Vulnerable Groups Protection and Rights for Advocacy: From the Perspectives of Community-Based Policy Making and Initiatives

Dear Colleagues,

Advocacy is a mechanism to secure the rights and represent the interests of, as well as obtain the appropriate services needed for, vulnerable groups, so as to ensure dignity and promote inclusion, equality, and social justice (Action for Advocacy, 2002: 2). All models of advocacy share a theoretical commitment to social justice and a methodological activism that has been explained as ‘an idea that mobilises people to act in order to bring about change’ (Newman and Yeates, 2008: 2). At a community level, advocacy has been a valuable tool used by various stakeholders—from individual community members to community-based organisations—to address issues experienced by vulnerable groups within the communities they serve, as well as the diverse, multi-layered, and ever changing social, political, economic, and cultural context this work takes place in. This Special Issue aims to explore this dynamic and illuminate the protection of vulnerable groups and their rights for advocacy, from the perspectives of community-based policy making and initiatives. We are interested in the ways that community initiatives and grassroots PAR approaches have been employed to provide rights-based support for vulnerable groups in various contexts, and how these may be used to inform further social policy change based on vulnerable groups' protection and rights.

Suggested topics include:

• Conceptualising advocacy/theories of advocacy;
• Advocacy and the decision-making processes;
• Working with communities to identify and offer rights-based support;
• Co-producing knowledge of advocacy needs with vulnerable communities;
• Creative methods and rights-based advocacy;
• Grassroots Participatory Action Advocacy Research with vulnerable groups;
• The needs and experiences of different models of advocacy within community contexts;
• Advocacy and community organising;
• Translating advocacy knowledge transfer translation outcomes to policy;
• Community-based advocacy;
• Statutory-based advocacy.

In this Special Issue, contributions must take the form of either papers, articles, conceptual papers or reviews, and address the topic herein stated.

Prof. Dr. Cristóbal Fernández-Muñoz
Guest Editor

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• community/community initiatives
• self-organizing
• advocacy
• participatory action research
• un/hidden voices
• vulnerability
• marginalization/exclusion
• rights-based action
• transformation
• agency
• dignity