Less powerful states – particularly those in the Global South – are pursuing a more diverse human rights agenda on issues including climate and the environment; the legacies of colonialism; and economic inequality. Embracing this presents a potential way out of the current impasse.
While great power politics set the overall framework for multilateralism, there are signs of fresh human rights leadership emerging from some countries in the Global South. A broader and more complex thematic agenda is taking shape as a result. Fresh impetus is being given to themes that had been somewhat suppressed by Global North domination of the international human rights agenda since the end of the Cold War. These themes include, among others, the legacies of colonialism and economic inequality.
This naturally raises broader questions about the future trajectory of human rights. If the post-Cold War agenda was substantially about promoting democracy, with an additional emphasis in the early 21st century on human protection, the next phase could see an interweaving of human rights with grand global challenges such as climate and the environment. This could be said to constitute a more authentic representation of the diverse priorities of different peoples and states around the world.
The existing human rights regime therefore faces challenges from two sides: whether it can stretch far enough to incorporate this broader agenda; and whether it can claim ongoing relevance without applying itself to a wider set of global challenges. As one interviewee said, the question always remains, ‘where can human rights be decisive, where are they part of the picture, where are they irrelevant?’
Despite the faultlines within the human rights system, and attempts by the US and its allies and by China to galvanize support around their rival paradigms of democracy and development, the actual alliances that form are often more complex and sometimes belie the political risk involved. Recent years have seen some notable initiatives from Global South states to tackle country situations, albeit in a limited way. For example, in 2017, the Lima Group (comprising 11 Latin American states and Canada) came together to develop a ‘peaceful and negotiated solution’ to the political and economic crisis in Venezuela, and in October 2019 secured a Commission of Inquiry on Venezuela through the HRC. However, the group has struggled to survive changes of government in Latin America, with several states announcing their withdrawal. In 2018, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the EU co-sponsored a resolution to establish the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) with a mandate ‘to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence of the most serious international crimes and violations of international law committed in Myanmar since 2011, and to prepare files in order to facilitate and expedite fair and independent criminal proceedings’. The following year, OIC member The Gambia brought a case against Myanmar before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), alleging genocide against the Rohingya people. Beyond human rights (though closely related), in 2021 Ireland and Niger cooperated on a draft resolution at the UNSC that focused on the effects of climate change on peace and security, which secured widespread support but was eventually vetoed by Russia.
These developments show how the global human rights agenda is never a simple matter of polarized bloc-voting, despite the pressures on small and less powerful states to fall into line. Rather, some of the most innovative work of the international human rights system has recently come about through alliances that do not neatly conform to the major power blocs. The following three themes, which have gained recent prominence, exemplify this trend.
The first is a growing focus on climate and the environment and their connections with human rights. Interviewees in different parts of the Global South saw this as a natural tie-up. For example, Africa has a long history of environmental litigation, including a March 2022 landmark ruling in South Africa affirming a constitutional right to clean air. In October 2021, the HRC adopted a resolution co-sponsored by Costa Rica, the Maldives, Morocco, Slovenia and Switzerland, recognizing for the first time the ‘right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a human right that is important for the enjoyment of human rights’. Significantly, this right was then affirmed by UNGA in July 2022, although it is not legally binding. A diplomat involved in that process noted that it had been arduous to gain the support of some Global North countries, citing their anxieties about the precedent this process created – and, perhaps more importantly, the potential for litigation. Opponents of the initiative also focused their critique on the ambiguities within the right, whereby it was not clear what the individual could expect from the state.
In October 2021, the HRC adopted a resolution recognizing for the first time the ‘right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a human right that is important for the enjoyment of human rights’.
Those HRC and UNGA resolutions nonetheless constituted a significant statement that many states see value in a human rights-based approach to climate and the environment. During the same October 2021 session of the HRC, the EU cooperated with the Bahamas, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Panama, Paraguay and Sudan to sponsor a resolution that led to the creation of a new mandate of UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change. The leadership of small island states in this area is also visible in other initiatives, such as Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley leading global advocacy on climate and development financing; and Vanuatu leading a group of countries pushing for an advisory ruling on climate change at the ICJ.
The second burgeoning theme is a focus on racism, xenophobia and the legacies of colonialism, in which observers are expecting African states to play a growing role over time. This theme has deep historical roots in the strong African push to create ICERD in 1965 but has been somewhat muted in the decades since. To some extent, the agenda returned to the fore as a result of the international reaction to the murder of George Floyd. One interviewee highlighted the sense of frustration across the African continent that it took an episode of racially motivated violence in the US to create political momentum on this issue, citing criticism that followed a statement on George Floyd from the AU commission chairperson, Moussa Faki Mahamat. Nevertheless, there was an effort to capitalize on the moment. In June 2020, the HRC held an urgent debate on ‘the current racially inspired human rights violations, systemic racism, police brutality against people of African descent and violence against peaceful protests’, leading to the establishment (by consensus) of a commission of inquiry into systemic racism in the context of law enforcement in the US and beyond.
