Human Rights Leadership: Towards a Research and Practice Agenda for Challenging Times

Eric Hoddy and John Gray, Human Rights Defender Hub Working Paper No. 9, University of York (May 2020)

Recent cases have highlighted how human rights defending is having to reckon with a sustained underinvestment in leadership. Narratives about human rights defending and activism in challenging contexts make at best only fleeting and often implicit reference to leadership with the result that leadership and the contexts for human rights defending remain poorly understood. This working paper presents findings from a review of the literature on leadership in times of stress and crisis. It presents various leadership concepts, frameworks, historical lessons and strategic insights from the academic literature outside the field of human rights practice. Overall, the working paper builds towards an integrated research and practice agenda for understanding and supporting human rights leadership. It also aims to serve as reference point on leadership for human rights organisations, movements, practitioners and academics in the field.