Adressing Inequality from a Human Rights Perspective

Numerous countries around the globe are witnessing a similar experience in their modern political contexts: democratic tools and human rights instruments —which have facilitated undeniable improvements in the lives of millions—, are proving largely insufficient for preventing extreme forms of exclusion. In other words, while human rights have played a fundamental role in highlighting inequalities based on factors such as a gender and ethnic and racial identity, they have coexisted alongside persistent socioeconomic injustices and the rise of authoritarian populist governments that are jeopardizing human rights institutions and principles worldwide.

Against this panorama, some are arguing that the human rights movement is incapable of warding off social injustice, while others are calling for a separation of the human rights and social movements. This book offers a third way: it points to an emerging set of ideas and practices being developed by activists, scholars, and courts from a range of countries that reveals the potential of human rights to resolve other radical injustices and to build more robust civil society movements against inequality and deregulation.

The contributors to this volume are activists-researchers who belong to human rights organizations from a range of countries throughout the Global South and who write from a geographic and personal angle to enrich global dialogue on the future of the human rights field.  Their chapters address multiple issues that center on inequality, including barriers to nationality for the children of migrants, violence against women in rural settings, indigenous migration to the city, the citizenship status of refugees, empathy is a key ingredient of public policy, the social impact of radical market reforms, and the war on drugs —and in doing so, offer valuable contributions to the construction of a more effective, horizontal, and creative human rights movement.