Equality Rights Beyond Neoliberal Constraints

Abstract

Decades of neoliberal policies have resulted in startling economic and social inequalities, both within and between countries. Reports on these alarming inequalities have prompted human rights scholars and practitioners to turn their attention to the potential of human rights to challenge these injustices. Most human rights scholars and practitioners appear to agree that international human rights law does not guarantee any level of economic or social equality. They maintain rather that economic and social equality is instrumentally important to achieving human rights. Numerous studies have shown the negative impacts of inequality on the right to health, political participation, discrimination and many other human rights. Those links are well established. But can we accept the contention that international human rights law does not recognize any right to economic and social equality? This chapter calls for reinterpreting equality and nondiscrimination in international human rights law – beyond the neoliberal paradigm – to recognize a right to multi-dimensional equality that extends to civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Applying traditional rules for treaty interpretation, it points to three avenues for construing rights to economic and social equality in the International Bill of Human Rights. The chapter concludes with a call to human rights scholars and practitioners to move beyond the constraints of neoliberalism to consider whether the holistic framework of the International Bill of Human Rights actually guarantees that everyone is equal in dignity and all rights.

Keywords: equality, nondiscrimination, neoliberalism, economic and social rights, human rights