The principles and modern universal concepts of human rights belong to everyone. For the realization, upholding, and protecting of all rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, compassion and persistent and great efforts are needed from many sources at all levels in every society.

Viewed from the perspective of a thoughtful need for cultivating a culture of human rights and fostering individual rights and liberties principles, you find a recommended reading collection below.  These publications are essentially informative, skillfully inspirational, and pragmatically transformative that 12Petals Media Group deems valuable for advocating a culture of human rights and prevalence of a culture of tolerance.

Source:  12Petals Media Group

::     Book Series Recommendation     ::

:: Book I - "Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction"

Author:Andrew Clapham

Professor, International Law

Publisher: Oxford University Press Publishing House

About the book: 

• The human rights movement is gaining increasing attention internationally. This book explains the scope of human rights today, and how they are used in both national and international law.
• Completely up-to-date. Human rights is a topical and controversial issue, and recent national and world events mean that they have been regularly invoked and analyzed.
• Looks at the past, present, and future of human rights. Questions whether they are under threat as they come to be seen by some as obstacles to peace, development and security.
• Ties in law, philosophy, and politics, to reveal the role played by human rights in the contemporary world.

You can read more about this book here:

:: Book II - "Human Rights from Below" Achieving Rights through Community Development

Author: Jim Ife

Professor - Jim Ife holds adjunct positions at the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia, and at the Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights at Deakin University, Victoria. 

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

About the book:

In Human Rights from Below, Jim Ife shows how human rights and community development are problematic terms but powerful ideals, and that each is essential for understanding and practicing the other. Ife contests that practitioners - advocates, activists, workers and volunteers - can better empower and protect communities when human rights are treated as more than just a specialist branch of law or international relations, and that human rights can be better realized when community development principles are applied.

The book offers a long overdue assessment of how human rights and community development are invariably interconnected. It highlights how critical it is to understand the two as a basis for thinking about and taking action to address the serious challenges facing the world in the twenty-first century.

Written both for students and for community development and human rights workers, Human Rights from Below brings together the important fields of human rights and community development, to enrich our thinking of both.

You can read more about this book here:

:: Book III - “The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations”

Authors: Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

Publisher: Penguin Portfolio

About the book:

It’s a starfish world and most people don’t even realize it.

One thing that business, institutions, governments and key individuals will have to realize is spiders and starfish may look alike, but starfish have a miraculous quality to them. Cut off the leg of a spider, and you have a seven-legged creature on your hands; cut off its head and you have a dead spider. But cut off the arm of a starfish and it will grow a new one. Not only that, but the severed arm can grow an entirely new body. Starfish can achieve this feat because, unlike spiders, they are decentralized; every major organ is replicated across each arm.

But starfish don’t just exist in the animal kingdom. Starfish organizations are taking society and the business world by storm, and are changing the rules of strategy and competition. Like starfish in the sea, starfish organizations are organized on very different principles than we are used to seeing in traditional organizations. Spider organizations are centralized and have clear organs and structure. You know who is in charge. You see them coming.

Starfish organizations, on the other hand, are based on completely different principles. They tend to organize around a shared ideology or a simple platform for communication … [shared mission]. They arise rapidly around the simplest ideas or platforms [such as culture of human rights and individual liberty concepts]. Ideas or platforms that can be easily duplicated. Once they arrive they can be massively disruptive and are here to stay, for good or bad. And the Internet can help them flourish.

So in today’s world starfish are starting to gain the upper hand. … Why is free, community based Wikipedia crushing Encyclopedia Britannica overnight? Why is tiny Craigslist crippling the global newspaper industry? … In today’s world to answer this it is essential to understand the potential strength of a starfish organization.

The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, explores the phenomenal and unstoppable new power of the starfish organizations and will change the way you look at the world.

You can read more about this book here:

:: Book IV – “Strengths Based Leadership”

Authors: Tom Rath and Barry Conchie

Publisher: Gallup Press

About the book:

In recent years, while continuing to learn more about strengths, Gallup scientists have also been examining decades of data on the topic of leadership. They studied more than one million work teams, conducted more than 20,000 in-depth interviews with leaders, and even interviewed more than 10,000 followers around the world to ask exactly why they followed the most important leader in their life.

In Strengths Based Leadership, #1 New York Times bestselling author Tom Rath and renowned leadership consultant Barry Conchie reveal the results of this research. Based on their discoveries, the book identifies three keys to being a more effective leader: knowing your strengths and investing in others' strengths, getting people with the right strengths on your team, and understanding and meeting the four basic needs of those who look to you for leadership.

You can read more about this book here:

12Petals hopes that these recommended publications can be helpful and supportive sources for human rights advocacy groups, activists, change agents, support groups, community development groups and societies, human rights assisting volunteers, and more.

Your viewpoint is very important to 12Petals Media Group. Please share your view and thoughts on these suggested books. For culture of human rights and responsibilities advocacy mission, please also suggest book(s) that you deem valuable.

Acknowledgement and Credits:

Project Development:

By: 12Petals Media group

Artwork Credit

Image Production By: 12Petals Media Group, Book Series Recommendation. 2013

Special thanks are extended to all those who keep supporting and contributing to 12Petals’ culture of human rights and responsibilities collaborative advocacy projects.

About 12Petals: 

12Petals Media Group strives to be a union of visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, cinematographers, playwrights, social entrepreneurs and more, all coming together to produce inspired multimedia pieces that promote and encourage respect for those rights protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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