That a disconnect exists between ordinary people and the world of human rights academia, NGOs and INGOs and the marginalised communities they are intended to serve is undisputed. As the years preceding and following the financial crash have been characterised by increased economic inequality and concentration of power and influence in the hands of a ever-shrinking coterie of elites, human rights as a tool of change have seemed increasingly legalistic, irrelevant and divorced from the people. A case study will be presented of Belfast based rights organisation (Participation and the Practice of Rights - PPR) set up to develop and test a model of how human rights can be used as tools by marginalised groups to define, campaign and implement international socio-economic rights standards in local settings
