Territorial Defenders in Human Rights. Territorial strategies and university extension

Abstract

The Territorial Human Rights Defenders are multi-stakeholder territorial intervention teams based on collective strategies in situations of institutional violence. Inserted in a Network of Ombudsmen that began in the Buenos Aires suburbs, they are based on the horizontality of knowledge among territorial actors and the creation of strategies to address access to justice and contribute to the fight against institutional violence. This article deals with the experience of setting up a Territorial Ombudsman's Office from a university extension project of the National University of Mar del Plata in the Belisario Roldán neighborhood of the same city, under the paradigm of critical extension. Based on this, the process of participation in the neighborhood fabric is described as strengthening social networks, and the dispute to thread new senses of popular intervention in territories where the rupture of social ties favors the deepening of violence. Finally, it deals with the route of articulations carried out, the main axes of intervention of the device as well as the role of the University as one more social actor in the construction of community experiences.