Working with the

Abstract

As on-site foreign legal practitioners are painfully aware, women are often at the end of the line when it comes to access or allocation of resources for development. Fortunately, the re-orientation of the world's focus towards women's rights as human rights has begun to change that state of affairs. Complementing this changing focus is the use of collaborative strategies to pool scarce resources towards a common goal: the equality of women. The use of a collaborative strategic model in a women's human rights project is often poorly understood and applied. This issue is vitally important to the further advancement of women's human rights because collaborative strategic models form the structure of an increasing number of ambitious projects. Therefore, it is imperative that everyone involved has a clear idea of what a collaborative strategic model is and how to use it effectively. The questions to be addressed in this Note are: Will careful structuring and maintenance of the project model help human rights advocates exploit it to its fullest capacity? Can a lack of attention to these details contribute to the failure of a project? What can be done to ensure that the model functions at full capacity? Lastly, is the collaborative model the most appropriate one for the implementation of women's human rights? I will explore these questions in the context of the implementation of women's human rights using a particular kind of collaborative strategic project model that I affectionately call "collaborating with the enemy." My perspective is that of a foreign legal practitioner who has been invited to assist in the development and/or implementation of a project involving women's human rights.