has trained activists, educators, lawyers, police, journalists, and parliamentarians in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Her publications include articles, books, and manuals on human rights education, most recently Compasito, a manual for children’s rights education (2007); Enabling Rights, a manual on the human rights of people with disabilities (2007); and The Human Rights Education Series (2007). She is the editor of the Human Rights Education Series for the University of Minnesota’s Human Rights Center. She makes her home in Menlo Park, California.

• Acknowledgments; Foreword; Prologue; Chapter 1 Introduction to Women’s Human Rights; Chapter 2 Women’s Human Rights to Equality and Nondiscrimination; Chapter 3 Women’s Human Rights in the Family; Chapter 4 The Human Rights of Young Women and Girls; Chapter 5 Women’s Human Right to Health; Chapter 6 Women’s Human Rights to Reproduction and Sexuality; Chapter 7 Women’s Human Right to Freedom from Violence; Chapter 8 Women’s Human Right to an Adequate Standard of Living; Chapter 9 Women’s Human Rights and Globalization; Chapter 10 Women’s Human Rights and Work; Chapter 11 Women’s Human Right to Education; Chapter 12 Women’s Human Rights in Politics, Public Life, and the Media; Chapter 13 Human Rights of Refugee, Displaced, and War-Affected Women; Chapter 14 The Road Ahead: Local Action and Global Change;

“Provides a wide range of women’s human rights training exercises from around the world.” —The People’s Movement for Human Rights Education “Together we must find ways to turn the vision of human rights into action, leading to meaningful change in our lives and in the world. As this book seeks to demonstrate, through local action, we can bring global change.” —Charlotte Bunch, from the Foreword “This is an essential handbook for international organizations, NGOs, governments, judiciary and law enforcement entities--especially for training purposes. The most important aspect is the ACTION orientation which will enable women and their allies to make concrete moves in their communities and nations for change.” —Nancie Caraway, Director, Women's Human Rights Projects, University of Hawaii-Manoa “A comprehensive, well conceived, thoughtfully designed handbook…an indispensable tool for human rights trainers and activists around the globe.” —Mahnaz Afkhami, Founder and President, Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace “Local Action/Global Change provides activists and advocates with the most comprehensive and practical approaches to understanding and articulating human rights of women. It is a critical tool to move us forward.” —Krishanti Dharmaraj, Co-Founder of Women’s Institute for Leadership Development for Human Rights “This book provides a clear, systematic, thoughtful approach to help navigate through the many diverse and complicated issues associated with how we understand and apply human rights for women. For someone who wants to make sense of it all and find conceptual clarity beyond the confusion we have seen in the past related to this important subject matter, this book is a must.” —Matthew Friedman, UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking “The contemporary global struggle for progressive, positive social change for women and their communities needs tools such as those found in the human rights education manual Local Action/Global Change. The revised manual directly engages with more than a decades’ accumulation of engaged theory and practice in human rights education and global justice work. It sets out the concepts and tools needed to make rights real for diverse women around the world, whether advocates are struggling in the home, community, national capital or international policy forum. Importantly, the authors confront the tensions as well as the potentials in using human rights as the grounding for action for justice for women and all persons, and carefully assemble an invaluable collection of practical and politically informed steps to build accountable advocacy within and across women’s and other social justice movements.” —Alice M. Miller, past co-Director, Center for the Study of Human Rights, University of California-Berkeley School of Law