“David Kennedy has often criticised human rights groups who attempt to work with international standards. [41]He argues that over time they have developed an entrepreneurship/professional model of work, relying on donor funding and distancing themselves from the subjects of their concern.

This is for the most part unfair since professionalization does not necessarily mean less activism or genuine concern.”
In my view Kennedy is spot on – as far as this country is concerned. How can you build a dialogue when you come to the grass roots level with a load of pre-conceptions, SOP’s and workplans developed in Colombo? This is the crux of the matter. The other point is this: why isolate children and families from their families and communities when it is those extended families and kinship networks that sustain them in the long term? By abstracting individuals from the group settings and then ignoring the group, identity based human rights approaches have actually rendered the individual victims more vulnerable.
Identity is temporary. Change is the truth. Working with changing and changeable humanity should be the work of human rights. But this has now been forgotten.
This is why human rights practice must now scrape the bottom of the barrel and seek the refuge of criminal law. Since when did criminal law support equality and social justice? It is just a state mechanism (now borrowed by the ICC) that uses the victim for its own agenda of power play. At the end of the day the criminal remedy is just a form of revenge. Certainly the most civilized form we have concocted. It is useful alright – but I fail to see how human rights can claim any credit from the prosecution of an offender. This is an abdication of the true work of human rights which is to work proactively around the causes of injustice. Reactive measures are a plaster – a simple diversion or distraction from the main point.