Emancipatory Human Rights

The Project “Emancipatory Human Rights”; is a research project in collaboration with Antwerp University in Belgium. The project aims to study ways to ensure that human rights are used exclusively for emancipatory purposes, and to examine the possibilities of protecting human rights from colonial uses. In addition to conceptual development, the research includes the preparation of papers on related issues that discuss the impact of the colonial context on the human rights situation in Palestine. The idea of formulating human rights locally, without abandoning their universality and internationalism, is the backbone of this research project. The conceptual background of the project stems from the possibility of reproducing human rights locally, provided that its emancipated from the monopolistic tendencies that accompany centralizations (European and others). For this purpose, the research project contains a central component that lies in the formulation process carried out by Palestinian youth (Birzeit University students in this case). Hence, an initiative called the “Human Rights Factory” will be launched, in which a group of students will work to define human rights from the perspective of the needs of Palestinian society (young men and women in particular). In addition to the Human Rights Factory, the project will prepare papers on several issues including the war in Palestine, the right to education, and the right to be emancipated from all forms of violence regardless of its different sources. The project will also discuss the impact of funding in the field of human rights on the formation and activation of these rights. The project is based on a vision of the organic nature of the process of producing emancipatory knowledge. For this purpose, the project was designed to allow a central role for youth in the research process, as well as, to accommodate the greatest possible amount of community contributions.