Featured article from Global Newsletter August 2026
Written by Sandra Carla Sarde Mirabelli.
*This discourse is based on the experience of Social Work, participation in rights councils and monitoring the Human Rights movement, through seminars, congresses, conferences, meetings and lives.
The concern for the collective good of our country, our city or neighborhood, based on loving values, makes us all seek to nurture and protect this good. (Bell Hooks, all about love 2021, p.13)
Contemporary society still lives with deep inequalities and although human rights are recognized as universal, their realization does not occur equally for all people. The social, cultural, economic and political conditions, as well as the
historical trajectories and power relations present in each context, directly influence the possibilities of access to and exercise of these rights.
Reflecting on the promotion of human dignity implies, therefore, questioning historically naturalized practices and behaviors that can reproduce processes of exclusion, discrimination, and stigmatization. It also means recognizing that the needs of the subjects are not homogeneous and that responses to situations of inequality need to consider the characteristics and concrete experiences of the people and territories where they live.
Understanding this diversity is key to transforming human rights from general principles into concrete actions. In this sense, its promotion is directly related to the cultural, educational and social practices developed in everyday life. Human rights are not an isolated field, but cross different dimensions of life, such as access to education, culture, adequate food, health, leisure, well-being, community life and social participation. These elements are fundamental for the construction of dignified living conditions and for the strengthening of citizenship.
Education, in this perspective, goes beyond the transmission of knowledge and can constitute a space for dialogue, listening, reflection and collective construction of knowledge. Likewise, culture represents an important dimension of identity and belonging, enabling different groups to express their histories, memories, values, and ways of understanding the world. These dimensions mean recognizing diversity as a constitutive element of society and strengthening the bonds between people and the places where they live.
It is in this context that the territory assumes a central role. The promotion and defense of human rights take place in the relationships and experiences developed in the spaces where people build their stories, establish bonds, share meanings and elaborate forms of existence. The territory, therefore, must be understood beyond a geographical delimitation. It is also constituted by social, cultural, economic, political and symbolic aspects that relate to and give meaning to collective life.
The territory is, therefore, a lived space. It contains memories, trajectories, affections, conflicts, inequalities, forms of organization and strategies of resistance. Also present are resources, public equipment, institutions, collectives,
community organizations, cultural spaces, schools, health services, social assistance equipment and different initiatives built by the population itself. Knowing a territory implies recognizing this complexity and understanding that its characteristics cannot be reduced only to its socioeconomic indicators or its material conditions.
Looking at the territory means observing both situations of vulnerability and violation of rights and the existing capacities to face them. Many communities develop their own strategies of care, solidarity, organization and resistance in the face of adverse situations. Neighborhood networks, associations, cultural groups, social movements, institutions and community initiatives can play a fundamental role in building responses to local demands. Recognizing these experiences means valuing subjects and knowledge that often remain invisible.
Adopting this view also means recognizing that both access to rights and situations of violation are crossed by inequalities related to race, gender, social class, age, origin and cultural identities, among other aspects. These dimensions can combine and produce different forms of exclusion and access to opportunities. Therefore, actions aimed at promoting human rights need to consider the particularities of subjects and locations, avoiding standardized responses to different realities.
In this process, the articulation between different actors and organizations present in the territories becomes fundamental. No institution or service, in isolation, can respond to the complexity of social demands. The construction of collaborative networks allows for the sharing of experiences, knowledge and responsibilities, expanding the circulation of information and developing more integrated strategies.
Experiences carried out in partnership and dialogue with collectives, social movements, community representatives and the social assistance network confirm the importance of cooperation for the defense and promotion of human rights. Working in a network does not only mean bringing together institutions, but building relationships of trust, establishing common goals and recognizing that different knowledge and forms of action can contribute to social transformation.
In this sense, listening occupies a fundamental place. Listening means recognizing the legitimacy of the experiences of those who experience certain situations on a daily basis. People who live in the territories have knowledge built from their trajectories and relationships and can contribute both to identifying problems that do not always appear in institutional diagnoses and to pointing out possibilities for coping.
The creation of spaces for collective learning, listening, exchange of experiences and the shared elaboration of knowledge favors the joint identification of problems, challenges, resources and possibilities existing in each territory. These spaces are built by the relationships, memories, experiences and narratives of the people who participate in them. By bringing together different perspectives and promoting the circulation of knowledge, local articulations are strengthened and the possibilities of building practices related to social justice, care and the expansion of access to
rights are expanded.
