Engaging Socio-Economic Rights at the Local Level (with Dr Andrew Fagan, Lucy Davies and Rebecca Rocket)
In his recent report on extreme poverty in the UK, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston highlighted our local areas of Jaywick and Clacton as places experiencing high levels of deprivation, where there is a sense among residents that they have been abandoned by the state.
In this episode, Mitch Paquette is joined by a panel of human rights organisers and academics who have been working on poverty-related human rights issues within these communities. While noting the destructive impact of austerity measures on the social protection afforded to these communities, such as cuts to legal aid, our panellists explain how making use of the human rights ‘toolbox’ has proved to be an effective way of organising these disenfranchised groups and supporting a community-led effort to claim their economic, social and cultural rights.
Rebecca Rocket is a Unite Community member and social justice organiser, Andrew Fagan is the Deputy Director of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex, and Lucy Davies is Housing Law Supervisor at the Essex Law Clinic.
You can read more about the issues discussed in this episode in this blogpost by Katya Al Khateeb https://hrcessex.wordpress.com/2019/08/29/human-rights-at-home/
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