A further HRC resolution in July 2021 – led by Cameroon on behalf of the African group of states, and also adopted by consensus – shifted from a focus on the US to a broader analysis of the legacies of colonialism and slavery. This resolution established an independent expert mechanism ‘to further transformative change for racial justice and equality in the context of law enforcement globally, especially where relating to the legacies of colonialism and the Transatlantic slave trade in enslaved Africans’. It was against this background that the China-led HRC resolution on the legacy of colonialism (Chapter 4) passed without African unanimity during the next Council session – a strong indication that African states intended to lead on this issue rather than ceding it to China. As one interviewee said, from the African perspective, these issues ‘need to be at the centre of the future of human rights’, and we are still in the early days of an emerging agenda.
In another sign that a confident post-colonialist discourse on human rights violations is only likely to grow, Kenya’s permanent representative to the UN in New York, Martin Kimani, delivered a potent defence of Ukraine’s territorial integrity at a UNSC emergency meeting in February 2022, grounded in colonial experience. He stated that ‘[w]e must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression.’
The third theme, spurred by the pandemic, is a renewed focus on inequality. One interviewee singled out the issue of vaccine inequality, saying that ‘it will be remembered [in the Global South] for a long time’. In October 2020, South Africa and India led an initiative (co-sponsored by 58 and backed by more than 100 mostly developing countries), urging the General Council of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend international property rights related to COVID-19 medications and treatments in order to enable wider access to vaccines and treatment. However, the push faced strong resistance from the EU, Switzerland and the UK in particular. While the US reversed its initial opposition in May 2021, the compromise agreement reached in June 2022 met with little enthusiasm. At the March 2022 session of the HRC, a group of mainly LMDC states introduced a resolution which made a similar call to the WTO initiative in human rights terms, expressing concern that the pandemic ‘has drastically exacerbated existing inequalities within and among States’. This draft resolution was in addition to the regular annual resolution on foreign debt and economic and social rights, which also made reference to the impact of COVID-19 (and which had some overlapping sponsors and passed by a similar margin). It seems likely that the inequalities agenda could develop further. As one participant in a Chatham House roundtable on human rights diplomacy said, ‘we need a new generation of diplomacy drawing on established normative instruments and advocacy to tackle global inequality’, focused on issues of debt, taxation, and extra-territorial obligations and jurisdiction among others.
There is potential in future for each of these three major themes – climate and the environment; racism and the legacies of colonialism; and inequality – to grow as priorities within the human rights system. There is also potential for them to influence each other, given their interdependencies, and in the best case, to lead to both a richer analysis of human rights violations and better tools for addressing them. There is already a tradition of states or blocs taking ownership of specific human rights issues within the multilateral system: for example, South Africa has become the established leader on tackling racial discrimination; while EU’s record in regulating technology positions it well to lead on the human rights aspects of technology in multilateral spaces (as one interviewee asked, ‘has the EU finally found its issue?’) But there should be room for more states or blocs to take ownership of more themes. A broader agenda championed by a larger group of states may be the strongest bulwark against the pressures of polarization and may help to maintain a reasonable degree of integrity within the human rights system. This will not be easy. Numerous countries in the Global North remain resolutely focused on human rights through a democracy lens, while there is a risk (as with the colonialism resolution) that China’s attempt to claim leadership of Global South agendas will add to the politicization of already complex issues. But this is the nature of diplomacy.
There is a question, however, about what more could be done to create greater room for manoeuvre for G77 and other less powerful countries. The answers are partly technical, with instruments such as the Small Island Developing States support fund enabling more states to be present in Geneva and engage in UN human rights mechanisms. In the case of smaller delegations, as one interviewee said, the level of engagement and even charisma from individual ambassadors is an important factor in determining their influence. The same interviewee also explained that provision for remote-working practices during the COVID-19 pandemic benefited those with lower capacity and smaller delegations, changing expectations for the future.
It is also important to bolster the status of economic, social and cultural rights within the human rights system, and to ensure they are not subsumed by a reductive narrative about the right to development. Mechanisms such as special procedures, the HRC and treaty bodies hold significant creative potential in this area, including by supporting litigation on chronic and systemic human rights issues through resolutions and reports – certain of these have already begun to have an impact in courtrooms. Although one former UN special rapporteur with an economic, social and cultural rights mandate bemoaned the lack of interest in their work relative to those with civil and political rights mandates, the former special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston made a series of politically bold country visits during his tenure to countries including China, the UK and the US, drawing significant media attention to issues of extreme inequality in some of the world’s largest economies.
Ultimately, however, political will from Global North countries will be crucial in creating space for leadership from Global South countries and attention to their priorities. Several Global South diplomats contributing perspectives to this paper expressed frustration at what they perceived as Global North hypocrisy on a range of issues from climate finance to COVID-19 vaccine inequality. One interviewee argued forcefully that Global North states would be easier to work with if they were less self-congratulatory and more willing to acknowledge their imperfection and struggles. This test may be relevant not only to the agenda of climate, racism and inequality, but increasingly also to civil and political rights in a period of democratic regression. Yet there are reasons for optimism in this regard. Recent creative partnerships between countries in the Global South and Global North, such as those leading the initiative on the right to a healthy environment, suggest that similar efforts may be possible in future.