Human rights are dead. Long live human rights.
Boy was I happy to read a report on “Narrative change and public services spending and provision”, from the University of Greenwich. (An un-sexy title, but a mighty important subject). One of the report’s key findings is that“the narrative of human rights and social justice has been powerful across many sectors and at global and national levels.”
This is a crucial reminder at a time when there has been no shortage of human rights soul-searching. The healthy but sometimes too-much-in-a-bubble questioning has revolved around questions like the weakness of human rights strategies in the face of rising populism. Yet from indigenous rights defenders resisting extractivism and protecting their land, to women’s and reproductive rights advocates in the United States dealing with the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v Wade, the struggle for rights – and the shared call of rights – is alive and well.
I’ve always considered human rights as claims on power. As such they have infinite potential as the sources and deployment of power shift. (Think monopoly tech, deepening private markets, controllers of energy whether clean or dirty). Provided, that is, that human rights work keeps up with or even looks ahead and preempts these shifts. And that it is not just defensive but also visionary and propositional, and as such, unifying. This can be easier for social and cultural rights like the right to housing, food, and health perhaps, than for civil and political rights, but applies across the board.
Three areas in which I’m hopeful for the creative potential of human rights are:
1. Harnessing the rights-based principles of accountability and transparency to trace the specific private and public actors (and the often blurry lines between the two) that have influence over decision-making at multiple geographical levels, from local to international – exposing those who benefit from restricting the realisation of rights, and generating shared demands for change.
2. The indivisibility and interdependence of rights. Another point that really resonated in the report is that “alliance-building is crucial for shifting narratives” (and from narratives, power). The breadth of human rights law means it addresses the multi-faceted nature of any individual’s experience as well as their positioning within wider groups that have elements of shared experience, on the grounds of gender, physical ability, migration status, race, belief and more.
3. And, building off of both the above points, there is opportunity to strengthen the links between different areas of rights – the right to housing, and workers’ rights for example – in shaping the response to the climate and environmental crisis.
In the face of convergent challenges, the pull of human rights is still a powerful one. It is not perfect, or infallible, and should be used along with other frames and strategies, whatever works and connects people in a particular time and particular place. But human rights can strengthen solidarity across boundaries of all kinds, when solidarity is so urgently needed.