ABSTRACT
This chapter explores contemporary debates about human rights and restorative justice, engaging with recent literature. The rights protections that victims and offenders have in the criminal justice system are identified, and the risks to rights that may occur in restorative justice processes are examined against them. The chapter differentiates between risks that arise from normative concerns and those that will only occur in instances of poor practice. The chapter observes that despite ambivalence about standard setting, it is part of restorative justice discourse and practice, and does resolve most of the risks to rights. The chapter then redirects the discussion about human rights away from a vertical, top-down, state-biased, criminal justice tethered and individualistic conceptualisation. It points instead towards a horizontal, mutually respectful rights relationship which allows for dignified rights-conscious participants to be agents in their own justice processes. This reconceptualization can have real effects in practice through the way that standards are developed and by whom, and through the encouragement of a relational rights-consciousness in restorative justice.
