The future of human rights: A research agenda

Abstract

In turbulent times, we stand at the leading edge of human rights. The previous generation of human rights scholarship debated the balance between a rising tide and an end times of human rights. From where we stand, we can discern both directions — and looking ahead, rising issues in the distance. Our research can only glimpse the social problems and power relations emerging at the horizon. These phenomena pose challenges to the continuing construction of human rights as a movement to expand norms and practices of who is human , what is right , and who is responsible . The human rights agenda sits at the crossroads of historic progress and hard times. On the one hand, the arc of history bends through consequential advocacy campaigns — from antislavery to anti-apartheid, expanding rights frames, and a growing interactive regime of global, regional, national, local, and transnational institutions for monitoring, advocacy, socialization, capacity building, and accountabil-ity — that culminates in an unprecedented justice cascade. On the other hand, historic governance gaps threaten the lives, liberties, and well-being of people displaced from their homes, livelihoods, and identi-ties by global forces beyond their control — from conflict to disaster to distorted development — while gender-based violence affects an estimated one of three women and girls worldwide. On every contin-ent, illiberal ethnonationalists degrade democratic institutions, minorities and migrants, women ’ s rights, sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) rights, and global governance, often posing counternorms to rights based in religious or populist claims: notably, in the United States, India, Turkey, Brazil, Hungary, Poland, the Philippines, and Israel. analytic to the This and rights-bearing