Human rights in social work: an essential basis

The social work profession in the United States has been reluctant to integrate human rights principles into academic curricula. The teaching of human rights remains in an infant stage, even though the Council of Social Work Education now mandates integration of human rights into social work education. A major difficulty in integrating human rights into the profession concerns a lack of understanding as to what human rights actually mean. This article defines human rights and discusses their meaning for social workers. The discussion includes an overview of the universalism versus cultural relativism challenge that occurs when discussing human rights, as well as the promises of human rights.