The past and future of human rights

2021 ◽  
pp. 183-224
Author(s):  
Gráinne de Búrca
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
The Future ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy ◽  
Advocacy Campaigns

This chapter reflects on the lessons to be derived from the advocacy campaigns in Pakistan, Argentina, and Ireland discussed in earlier chapters. Insights drawn from those campaigns are used to refine the experimentalist account of human rights advanced in Chapter 2, particularly as regards the importance of social movements and of building broad social support for human rights campaigns. The remainder of the chapter describes five major challenges of the current era—illiberalism, climate change, digitalization, pandemics, and inequality—and considers the difficulties they pose for the experimentalist account of human rights advocacy. It argues that the experimentalist practice of human rights advocacy is reasonably resilient and adaptive, and that internal contestation from within the human rights movement as well as external critiques have already helped to catalyze reform and to push activists and advocates to think more innovatively about the changes needed to strengthen the ability of the movement to engage with these major challenges in the future. It concludes that in a turbulent era, rather than abandon human rights, we should redouble our efforts to bolster, renew, and reinvigorate a movement that has galvanized constituencies and communities around the globe to mobilize for a better world.

scholarly journals Remarks by Alice Thomas

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 178-180
Author(s):  
Alice Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
The Future

Thanks. That was a particularly good introduction to some concepts that I am going to try to address here, when I get into a much more messy, complex area—which is how climate change is affecting human mobility, and where the myriad of people who are moving or may move in the future of this, where would they fit within the current regimes for refugees and migrants and how do those regimes need to be amended or extended in order to better protect the human rights of people that are moving in this context.

Human Rights in the Paris Agreement

Climate Law ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 109-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benoit Mayer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy

The Paris Agreement contains the first mention of human rights in a climate change treaty. This article recounts the build-up of human rights advocacy since the Cancun Agreements. It then discusses the significance of the inclusion of a provision on human rights in the preamble to the Paris Agreement and explores other relevant provisions adopted at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the un Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in December 2015.

Epilogue

2016 ◽  
pp. 119-122
Author(s):  
Christian W. McMillen
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Health Infrastructure ◽  
Health Infrastructure ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Face ◽  
New Challenges

There will be more pandemics. A pandemic might come from an old, familiar foe such as influenza or might emerge from a new source—a zoonosis that makes its way into humans, perhaps. The epilogue asks how the world will confront pandemics in the future. It is likely that patterns established long ago will re-emerge. But how will new challenges, like climate change, affect future pandemics and our ability to respond? Will lessons learned from the past help with plans for the future? One thing is clear: in the face of a serious pandemic much of the developing world’s public health infrastructure will be woefully overburdened. This must be addressed.

Witnessing the Ruins of Apartheid

Matatu ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-80
Author(s):  
Marie Kruger
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Prison Staff ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Former Inmates

AbstractConstitution Hill, a unique and hybrid memorial site in the centre of Johannesburg, commemorates the violence of apartheid in the city’s infamous prison complex. Based on a series of workshops with former inmates and prison staff, the permanent exhibitions emphasize the importance of personal objects and testimonials for understanding the human rights violations of the past and their significance for the present and the future. In response to Yvonne Owuor’s appeal to remember the vulnerability of those human bodies who no one “[has] bothered to mention, to mourn”, my article attempts to map a new path towards responsible forms of spectatorship as we walk through the former Women’s Jail and listen to the witness accounts of Deborah Matshoba and Nolundi Ntamo.

scholarly journals Religion, Human Rights, and Forensic Activism: The Search for the Disappeared in Latin America

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 601
Author(s):  
María Soledad Catoggio
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Qualitative Research Design ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
Mode Of Operation ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
Scientific System ◽  
Depth Interviews

This paper systematizes and analyzes the links and exchanges between the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense (EAAF)) and the world of religion. My hypothesis is that these links are inextricable from the mode of operation that defined the EAAF, which can be called “forensic activism”. This kind of activism, outside the State, combined scientific expertise with humanitarian sensitivity, defined by its autonomy from the human rights movement and the national scientific system (both academic and university). Moreover, religion emerged constantly from the type of work undertaken, between the living and the dead. Thus, beliefs, with their prohibitions, rituals, and ways of making sense of suffering and their tools for coming to terms with grief, coexisted with the EAAF’s development. These findings emerge from a qualitative research design combining document analysis, in-depth interviews, and participative observation of scientific disclosure open to the public provided by the EAAF over the past three years.

