Human rights and critical social work : competing epistemologies for practice

The paper argues that the idea of human rights remains a 'two-edged sword' for critical social work practice. On one hand, human rights implies a progressive stance for critical social workers. However, human rights can be used to maintain conservative perspectives on critical social work reinforcing the neoliberal status quo. The paper analyses literature critiquing human rights theory as a Western-centric development perspective concluding that critical social work practice can benefit from an understanding of human rights that seeks to challenge top-down approaches to human rights implementation.