Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Insights from Palestinian Youth

Authors

Mai Awad, University of California, Santa CruzFollow

Author Bio

Mai Awad (she/her) is a Palestinian Ph.D. student in Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research broadly explores settler colonialism, focusing on subjectivity, agency, and resistance in Palestine. She looks into how Palestinians navigate their colonial reality through everyday resistance, particularly in the face of expanding Israeli settlements.

Abstract

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted in 1948, articulating a bold vision of a future in which every human being has the essential rights of dignity, freedom, and justice. But so much of that promise may now be at risk, especially with regard to how the UDHR addresses systemic inequities rooted in colonial legacies. This contradiction is especially evident in the lived experiences of marginalized communities in the Global South—where structural inequalities are entrenched in the everyday fabric of life. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), for example, principles of human rights appear light years from the current lived experience of Palestinians who are subjected to military occupation, Israeli incursions, and suffocating checkpoints that lead to a systematic infringing of the UDHR’s principles.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Awad, M. (2025). Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Insights from Palestinian Youth. International Journal of Human Rights Education, 9(1). Retrieved from https://repository.usfca.edu/ijhre/vol9/iss1/16