scholarly journals International Migration and Work: Charting an Ethical Approach to the Future

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-133
Author(s):  
Donald Kerwin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Migration ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Global Compact ◽  
Future Of Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ethical Approach ◽  
The Future

Executive Summary This research was conducted at the request of the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) as part of a two-year special initiative entitled “The Future of Work, Labour After Laudato Sì.” 1 This article explores the future of work, international migration, and the intersection of the two at a time of rapid change, uncertainty, and disruption for migrants, laborers, and their families and communities. It draws on human rights principles, international law, and religious values, particularly from the Catholic tradition, to chart an ethical approach to the governance of these timeless phenomena. What does the future hold? Under one dystopian scenario, the future of work will be characterized by massive job loss due to automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Politicians and business leaders will characterize the resulting human displacement as an unavoidable “disruption” and byproduct of change. Euphemisms, however, will poorly mask the loss of livelihood, self-esteem, and a central marker of identity for countless persons, particularly the poor and vulnerable. Technological advances will decimate families, communities, and entire ways of life. For many, stable work will become a thing of the past, and technology an instrument of marginalization and discrimination. Algorithms will be used to “perpetuate gender bias” ( ILO 2019a , 35), pit workers against each other, and squeeze the maximum productivity from them for the minimum compensation. The “inappropriate use” and “weak governance” of algorithms will lead to “biases, errors and malicious acts” ( Albinson, Krishna, and Chu 2018 ). Large swaths of the world’s citizens will become (at best) the unhappy dependents of states and global elites. The future of migration seems equally daunting. Current trends suggest that the number of international migrants will continue to rise due to job displacement, violence, natural disaster, and states that cannot or will not meet their fundamental responsibilities. If the past is prologue, unscrupulous politicians and media sources will also continue to blame migrants for the economic and cultural displacement of their constituents, xenophobia will increase, and migrants will encounter hostility in host communities. Natives will criticize their governments and institutions for failing to protect their interests and needs, and migrant laborers will be caught in the middle. This article does not minimize the urgency of the challenges presented by migration and work. It documents the unacceptable living, working, and migration conditions of immense numbers of the world’s citizens. It offers, however, a more optimistic vision of the future than the dystopian view, a vision characterized by international cooperation and solidarity. It recognizes the potential of technology “to render labour superfluous, ultimately alienating workers and stunting their development,” but also its potential to “free workers from arduous labour; from dirt, drudgery, danger and deprivation” and “to reduce work-related stress and potential injuries” ( ILO 2019 , 43). It recognizes the way in which fear of displacement can lead to exclusionary nationalism and xenophobia, but also the possibility of unity based on the shared values embedded in the cultures of diverse persons. It recognizes the costs of migration, but also its immense contributions to host communities. The article argues for person-centered systems and policies that promote the freedom, rights, and dignity of workers, migrants, and migrant workers, and that strengthen migrant host communities. It begins by examining the challenges facing low-income and vulnerable migrants who struggle for decent work, are the most likely to lose their jobs, and are “the least equipped to seize new job opportunities” ( ILO 2019 , 18). 2 It then presents an ethical, person-centered vision of migration and work, rooted in human rights principles, international law, and Catholic social teaching. The article also draws on principles articulated in the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM); the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR); and the Holy See’s Twenty Action Points for the Global Compacts. It ends with a series of recommendations that seek to bring this vision to fruition.

State Funding for Human Rights Activism: Channeling Protest?

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (13) ◽  
pp. 1703-1728 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominique Clément
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
State Funding ◽  
Private Funding ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
Channeling Effect ◽  
The Impact

Channeling theory posits that external funding for social movements, rather than coopting activism, channels activism into more structured and less militants forms. Studies on channeling, however, focus on private funding. The following article examines whether public funding has a comparable effect on social movements. Using the human rights movement in Canada as a case study, it examines several issues relating to channeling: why funders support activism; funding as social control or altruism; how funding is related to consolidating movement gains; and the impact of funding on mobilization, activism, and internal movement dynamics. To address these questions, this article draws on an innovative new data set that includes lists of grants extracted from more than 30 years of government budgets in Canada. It also draws on several years of archival research on a network of 19 organizations in every region of Canada, as well as interviews with former members of these organizations. In addition to demonstrating that public funding has a comparable channeling effect as private funding, this article provides the first comprehensive survey of the extent of state funding for the human rights movement in Canada.

Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 224-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle P. Whyte
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Viewing Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Parallel Universes ◽  
Indigenous Perspectives ◽  
Colonial Violence ◽  
Climate Crisis

Portrayals of the Anthropocene period are often dystopian or post-apocalyptic narratives of climate crises that will leave humans in horrific science-fiction scenarios. Such narratives can erase certain populations, such as Indigenous peoples, who approach climate change having already been through transformations of their societies induced by colonial violence. This essay discusses how some Indigenous perspectives on climate change can situate the present time as already dystopian. Instead of dread of an impending crisis, Indigenous approaches to climate change are motivated through dialogic narratives with descendants and ancestors. In some cases, these narratives are like science fiction in which Indigenous peoples work to empower their own protagonists to address contemporary challenges. Yet within literature on climate change and the Anthropocene, Indigenous peoples often get placed in historical categories designed by nonIndigenous persons, such as the Holocene. In some cases, these categories serve as the backdrop for allies' narratives that privilege themselves as the protagonists who will save Indigenous peoples from colonial violence and the climate crisis. I speculate that this tendency among allies could possibly be related to their sometimes denying that they are living in times their ancestors would have likely fantasized about. I will show how this denial threatens allies' capacities to build coalitions with Indigenous peoples. Inuit culture is based on the ice, the snow and the cold…. It is the speed and intensity in which change has occurred and continues to occur that is a big factor why we are having trouble with adapting to certain situations. Climate change is yet another rapid assault on our way of life. It cannot be separated from the first waves of changes and assaults at the very core of the human spirit that have come our way. Just as we are recognizing and understanding the first waves of change … our environment and climate now gets threatened. Sheila Watt-Cloutier, interviewed by the Ottawa Citizen. (Robb, 2015) In North America many Indigenous traditions tell us that reality is more than just facts and figures collected so that humankind might widely use resources. Rather, to know “it”—reality—requires respect for the relationships and relatives that constitute the complex web of life. I call this Indigenous realism, and it entails that we, members of humankind, accept our inalienable responsibilities as members of the planet's complex life system, as well as our inalienable rights. ( Wildcat, 2009 , xi) Within Māori ontological and cosmological paradigms it is impossible to conceive of the present and the future as separate and distinct from the past, for the past is constitutive of the present and, as such, is inherently reconstituted within the future. (Stewart-Harawira, 2005, 42) In fact, incorporating time travel, alternate realities, parallel universes and multiverses, and alternative histories is a hallmark of Native storytelling tradition, while viewing time as pasts, presents, and futures that flow together like currents in a navigable stream is central to Native epistemologies. ( Dillon, 2016a , 345)

Paradigm for a New Millennium

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emile G. McAnany
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Entrepreneurship ◽  
Advocacy Group ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Communication Work ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy ◽  
Communication For Development ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter describes a fourth paradigm that has arisen in the social change and development arena over the past two decades: social entrepreneurship (SE). It begins with an overview of disagreements over the definition of SE, along with the origins of the concept. It then considers what is new about the SE paradigm and how it might be incorporated into the field of communication for development (c4d). It also evaluates four projects that highlight innovations to serve people and the kinds of social entrepreneurship that they have incorporated: Indonesia's Radio 68H; Grameen Foundation's village phone initiative in Uganda; the Barefoot College of Tilonia in Rajastan, India; Witness, a human rights advocacy group founded by musician Peter Gabriel. Drawing on the case of SE, the chapter concludes by asking how paradigms in communication work.

Lessons from the Past: Developing Allegiances for the Future

2001 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Linda S. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
African American ◽  
Social Work ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Shared Resources ◽  
Settlement House ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
African American Leaders

This article analyzes linkages among the 60 Settlement House workers and other white and African-American leaders of the Progressive Era who signed “The Call,” a media statement calling for aid for African Americans in 1908 that eventually led to development of the NAACP. The analysis demonstrates the value of linkage and shared resources for success of social movements during the Progressive Era. This article applies the discussion to issues facing social work today.

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