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Richard Carver, Ron Dudai, Paul Gready, Preface to the Anniversary Issue, Journal of Human Rights Practice, Volume 11, Issue 2, July 2019, Pages 271–272, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huz028
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With this issue, the Journal of Human Rights Practice celebrates its tenth anniversary. There are plenty of academic journals in the human rights field, but still none that fill the gap that our founding editors, Brian Phillips and Paul Gready, identified in 2009. It seemed to them then—and seems to us still—that there was a place for sustained critical reflection on the practice of human rights and, in particular, the interface between human rights and the academic world. ‘Human rights’ seemed to exist in two separate and parallel universes, one theoretical and predominantly legal, the other quotidian and pragmatic. Yet the two worlds are clearly connected: the editors of the Journal in 2009 and today have all crossed back and forth between the academic and activist spheres in a way that no longer seems unusual.
In 2009, we set ourselves a number of tasks. The relationship between academia and human rights practice seemed to be shifting away from debates about the intellectual validity of human rights as a way of framing the world towards an exploration of implementation: do human rights make a difference in practice? (No coincidence that Brian’s academic home at the time was the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice at Oxford Brookes University and Paul’s the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York.) This focus on implementation also seemed to imply steps towards an interdisciplinary approach and away from the stranglehold of law and international relations. It implied a focus on relatively neglected issues, especially in the field of economic and social rights, and actors, such as persons with disabilities. Both practice and practitioners have been interpreted in a capacious and inclusive manner. Brian and Paul’s editorial in the first issue contained a very long list of potential practitioners for whom the Journal was intended as a platform for debate:
