Human Rights and Social Justice: Social Action and Service for the Helping and Health Professions

• Provides both historical and philosophical perspectives on human rights principles, with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the centerpiece
• Succinctly summarizes for the educated layperson core principles of other major human rights documents, such as international conventions on: Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR); Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR); the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); the Eradication of Racial Discrimination (CERD); the Rights of the Child (CRC); Torture (CAT); the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; Medical Ethics; and the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness
• Viewing social justice as struggle, advocates a multi-pronged approach dealing with whole, at-risk, and clinical populations to promote physical and mental well-being and eradicate social and individual pathology
• Examines social actions like human rights education, resolutions, and bills; the arts and the media; humanistic administration; grant writing; social entrepreneurship; clinical interventions; and quantitative and qualitative research that can promote human dignity, public health, human development, and the creation of a human rights culture, which is a "lived awareness" of human rights principles in mind, heart, and body

Dr. Joseph Wronka is Professor of Social Work, Springfield College, Springfield, MA, Representative to the United Nations in Geneva for the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and part-time representative for the People’s Movement for Human Rights Learning to the UN in New York. He is also President of Human Rights Action International (HRAI).  Dr. Wronka  received a Fulbright Senior Specialist award, in the discipline of social work with specialities in social justice and poverty and sub specialities in human rights, psychology, and existential-phenomenology. In 2015 he went to Pakistan and Austria as a Fulbright Scholar. Select academic appointments included: West Georgia College, St. Francis College, New York University, Caldwell College, Ramapo College, Chukchi Community College, the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Kotzebue Technical Center, College of the Holy Cross, Simmons, Boston College, and in Europe, Fachhochschule  at Berne and Zurich, Switzerland; Vienna, Sankt-Poelton, and Innsbruck, Austria; and Hanover, Germany. He was also Visiting Scholar at Brandeis University and Visiting Fellow at the University of Delhi, India. He was also a counselor at alcoholism and methadone maintenance treatment centers; clinician in  community mental health centers and in private practice; director of a mental health/substance abuse center; human rights commissioner; Vice President of the World Citizen Foundation; board member to the Coalition for a Strong United Nations and Amherst Media, where he is presently producer of “Creating a Human Rights Culture”.  His website is:  www.humanrightsculture.org

          Published widely in scholarly and popular fora, he has presented his work in roughly eighteen countries. His interest is primarily the development of social change strategies to implement human rights principles, in other words, the creation of a human rights culture which he views as the pillars of social justice.  Such principles mirror substantively millennia of teaching in various spiritual and ethical belief systems, which assert ultimately that every person, everywhere ought to be guaranteed their human rights, and live with human dignity and to their potential, without discrimination. At times, he refers to himself as an “adventure junkie.” He also likes to travel, swim laps; kayak; fish; ride his bike; and play classical music on the piano and concert and ethnic pieces on the accordion.