Human Rights 2030: Existential Challenges and a New Paradigm for the Field

Abstract

This chapter proposes disruptive interventions in human rights practice that address the existential challenges to the field: a more collaborative mode of operation, greater sense of time (both long term and short term), and heightened attention to narratives, emotions, and frames capable of connecting with larger constituencies and other social justice movements. The traditional paradigm of human rights is inadequate to deal with the simultaneity, speed, and depth of the ecological, technological, geopolitical, and socio-economic challenges of the 2020s. Against the despair of critics who announce the ‘endtimes’ of human rights and the defensiveness of traditional advocates who double down on conventional tactics, this chapter proposes ideas and strategies for the next decade that draw on lessons from other fields of knowledge and practice.

Keywords: human rights, international law, transnational networks, social movements, future