The turbulence of our present era calls for tools and mechanisms that can strengthen international cooperation and address the profound challenges facing the world. The 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), in December 2023, is a landmark that offers an opportunity to reflect on the past and look ahead to the future contribution that human rights could make in this regard. It should be an opportunity for renewal, including considering how to apply the resources offered by the human rights system to the biggest global challenges.
Much progress has been made through the norms, laws, mechanisms and institutions that make up the international human rights system. Through the elaboration of universal standards as part of the wider multilateral system, human rights have provided a non-anarchic way to negotiate the relationship between people and power.
The human rights framework has grown and evolved throughout a period of great change. But we now live in a different world from the one in which it came into being. This is a time of compounding crises that are global in nature, including rising economic inequality and debt distress, climate change and biodiversity loss, and threats to the conditions that enable democracy – all of which are unfolding in the context of renewed great power competition and rivalry. At the same time, we are experiencing an unprecedented encroachment of technology in our lives.
The context raises questions about whether the human rights framework and system as it has evolved since 1948 still holds answers to the challenges we face today. On the one hand, there is a narrative of decline – that the human rights system is tired, and its biggest achievements lie in the past. For some human rights practitioners, significant reversals in areas such as women’s rights, freedoms of expression and assembly, and refugee rights challenge their belief in prospects for progress. This may tempt them to adopt a defensive posture, in an effort to prevent further backsliding.
On the other hand, plenty of hope is still invested in the human rights system, which remains deeply embedded in the UN and wider multilateral system as well as in domestic constitutions and laws. There is something precious in the way that human rights bring together a universal language of moral norms with state obligations and mechanisms to protect these rights. The scholar Kathryn Sikkink has articulated a potent defence of human rights based on evidence of impact and deconstructing the assumptions on which narratives of decline are built.
At this significant anniversary, it is not possible to construct one single coherent global story about the current state of human rights. There is room both for concern and for optimism. This briefing paper argues that there is scope for renewal, too. In particular, there is a crucial role for human rights to play in tackling the grand global challenges of our time and how they manifest in the lives of people around the world.
The paper draws on material from 45 interviews with human rights practitioners across different fields, as well as five Chatham House roundtables and a review of relevant literature. It has two main sections: the first addresses questions of methodology – how the human rights system should seek to achieve change; the second proposes a three-part agenda for how human rights should be applied to some of the most consequential global challenges now facing societies around the world. There is no suggestion that this should be a comprehensive blueprint for human rights, since there are many other priorities besides, but it should be at the heart of an agenda for the renewal of human rights.