Course Description
While humanitarian action often involves, as the name suggests, working with international humanitarian law, human rights law plays an important role as well. From election monitoring in post-conflict settings to building rights-based programmes, focused on the needs of marginalized groups, the connection between human rights and humanitarian action work is of ever growing importance. How does the Human Right to water or food impact our considerations of towards humanitarian response? How should humanitarian work in conflict ensure political and cultural rights enshrined in international conventions?
The module continues by looking at political aspects of advocacy, such as lobbying and political outreach. It seeks to inform students about advocacy as a tool to raise awareness about forgotten crises, promote the respect for IHL, bring the voices of crises affected people to the forefront while maintaining their dignity and agency to ultimately obtain access to deliver humanitarian action. With a plethora of different crises in the world, it is sometimes hard to keep the public and politicians focused on crises typically considered “forgotten”. This part of the course focuses political outreach and communication.
Lastly, as advocacy is not just a skill to be used at headquarters, students will learn about what it means to advocate in the field. Especially in conflict, aid workers have to negotiate access around and through the front lines. Furthermore, many organisations work to advocate greater compliance with international humanitarian law by parties to a conflict. All of this is implementing advocacy and policy in the field
