Can the global backlash against human rights be stopped?

Respect for human rights has declined over two decades. But despite a backlash against the international legal order, some players are driving positive change.

Just 75 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written, the international human rights regime is under threat.

Respect for human rights has declined in the 21st century, a report by the University of Rhode Island‘s Global Rights Project has found, exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, when there was a sharp increase in human trafficking and a reduction in freedom of movement.

An Amnesty International report painted a similarly grim picture, describing a “world spiralling through time, hurtling backwards past the 1948 promise of universal human rights”.

Civilians are being treated as expendable in Gaza, Ukraine and other armed conflicts — and that’s just one of several bleak themes described by Amnesty.

Women’s rights have also been walked back amid a resurgence of far-right, populist governments. Artificial Intelligence has facilitated the widespread erosion of some rights, including rights to privacy and online safety.

Meanwhile, economic crises, in combination with climate change and the aftermath of the pandemic, have all disproportionately impacted the world’s most marginalised groups, including people with disability.

As a result, high food prices and fuel insecurity are seriously threatening the right to an adequate standard of living.

This diminishing respect for human rights has been aided by a backlash against the United Nations. Simultaneously, a rise in populist politics across a growing number of countries, including Italy, the Philippines and the United States has also threatened respect for human rights and the global legal order more broadly.

But there is good news: Environmental human rights advocates, including Indigenous groups, have played a key role in advancing a relatively ‘new’ human right to a healthy environment in recent years.

This 360info special report asks: How serious is the global backlash against human rights we appear to be witnessing — and what can be done to resurrect respect for human rights?

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.