Every day, those doing human rights work are confronted with irresolvable ethical dilemmas that extend beyond institutional ethical processes. Messy Ethics in Human Rights Work invites readers into a series of overlapping conversations, as activists, researchers, artists, and others reflect on the complex disorderliness of ethics in practice, and the implications for human rights work. Contributors share situations when they were ethically stuck between a rock and hard place. What happened? What would they do differently next time? This work proposes that personal reflection and collective, sometimes uncomfortable discussion, are essential components of critical human rights practice.

On Thursday, October 26, 2023 at 7pm, in collaboration with McNally Robinson Grant Park and UBC Press, the Centre for Human Rights Research hosted a launch of the book with a conversation with the co-editors exploring what ethics means in the human rights work they do.