The Future of Human Rights
Emerging frontiers including climate rights, AI governance, pandemic preparedness, and the challenge of maintaining the human rights consensus.
A System Under Strain
The international human rights system built after World War II faces its most serious challenge in decades. The post-Cold War optimism that human rights would become truly universal has given way to a more contested landscape. Authoritarian governments are more confident and more networked, sharing surveillance technology and strategies for suppressing dissent. Democratic backsliding has eroded rights protections in countries from Hungary to India to the Philippines. The United States, long the most powerful advocate of human rights abroad (if inconsistently), has periodically withdrawn from human rights institutions.
The Human Rights Council itself is frequently criticized for including member states with abysmal human rights records. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and others have served on the Council while committing serious abuses. This creates a legitimacy problem: how can a body uphold universal standards when its own members violate them?