In early 2017, in the wake of growing political instability, a contentious article titled “Welcome to the Post-Human Rights World” was published in Foreign Policy. The article argued that the global human rights movement was facing an existential threat. Set against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s election, the article predicted that the rise in nationalism, unchecked globalization and the influence of assertive autocratic players, such as Russia and China, would undermine the democratic values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). In this “post-human rights world,” international norms and institutions would continue to exist but would become increasingly ineffective. In turn, the priority placed on protecting the individual rights of human beings would be overshadowed by a “more crowded, nervous, anxious world.”
Fast-forward two years later and these predictions remain even more critical than before.
The Freedom in the World 2019 report, an annual publication released by Freedom House, broke down 13 consecutive years of worldwide decline in global freedom. The report identified globalization as a key contributor, arguing that social and economic changes relating to globalization have contributed to “a crisis of confidence in the political systems of long-standing democracies.” It is undeniable that globalization has drawn the world closer together economically, but it has also drawn the world apart by assuming a system of shared global values. While economies, lifestyles, technologies and attitudes have gradually converged, morality and ethics have not. As Michael Ignatieff explains “globalization of our economies does not produce globalization in our hearts and minds.”
This exposes profound contradictions to the system of international human rights. If we do not have a system of shared morality, then how can the universal principles enshrined in the UDHR endure through periods of uncertainty. Taking the UDHR from paper to practice is an altogether different challenge when its fundamental basis of shared global values no longer exists. The widening rift between the local and universal, the global and the contextual, no longer address the moral lives of ordinary citizens.
We need to reconsider both the place of human rights in a divided world and the applicability of those rights to whom they aim to protect. At its lowest level, this means removing the ideology and aspiration, shedding the universal language used by global elites and confronting the idea of divisible rights. It means placing human rights back in touch with the everyday concerns of ordinary citizens and communities.
The need for global cooperation in a divided world
At the heart of this problem is how to get countries, communities, and people to work better together and to envision a common global future. As States become more preoccupied with sovereign interests, there is less of an effort being made toward upholding a common global identity and with it, a global agenda. The question is mostly a moral one – how can we create a global operating system from hundreds of different origins, histories, faiths and religions. It is also a question of economic and social concerns. The enduring relevance of the UDHR lies in its ability to address wealth gaps and inequality – factors that were not included in its initial drafting but have left millions of ordinary citizens feeling victim to globalization.
The issue here is not necessarily that there are new types of rights, but that the system of fundamental rights – the very basic rights enshrined in the UDHR – clearly do not fit with the times of uncertainty we face today. People all over the world are losing faith in the global liberal order. Terrorism, hate-mongering against immigrants, media incitement and political aggravation have led to an “age of anger,” where pent-up discontent and cynicism have produced polarised views on race, religion, class and education. When order breaks down and conflicts arise, an environment of fear and exclusion can easily be exploited by politicians to create divides that protect some and leave others behind.
Going back to the “post-human rights world,” the first question to ask is whether the trend of resurgent sovereignty and isolationism will really survive? Yuval Noah Harari, acclaimed writer and one of today’s most thoughtful commentators on the future of humankind, presents a thought experiment describing a post-liberal system deemed the “Nationalist International”. Under this system, individual Nation-States would build walls and slow down the movement of ideas, money, goods and people to create distinct Nation-States with their own individual identities and traditions. Harari elaborates, “It will be a world without immigration, without universal values, without multiculturalism, and without a global elite—but with peaceful international relations and some trade. In a word, the ‘Nationalist International’ envisions the world as a network of walled-but-friendly fortresses.”
Harari later counters his thought experiment by arguing that a Nationalist Internationalist system could not work, simply because the pervasive threats of today – being climate change, artificial intelligence and nuclear war – place a much larger risk on humanity as a whole, and in turn demands global trust and cooperation. In other words, there is very little chance that the international order could revert back to a pre-globalized system because the threats we face today are much larger than a State can contain alone. In presenting this thought experiment, Harari encourages the liberal order by arguing that “even with its many faults, it is superior to any other system.” The liberal order is undeniably in need of urgent revision, but as history has shown, States can only truly survive and flourish through global cooperation.
Therefore, if States continue to promote isolationism and undermine the liberal world order, the first to feel the repercussions would be the most vulnerable members of humanity, being refugees, illegal migrants and persecuted minorities, before reaching the entire of humankind. In the wake of these ‘common global enemies’ - climate change, nuclear war and technological disruptions - there is no better time to forge a renewed global identity and prioritize the interests of humankind. In practice, this would involve an appeal to the ordinary citizens in highlighting that it is not the ideals of extreme isolationism and putting national priorities first that would benefit them, but a shared common priority to work towards a more secure and sustainable future.
An appeal to the ordinary citizen
In its broadest sense, the international human rights system cannot continue under the assumption of timelessness. The foundations of the system are being threatened and more efforts need to be made in making its case to ordinary citizens. In the same way that right-wing nationalism won by directing its policies downwards to the ordinary needs of the individual, the international human rights agenda must appeal to the same ordinary needs of the citizen. This requires a reframing of the moral order and a step back from ideological thinking, doctrine and human rights language.
In his book Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World, Michael Ignatieff travelled across the world to answer the question of moral order in an unjust, dangerous and uncertain world. His answer was to appeal to the “ordinary virtues” of people, being the recurrent, constant struggles lived by citizens in their everyday lives. Ordinary virtues are those that allow us to be decent, to live decently, and to make sense of our lives as meaningful. People are unmoved by the “elite discourse of human rights and international law.” In real life, context is all that matters. Therefore, the true test of public institutions is whether they create enough order and stability for citizens to live decently and behave decently towards one another.
It could be that a divided world leads to fear, exclusion and isolation, but a divided world could also be the answer to a new wave of global cooperation. The universal system as we know it may have catapulted progress, but it did not foster an enduring system of trust and tolerance. Instead, we need to look deeper in finding commonality in our ideas of decency and with it, push for public institutions to regain confidence and foster global cooperation by appealing to the ordinary lives and virtues of citizens.
About the author
Rapti Ratnayake is a recent LLM graduate and former O'Brien Fellow (2017-2018).
She is currently working as the Randal Barker Research Assistant at McGill University. Her research focuses on transitional justice, trade and development and foreign policy. Prior to starting her LLM, Rapti received the Asia Foundation's LankaCorps Fellowship, where she worked in Sri Lanka on issues of transitional justice, women's economic empowerment and post-conflict reconciliation.