Participation, in this context, needs to be understood as an effective process. It's not just about inviting people to activities or consulting with the community about pre-defined decisions. Participating means creating conditions so that the subjects can contribute to the definition of priorities, to the construction of actions and to the evaluation of results. In this way, participatory spaces strengthen autonomy, belonging, and the ability to intervene in reality.
Cultural and educational practices also play an important role in this process. Workshops, conversation circles, artistic activities, community actions and training meetings can create opportunities for people to express their experiences, recognize their identities and build new meanings about the place where they live. When developed in a participatory manner, these actions can go beyond the punctual character and contribute to the strengthening of community bonds.
The appreciation of memories also contributes to the understanding of territories. The stories of people, families and communities help to reveal the processes that constituted a given space and the events that marked their trajectories. Preserving and sharing these memories strengthens identities, combats processes of invisibility, and recognizes the contribution of different groups to the formation of society.
At the same time, territories are dynamic spaces, constantly transformed by social, economic, cultural, and political changes. New subjects arrive, others move, institutions are modified and new forms of organization emerge. For this reason, knowing the territory does not mean producing a definitive reading, but maintaining a permanent attitude of observation, listening and dialogue.
Promoting human rights also requires creating environments in which differences can be recognized and respected. Democratic coexistence presupposes spaces in which different opinions, identities, trajectories and forms of expression can coexist. In this sense, it is necessary to confront discriminatory practices and barriers that distance certain groups from spaces of participation and decision-making.
The valorization of the knowledge produced in the territories themselves and the creation of environments favorable to participation and the exercise of citizenship become, therefore, essential elements in the educational processes and in the experiences built collectively. These processes can stimulate dialogue, bring people together, strengthen bonds, and contribute to the construction of perspectives guided by greater equity and social justice.
More than developing actions in a given territory, it is about building actions with the territory. This difference is fundamental. When an initiative is externally planned and applied in a standardized way, there is a risk of disregarding local needs, experiences, and knowledge. When the community participates in the construction of the process, the possibilities of belonging, appropriation and continuity of actions are expanded.
Building with the territory means recognizing that communities have a voice, history, and the capacity to produce responses. It also means understanding that professionals and institutions have important knowledge and resources, but that these elements need to dialogue with the knowledge and experiences of those who
live the daily reality.
Thinking about rights from the territories is, finally, recognizing that citizenship happens in concrete places and in the relationships established between people. It is present in the school, in the square, in public services, in cultural spaces, in community associations and in the networks that are formed in everyday life. It is in these spaces that people build strategies to face inequalities and develop practices of solidarity and transformation.
In this way, promoting human rights means creating conditions for each territory to strengthen its capacities, expand its networks and recognize the subjects who are part of it as protagonists of its own history. It means investing in listening, participation, culture, education, care and articulation between different actors.
Rights, therefore, do not happen only in documents, laws or institutions. They happen when they find space in everyday life, when they are transformed into concrete practices, relationships and opportunities. They happen when a person is
heard, when an identity is respected, when a community participates in a decision, when knowledge is recognized, and when different subjects come together to transform a reality.
It is in this movement that territories cease to be just spaces where policies and actions are carried out and come to be understood as places of production of rights. They are spaces of memory, belonging, creation, learning and transformation. Recognizing them in their complexity means expanding the capacity to build more democratic, inclusive and connected responses to the real needs of the population.
Thus, the promotion of human rights is strengthened when it is based on the principle that every person has dignity, voice, history and the ability to contribute to the construction of society. By valuing territories, encounters and collective constructions, not only access to rights is expanded, but also the possibility of building more solidary, participatory and equitable social relations. The challenge is to transform this understanding into permanent practices, capable of articulating different knowledge, recognizing different experiences and creating, in each territory, conditions for rights to be effectively lived.
In this way, educating, caring, participating, dialoguing and articulating are no longer isolated actions and start to compose the same perspective of transformation. A perspective that recognizes that the defense of human rights is built in everyday life, in relationships and in territories, through the active participation of subjects and communities. After all, it is when rights find people, bonds, spaces for participation and concrete possibilities of realization that they cease to be just principles and become part of the lived experience.
Sandra Carla Sarde Mirabelli, PhD in Social Work from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC SP), Master in Gerontology from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC SP), Specialist in Public Policy Management and the Third Sector from the Instituição Toledo de Ensino de Bauru (ITE), Specialist in Gerontology from the Sociedade Brasileira de Geriatria e Gerontologia (SBGG) and Sociocultural Advisor at the Serviço Social do Comércio (SESC SP).
