Overview

This deeply honest and optimistic memoir is told through stories chronicling the personal transformation and frenetic journey of a blond-haired California beach boy into his emergence as an unorthodox international human rights renegade. It charts the unlikely evolution of a rather clueless American kid into a fighter for the rights of poor and vulnerable who worked for justice in more than 80 countries and became an ardent world citizen along the way.This book describes in intimate detail the highs and lows of an adventurous life as a global human rights legal activist across the globe. It provides an insider's view, rarely seen or understood by the public at large, of what it takes to live a human rights life. The book touches on everything from working in war zones, desperately trying to stop planned forced evictions and repairing displacement when prevention didn't work to writing the laws that now protect millions against various forms of human rights abuse (or at least they are supposed to!). It tells us inexplicable synchronicities across all of the world's continents, slums (and love) in Santo Domingo, Bangkok and Manila, wars in the Balkans and beyond, earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, reversing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, helping Timor Leste in its earlier days as an independent country, interludes with the Dalai Lama, presidents, prime ministers, activists and much more.Home reveals the personal struggles of fighting for justice when one's best friend faces torture and then the author deals with muggings, human suffering too extreme to handle and repeated near-death experiences and illness after illness after illness. If you've ever wondered what it takes to change the world, or at least a lifelong attempt to so do, then this is the book you've been looking for.

Full Product Details

9781644569009

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Reviews

""Scott journeys fromthe slums of a hundred cities to presidential palaces, bearingwitness to the horrors of forced eviction, conflict and climate displacement alongside the birth of new countries andthe hard fought achievements of housing rights activists and the UN human rights community. His story isa powerful testament to a life well-spentin search of justice, dignity and peace. It proves thateven in our darkest times, when international solidarity and the rule of law falter, the power of our shared humanity and a common future can prevail.""Aromar ReviVice Chancellor, IIHS UniversityBengaluru, India""Leckie's boundless enthusiasm and love of humanity shines through-at the same time he breathes life into the abstract idea of a human right to housing.""Andrew ClaphamProfessor of International Law, Geneva Graduate InstituteAuthor, War

Author Information

Scott Leckie (www.scottleckie.com.au) is a world citizen who has lived in more than a dozen countries across the world. His early life was spent on the West Coast of the United States, where he was attended the University of Oregon. He departed the US permanently in the mid-1980s and then lived in various countries throughout Europe, Asia and the Pacific and Australia.Scott has worked on human rights issues in more than 80 countries. His interventions helped to protect hundreds of thousands of people against planned forced evictions in popular communities in the Dominican Republic, Panama, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, Zambia and around the world and led to additional hundreds of thousands of refugees and IDPs being able to repossess their homes. For the past 20 years, he has worked with many communities threatened with displacement due to climate change. He founded three major international non-governmental organizations. He currently directs Displacement Solutions (www.displacementsolutions.org), a global not-for-profit NGO dedicated to resolving displacement generated by global warming and climate change. He also founded and directs Oneness World Foundation (www.onenessworld.org), a research think tank exploring new forms of global governance and world citizenship. He manages the One House, One Family (OHOF) initiative, a project in Bangladesh that funds and builds permanent and free homes for climate displaced families. To date, OHOF has built 18 homes to some of Bangladesh's most vulnerable families.He has taught and designed several human rights courses in top-100 universities and law schools around the world, developed the world's first law school course on climate change and displacement which he now teaches at Monash Law School. He has written 28 books and over 300 academic articles and reports on issues including world citizenship, land solutions for climate displacement, housing rights, economic, social and cultural rights, forced evictions, the right to housing and property restitution for refugees and internally displaced persons and other human rights themes.

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