A new book from three human rights scholars says the field's power problems are fixable, and it names the tactics already working. Decolonial Human Rights Practice: Tactics, Obstacles, and Futures (Oxford University Press, 2026) draws on interviews with more than 150 advocates worldwide. Its co-authors are Professor Gulika Reddy of Stanford Law School, Professor Sarah Knuckey of Columbia Law School and Professor Anjli Parrin of the University of Chicago Law School, according to Stanford Law School.
The practical question the book answers is one Parrin put plainly: existing scholarship, she says, offers substantial analysis of what is wrong with international human rights work, but considerably less guidance on "how do you do this right?" The authors researched between 2018 and 2025 in roughly a dozen countries, including India, Kenya, Guatemala, South Sudan, Myanmar, Iraq, Mexico, Ethiopia and the Central African Republic. What they found, and what follows here, is a working checklist for anyone in a north-south advocacy partnership. For readers tracking how rights coverage is changing, our Rights News section follows these debates as they land. This connects to our earlier piece, Who can enforce the Voting Rights Act is now a question of where you live.
The stakes are not abstract. At the height of deadly violence in the Central African Republic in 2013, a researcher from a major international organization could not leave her hotel because of the danger outside. A local advocate risked his life crossing the city to meet her, sharing firsthand accounts of abuses by armed groups and information about victims. The organization published a report documenting the abuses. Neither the local advocate nor his organization received any credit. For related coverage, see Olmstead at twenty-six: the right to live outside institutions.
What are the four patterns to watch for in a partnership?
The research identifies four recurring forms of domination between global north organizations and their global south counterparts: extraction, control, condescension and recuperation. Each one is a specific behavior, not a mood, which makes it checkable.
- Extraction. An international organization draws on or "mines" a local advocate's knowledge and work without adequately sharing credit or resources. The CAR report is the textbook case.
- Control. The northern partner seeks to determine advocacy priorities, strategies, funding, or who gets to speak publicly about an issue.
- Condescension. Attitudes and practices that diminish south expertise and agency. The authors report that global south advocates were sometimes treated as little more than intermediaries or "tour guides" rather than experts.
- Recuperation. Practices that appear to promote inclusion but leave existing power structures essentially untouched. This is the hardest to spot, because it looks like progress.
Knuckey ties these patterns to structural causes. "These daily practices are shaped and enabled by deep global economic inequalities, the political economy of human rights, white saviorism, visa and race privileges, and assumptions about expertise," she says. The background condition: global south activists often bring significant expertise and shoulder the greatest risks, while better-resourced international organizations receive the recognition and funding, set the priorities, and too often become the public voice on issues affecting communities thousands of miles away.
If you work for a global south organization, what are your options?
The book documents resistance tactics that global south organizations use to negotiate more equitable partnership terms. Reddy describes them as a spectrum, and the spectrum is a decision tree: each step costs more than the last.
- Start with dialogue. Some advocates begin by educating their global north partners about why a colonial model of human rights practice is both harmful and ineffective. Cost: time, and it may not work.
- Escalate if dialogue fails. Reddy says some advocates then walk away from the partnership, condemn existing practices publicly, or create their own networks and advocacy spaces. Cost: lost access to the partner's funding, platform and institutional reach.
The consistency of experiences across countries surprised the authors. "The pervasiveness of the concerns was quite surprising," Parrin says. But the research also documented the range of responses already in use. "We were also quite inspired by the breadth and diversity of ways in which activists globally were already challenging entrenched practices," she says. Some interviewees spoke for more than two hours, eager to share their experiences and ideas.
If you work for an international organization, what changes can you actually make?
The book identifies allyship tactics used by international organizations to shift decision-making power. They are concrete and testable:
- Share decision-making authority with local partners rather than retaining it.
- Direct more funding toward local groups.
- Publicly recognize local partners' expertise, the step that was missing in the Central African Republic case.
- Support local advocates to gain access to international institutions, donors and media.
The pressure for these changes is not coming only from inside the organizations. "Under pressure from rightsholders and global south activists, international global north NGOs have increasingly joined in decolonizing human rights practic" — the source text cuts off mid-word, but the direction of travel is stated: change is underway, prompted from outside.
Why does the everyday practice matter as much as the big cases?
The book examines how global power inequities play out in routine work: how violations are investigated, and who speaks for issues at the United Nations. The authors each recall participating in discussions about human rights conditions in countries where nobody from the affected country or community was represented. That is the gap a reader can check in any panel, report or briefing: who is in the room, and who is quoted.
Reddy frames the moment as a choice rather than a verdict. "The human rights field was built to challenge unequal power, yet it too often benefits from and replicates it," she says. "Its colonial way of operating is neither inevitable nor immutable, and reform is already taking place in pockets of the field. We are at an inflection point, and the choices we make today will determine what kind of field we become."
The book grew out of the authors' experiences teaching together. They had witnessed many successful and ethical global north-south partnerships, but also disparities between the stated values of international human rights advocacy and its everyday practice. The evidence establishes the patterns and the tactics in use. What it does not yet establish is how widely the allyship tactics have spread beyond the pockets Reddy describes, or whether the escalation options open to global south advocates change partner behavior over time. Those remain open questions for the field.
