Human Rights in Chilean Social Work: Lessons from Chile to Prepare Social Work Students for Human Rights Practice
- PDF / 508,276 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 36 Downloads / 221 Views
Human Rights in Chilean Social Work: Lessons from Chile to Prepare Social Work Students for Human Rights Practice Gabriela Rubilar Donoso 1
&
Caterine Galaz Valderrama 1
&
Catherine A. LaBrenz 2
Accepted: 1 November 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This article presents findings from two studies conducted in Chile to examine the link between human rights and social work practice. The focus of this paper was to explore the role of undergraduate education in preparing future social work practitioners for human rights practice. Data from a qualitative longitudinal study to understand the role of social workers during the dictatorship in Chile (1973–1989) were used; then, in October 2019, as civil unrest and police and military brutality erupted across the country, the authors created a commission to register and document narratives and testimonies of current human rights violations in Chile. The research team utilized a qualitative approach to analyze data from the in-depth interviews that were conducted in the longitudinal study and from the 2019 commission. Findings suggest a need to cover more in-depth human rights content in social work education and to teach students to create community collaborations in the field. Implications for social work education and practice in the current political climate are explored. Keywords Human rights . Social work students . Memory . Testimonies . Chile
In October 2019, Chile experienced the greatest “social uprising since recovering democracy,” which had occurred thirty years prior (Garcés 2019; Araujo 2019). What began as a student protest against raising prices of public transit escalated into large-scale protest against neoliberalism and policies enacted during Pinochet’s dictatorship that have stratified and perpetuated inequities in Chilean society. In response, the government declared a toque de queda (curfew) and brought in the military to patrol the streets at night. As the protests and police and military presence escalated, several organizations registered instances of violations of human rights, police brutality, and abuse of power (Amnesty International 2020). The official Ministry of Health recognized
* Gabriela Rubilar Donoso [email protected] Caterine Galaz Valderrama [email protected] Catherine A. LaBrenz [email protected] 1
Universidad de Chile Departamento de Trabajo Social, Santiago de Chile, Chile
2
University of Texas at Arlington School of Social Work, Arlington, TX, USA
that over 13,000 people were injured during the first two months of protests, and between October and December 2019, over 2500 formal reports were made alleging violations of human rights (Amnesty International 2020). Although the toque de queda declared in October was repealed after a few weeks, the global spread of coronavirus in March 2020 led to the government declaring estado de excepción, also giving police and military authorities more power to limit transit, mobility, and social organizing; this has led to concerns about disparities in enforcement and
Data Loading...
