Elisabeth Reichert

Individual Counseling for Sexually Abused Children: A Role for Animals and Storytelling

This article addresses the use of animal assisted therapy in individual counseling for sexually abused children. It focuses on how the animal can help the sexually abused child disclose abuse and express feelings. Storytelling forms a part of the treatment process. The authors clinical experience at Project Against Sexual Abuse of Appalachian Children in Knoxville, Tennessee, forms the basis for the article.

Human Rights: An Examination of Universalism and Cultural Relativism

The social work profession is only beginning to incorporate human rights into its policies and practices. To understand what is meant by human rights, social workers will need to understand underlying concepts. The two of the most important concepts in terms of understanding the application of human rights to policies and practices will be universalism and cultural relativism. Knowing how to analyze and critique these two concepts will be crucial to developing an acceptable standard of knowledge about human rights.

Human rights in social work: an essential basis

The social work profession in the United States has been reluctant to integrate human rights principles into academic curricula. The teaching of human rights remains in an infant stage, even though the Council of Social Work Education now mandates integration of human rights into social work education. A major difficulty in integrating human rights into the profession concerns a lack of understanding as to what human rights actually mean. This article defines human rights and discusses their meaning for social workers. The discussion includes an overview of the universalism versus cultural relativism challenge that occurs when discussing human rights, as well as the promises of human rights.

Women's rights are human rights: platform for action

The strongest and most urgent international statement about women’s rights emerged from the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in September 1995 in Beijing. This statement, referred to as the Platform for Action, represents an agenda to empower women in economic, social and political areas (United Nations, 1996a). Prompted by women from all over the world, UN delegates unanimously agreed that the rights of women and the girl child are an indivisible part of universal human rights. A fundamental prerequisite for women and men to share power is that of recognizing women’s rights as human rights (United Nations, 1996a). Often without recourse against violations of their rights, women find it difficult to overcome barriers to their advancement in society. Women may encounter obstacles to enjoyment of human rights because many people do not recognize those rights. Failure to identify human rights of women begins at an early age, with the girl child. This paper discusses violence against women as a violation of their human rights and the philosophy behind this concept. The paper also covers the 1995 Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Forum held parallel to the UN women’s conference. At the NGO forum, social workers held a symposium on human rights and violence against women, the first organized gathering of social workers held in conjunction with a UN conference. Finally, the paper explains the Platform for Action and what it means to international social work.

Human Rights and Social Work

Human rights have provided a contentious issue in the social work profession, and have a patchy implementation globally. This is changing as social workers and educators throughout the world embrace concepts of human rights. The International Federation of Social Workers and International Association of Schools of Social Work have incorporated human rights throughout their mission statements. However, while human rights have now become more accepted within social work education and practice, social workers still have to understand what human rights actually represent. Application of human rights to social work policies and practices remains a work in progress.

Human Rights in the United States: Beyond Exceptionalism, by Hertel, S. & Libal, K. (Eds.).

Human Rights in the United States: Beyond Exceptionalism, edited by Shareen Hertel and Kathryn Libal, presents numerous viewpoints by authors knowledgeable on human rights within the United States. The editors selected an excellent cross-section of articles about human rights policies as they are carried out in the United States. These articles cover diverse topics, but the focus clearly reflects social welfare and cultural issues, including children’s rights; domestic violence; immigration; persons with disabilities; and lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgendered persons. The purpose of the book is to cover a particular human rights issue within the social and cultural domain as it relates to current U.S. policies. The outcome of this exercise usually shows that the United States has a long way to go before it can truly claim that it follows human rights principles in regard to a host of social and cultural policy issues. The author of each article addresses a particular human rights issue within the United States, and then focuses primarily on the legal aspects of that issue. In most cases, the author concludes that human rights policies within the United States are woefully lacking in addressing the issue at hand. This legal analysis of a particular human rights issue will undoubtedly suit students of law, but may be off-putting for those readers who prefer a more descriptive summary of human rights issues. Yet, the writing style is not overly legalistic, and even nonlawyers should have little troubling following the authors’ analysis of human rights policies within the United States. The primary strength of this book relates to the focus on U.S. domestic policies and why human rights principles could benefit those policies. All too often, when pundits or other commentators discuss human rights from a U.S. perspective, attention turns to other countries. Rarely do media or U.S. politicians ever discuss human rights violations within or by the United States. This sidestepping of human rights discussion as it relates to the United States clearly detracts from a more profound understanding of what human rights actually mean. Even when the U.S. violates a well-established human right, such as the right not to be tortured, U.S.

International conferences on violence against women

Violence against women has been written about as an international health issue. Since 1975 international conferences and organizations have addressed the problems. The resulting resolutions requested that measures be taken to eliminate violence against women.