Human rights, in itself, have long been a contentious industry, developing over the decades and adapting to particular regions and surroundings. It is no different in Palestine, and perhaps even more so under the ongoing Israeli occupation, which remains one of the greatest focuses for human rights work in contemporary times.
Central to the field of human rights in Israel’s occupation of Palestine is the NGO Al-Haq – otherwise known as Law in the Service of Man (LSM) – which the professor Lynn Welchman extensively lays out in her book ‘Al-Haq: A Global History of the First Palestinian Human Rights Organisation’, published in 2021.
In the book, Welchman takes the reader through the story of its beginnings and establishment in Ramallah in 1979, describing the context of that time and its political situation, its evolution as an organisation, its growth from a small setup of lawyers into what became the first and most major Palestinian human rights group exposing the crimes of the Israeli occupation.
This book is on the shortlist for the Palestine Book Awards 2022, please click here to read the full review on the Palestine Book Awards site.