Economics and Human Rights: End of Intervention?

The global economic crisis is accelerating processes of change, whereby economic – and ultimately political – power is shifting away from European and North American states which have dominated the world for most of the past two centuries.These dramatic changes will have significant impacts in many sectors, including on development and humanitarian activity. Any decline in the west’s economic and strategic power means that in future there will be less financial and political capital to back international interventions based on human rights.