Protecting Human Rights in the Age of Global Protests

• In Event: Populist Threats to Human Rights Institutions

Abstract

From Ecuador to Sudan, Chile to Iran, India to Iraq, Venezuela to Algeria, Haiti to Spain, Hong Kong to Bolivia, Puerto Rico to Lebanon, we have witnessed a massive wave of people taking to the streets to claim their basic right to protest and demand reform from their governments. This massive global surge in protests has emerged largely in response to glaring income inequality, rampant corruption, massive youth unemployment, and widespread human rights abuses. These protests have been largely directed at the political establishment, ironically generating support for nationalist/populist regimes throughout the world. In response, a “resistance movement” has emerged that intends to address a range of concerns including: climate change, net neutrality, the campaign for Black Lives, reproductive and immigrant and disability rights. The variations in the protesters’ grievances or agendas notwithstanding, these uprisings point to a broader need for a new social contract between citizens and governments that goes beyond making traditional modifications in political and socioeconomic structure. These modern protest movements have found a natural ally in cyberspace. The latter has also made people acutely aware of economic inequality as well as their mobilizing potential. The paradoxical nature of digital media has exposed both their emancipatory potential and constraining risks. I argue that the worldwide rise in protest is a pushback against several state policies, including neoliberal economic measures, rampant corruption, glaring economic and gender inequality, and an era of ongoing political repression. In this context, I attempt to answer three key questions: (1) what are the variations and similarities between various protests; (2) why do these large-scale unrests often fail to achieve swift and transformative political change? And finally (3) what kind of strategies does the human rights community need to adopt in response to fundamentally new context (i.e., post-liberal world order) that we now face?

Author

• Mahmood Monshipouri, San Francisco State University