Insight: securing the future of human rights
Eight ideas to help us imagine a stronger human rights system.
In a time of global crisis, tight funding, and institutional reform, the future of human rights is an urgent question.
The overall ambition should be to reposition human rights once more as a foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world. The strategy for achieving this should include:
Embracing the idea that human rights serve larger purposes
Rescuing human rights from their defunct association with the Pax Americana
Applying the many resources of the human rights system to the biggest global challenges that threaten our destruction.
The following ideas offer some ways to do this, drawing on the following publications:
Strengthening the Human Rights System
Invest in imagination
We urgently need to think expansively and imagine alternative futures – yet amid crises, this proves to be one of the hardest things to do. We should not think of human rights as a blueprint, but invest in developing stories of the future we want, and then consider how human rights offer pathways to help us achieve them.
We have to think less about law and more about value systems, ethics, faith, and belonging, and to love the end goals more than the institutions and processes we have created.
Frame human rights as the foundation of security
Conflict is becoming normalised and defence is absorbing ever more resources. Without losing sight of the safeguards human rights offer against undue securitisation, we need a new narrative about human rights as the foundation for security.
Human rights and security aim for the same outcomes: the ability of all people to live safe and dignified lives.
Pursue an agenda of systemic economic reform
As the aid and development sectors undergo massive shifts with loss of US funding, the human rights sector should offer itself as a partner in the task of envisaging and bringing about systemic reforms to create a more equitable world order. This would honour the historic and ongoing focus of many states from Asia and Africa on the “right to development”.
Engage the planetary crisis with specific contributions
The climate, environmental, and biodiversity crises will increasingly impact every area of human rights, and the human rights system offers important ideas and mechanisms that can contribute to both mitigation and adaptation.
Among these should be a focus on defining Loss and Damage (including drawing upon social and cultural rights to shed light on the non-economic aspects) and the concept of a just transition.
Focus on corruption and good governance
As the Open Society Barometer showed in 2023, corruption and poor public services matter greatly to people around the world, and failings in these areas are the soft underbelly of authoritarian regimes.
The human rights ecosystem should focus on exposing these failures, and supporting individuals and organisations who do so at cost to themselves – including with short-term relocations or legal funding.
Offer a vision of civic systems, democracy, and tech
As democratic regression becomes the norm and emerging technology threatens to take us in directions consistent with oligarchic authoritarianism, the human rights ecosystem needs to move beyond a preoccupation with “shrinking civic space” and offer a compelling alternative vision – including one in which tech serves our needs, not the other way round.
Establish a voluntary protocol on targeted sanctions
As more states adopt Magnitsky-style sanctions in the relative absence of alternative options for accountability, they should engage with the legitimate critique that such sanctions can themselves violate human rights, by establishing a voluntary protocol designed to safeguard transparency, accountability, and consistency.
Raise the bar on business and human rights
It is time to re-evaluate the field of business and human rights and establish a roadmap for its future as the largest global corporations become vastly more powerful than ever before. This should consider what interfaces should exist between the human rights system and corporations (including regulation and engagement), and how to compel and incentivise corporations and investors to cultivate positive social and economic outcomes.